Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters stormed inside New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on Saturday afternoon, forcing it to close its doors early.
Arts and culture website Hyperallergic reports close to 800 pro-Palestinian protesters filled the museum’s atrium in protest of alleged investments into Israel’s military weapons by the museum’s trustees.
The protesters distributed more than 1,000 imitation MoMA pamphlets criticizing trustees Leon Black, Larry Fink, Paula Crown, Marie-Josée Kravis and Ronald S. Lauder, the report states, and hung a banner over the lobby that read “MoMA Trustees Fund Genocide, Apartheid, and Settler Colonialism.”
Videos posted across social media networks showed the extent of the attempted takeover of the famous site.
In the videos hundreds of people can be heard to chant “Free Free Palestine” as they stand under various signs and banners reading “Ceasefire now,” “Long live Gaza” and “From the river to the sea.”
The latter is a shortened version of the popular anti-Israel chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as noted by the Times of Israel.
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After around 15 minutes, the museum’s security guards began turning people away at the doors and allowed people inside the building to exit, the report says.
A similar protest took place at the MoMA in May 2021, amid Operation Guardian of the Walls, the Times notes.