Protesters stage sit-in outside New York Stock Exchange to spotlight Gaza attacks

A group of protesters staged a sit-in outside the New York Stock Exchange on Monday morning amid continued Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Approximately 500 individuals representing Jewish Voices for Peace, a Jewish-led pro-Palestinian group, arrived at the exchange at 85 Broad St. as part of an “unscheduled protest” just before the stock market’s official 9:30 a.m. opening, according to a New York Police Department spokesperson.

A total of 206 arrests were made, the spokesperson said. An NYSE representative said at least one person had handcuffed himself between an interior and exterior door.

In an email to NBC News ahead of the action, a spokesperson for the protest group said “hundreds” were planning to gather at the exchange to demand that the U.S. government “fund FEMA, not genocide.”

“As Gaza is bombed, Wall Street booms,” Jewish Voices for Peace said in a post on X. “The stock prices of weapons manufacturers have skyrocketed this year. The U.S. war economy is profiting from genocide.” 

The Israeli conflict last week passed the first anniversary of the deadly Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas militants.

A renewed Israeli operation in northern Gaza put a refugee camp and hospitals in the area under siege over the weekend, with more than 200 people killed.

Early Monday, a fire broke out in an encampment housing displaced civilians following Israeli attacks in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza.

The Associated Press reported Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was mulling a plan to seal northern Gaza in an attempt to “starve out” Hamas militants there, something that would also affect hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes.