New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the city's police commissioner arrived Sunday together with a ranking Congressman to show solidarity with Israel’s besieged southern residents.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, U.S. Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia and Mayor Bloomberg boarded a plane bound for Israel late Saturday night.
The three men are scheduled to tour the rocket-battered cities of Sderot and Ashkelon on Sunday.
Their visit had been kept secret due to security precautions. Bloomberg, who said he plans to visit New Yorkers who have moved to Israel, left New York after police forces spent the day redirecting traffic and managing a crowd of hundreds of anti-war demonstrators.
The protest flooded the city streets for blocks, chanting “Free Palestine” and calling the operation a “massacre.” Police maintained control of the crowd, which began with a 1:00 pm. rally in Times Square in midtown Manhattan.
Protestors then took to the sidewalks of Second Avenue and marched across the city to the Israeli Consulate, located near the United Nations building in downtown New York.
Rallies were also reported in other major cities around the United States, as well as in most major cities around the world and in Tel Aviv, where a thousand Israelis gathered in Rabin Square to protest the war. Some 600 counter-demonstrators rallied nearby to express their support for IDF soldiers and the residents of the south they were protecting as they entered Gaza Saturday night.