On Thursday, the New York City Police Department (NYPD), under the leadership of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, arrested an estimated 104 people organized by the anti-genocide organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). The demonstrators were protesting the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly.

Tisch, a holdover from the Eric Adams administration, was reappointed as police chief by Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The protesters sat down on First Avenue and 39th street near the UN building in an effort to prevent access by Netanyahu’s motorcade. They were arrested by the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG), the notoriously violent “anti-terrorism” unit that brutalized students and other protesters at Columbia University and City College who were seeking to end their schools’ relationship with the Israeli state. Mamdani had promised during the mayoral election to disband the unit.

As Mamdani’s police were rounding up anti-genocide protesters, Netanyahu was delivering a genocidal rant at the UN, calling the victims of Israel’s homicidal campaign throughout the Middle East “barbarians,” “monsters,” “butchers” and “the worst mass murderers on earth.”

Israel has killed 73,928 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 175,030 since October 2023, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported Thursday. Israeli forces killed 1,408 of these after the ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025.

Among those arrested were actors Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder. In a post on Instagram after her release, Einbinder wrote:

If the pictures of my friends and me getting arrested in protest of Netanyahu’s shameful visit to New York draw attention to anything, let it be to the devastating genocidal war Israel is waging against the people of Palestine and Southern Lebanon—to the settler attacks, the home demolitions, the bombing of people as they sleep… Let us not mistake the spectacle for the story: genocide is the headline, and it is time for it to end.

Thursday’s arrests provide a cap to this week’s actions by the pseudo-socialist Mamdani administration, which have shown how thoroughly it has abandoned any pretense of opposition to the foreign policy of American imperialism.

Only three days earlier, Mamdani held a cordial meeting and groveling press conference with the fascist president of the United States, Donald Trump, at the official mayoral residence in Manhattan, Gracie Mansion. Ostensibly they discussed the building of a new office and residential complex on the train yards of Sunnyside, Queens—a potential profit bonanza for Trump and his real estate buddies.

This preceded Trump’s Tuesday tirade at the UN General Assembly, during which he threatened to “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly.” Trump also attacked the DSA as a “communist” front for Cuba. Mamdani made no comment on the speech.

On Monday, after his meeting with Trump, Mamdani gave an interview to CNN decrying Netanyahu as a “war criminal” and an “architect of a horrific genocide.” But he nevertheless defended his decision not to have the NYPD arrest Netanyahu on International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants.

Addressing the planned demonstrations at UN headquarters, Mamdani announced that he would not personally participate. He subsequently said he had not called for protests against Netanyahu’s appearance at the UN.

On Wednesday, Mamdani planted an olive tree—a symbol of Palestinian resistance—on the grounds of Gracie Mansion alongside Palestinian families originally from Gaza who are now residing in New York. Mamdani released a video of the event on his X account right before Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly.

During this address, which was marked by a mass walkout of diplomats, Netanyahu singled out Mamdani from the rostrum, accusing him of spreading falsehoods and fueling antisemitism.

Hours after Netanyahu’s address, Mamdani issued a formal statement rebutting the Israeli prime minister’s remarks. He stated that Netanyahu used the UN podium to “repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians” and added that “no lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The New York City DSA leadership collaborated in this shoddy attempt to cover for Mamdani’s alliance with Trump and support for US imperialism. Among those arrested Thursday were DSA City Council Members Chi Ossé, Alexa Avilés, Tiffany Cabán and Jennifer Gutiérrez. Also arrested were Assembly member Emily Gallagher; DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic nominee in New York’s 13th Congressional District; and Aber Kawas, Christian Celeste Tate, David Orkin and Illapa Sairitupac—all candidates for positions in the New York state legislature.

Not one of them criticized Mamdani’s meeting and appearance with Trump or his refusal to call for any mass action against Netanyahu.

The mass arrest of anti-Netanyahu protesters is of a piece with Mamdani’s repeated praise of Police Commissioner Tisch and touting of his own law-and-order credentials. He has boasted of lowering the crime rate.

Last month, after NYPD officers shot to death a mentally ill woman in Midtown Manhattan, Mandani went out of his way to praise the police officers involved. “I want to thank the NYPD officers who stepped in and prevented a horrific attack from becoming even worse,” he said.

A few days later, when Chaun Bottom, an unemployed welder from the Bronx, climbed on the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge with a knife, intending to kill himself, the police fatally shot him. Mamdani’s response was that the officers had tried to “de-escalate” the situation and that Bottom had “threatened the officers.”

Also earlier this month Mamdani stood beside Tisch and Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism Rebecca Weiner as Weiner decried “a proliferation of threats” coming from the “far left” as well as the “far right.”

A class logic is at work in the politics of the DSA. Support for the largest and most heavily armed police force in the United States defines an organization that backs American imperialism and defends the capitalist state, under conditions of acute crisis that is driving the oligarchy to war and dictatorship. The DSA does not represent the working class. It speaks for privileged sections of the middle class that seek not the overthrow of capitalism, but a deal with the corporate oligarchy to give it a bigger slice of the profits extracted from the working class.

Supporters of the Socialist Equality Party distributed hundreds of leaflets to demonstrators on Thursday based on an article on the World Socialist Web Site that identified the DSA as an appendage of imperialism.