Pro-Palestine protesters marched outside the Met Gala as celebrities headed to the annual fundraising event held for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institut in New York City.
Several of these demonstrators, carrying banners with slogans saying “No Met Gala While Bombs Drop in Gaza”, were arrested.
The Monday night protests came amid ongoing demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza at major universities and colleges across the US. Since mid-April, more than 2,400 protesters have been arrested.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) confirmed the arrests, but did not mention the specific number of people taken into custody on Monday night. NBC News said the protesters appeared to be from Hunter College, a public university in New York City.
Earlier in the evening, a small group of protesters gathered in Central Park with cardboard banners saying “No Celebration Without Liberation”, The New York Times reported.
At the same time, a larger group of protesters made their way along the city’s Fifth Avenue, with many of them waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Gaza! Gaza!”. The NYPD put up barricades at various areas surrounding the Met Gala venue, aiming to create a barrier between the protesters and the event.
At around 6.30 pm when celebrities started arriving, the police started arresting the protesters. NYPD officers were spotted near the event with masks and zip-tie handcuffs. Also on Monday, a group of demonstrators also vandalised a World War I memorial in Central Park and burned an American flag.
The base of the memorial, Old Glory at the site of the 107th Infantry Memorial, was defaced with graffiti reading “Gaza”, The New York Post reported.
Stickers of the Palestinian flag that read “Stop the Genocide. End the apartheid. Free Palestine” were pasted on the statue’s bronze soldiers.
The protests seemed to intensify after Israel pressed forward with its planned military offensive in Rafah city, the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza, just hours after the Palestinian militant group had agreed to a ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar to end the seven-month war.
Israel said the deal did not meet its “core demands”.
On Tuesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces announced that it was “conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah”.