© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Pro-Israel demonstrators protest in Times Square on the second day of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in Manhattan in New York City, U.S., October 8, 2023. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Photo
By Jonathan Allen and Gabriella Borter
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Demonstrators demanding the release of hostages taken by Hamas planned a rally in New York’s Times Square on Thursday, as President Joe Biden faces mounting pressure to leverage every diplomatic tool to secure the freedom of any American captives.
U.S. officials have said Hamas is holding some 200 people hostage after the Palestinian group’s Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel, when militants killed about 1,400 Israelis.
While there is no official list of Americans in captivity, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jim Risch, told reporters on Wednesday that 10 of the hostages held by Hamas were American.
“It is the highest priority here. We want those people out,” Risch said.
Thursday’s protest in Times Square, organized by the nonprofit Israeli American Council, was expected to draw hundreds of demonstrators and many officials, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
The organization’s chief executive, Elan Carr, said the rally was aimed at pressuring officials to secure the hostages’ release, and to express solidarity with Jewish people after the attacks.
“The entire Jewish world is in a state of grief,” he said in a phone interview. “I represent the Israeli American community, half a million Israeli Americans in the United States, and for Israeli Americans it’s that much more personal.”
At least three families affected by the crisis will be at the rally, organizers said. Among them will be the parents of Omer Neutra, a hostage who was born and raised in New York.
Plans call for 15 billboards in Times Square to show the faces of people believed to be held hostage. Holograms of families appealing for the release of their loved ones will be beamed on the rally stage.
The event comes as Americans across the U.S. are taking to the streets on a near-daily basis to protest on behalf of Israel or the Palestinian people, with bitter divisions re-emerging over the decades-long conflict in the Middle East.
A pro-Palestinian rally was planned for Friday outside the main branch of New York City’s Public Library to call for a ceasefire. On Wednesday, hundreds of protesters demanding a ceasefire were arrested while occupying the rotunda of the Cannon House office building at the U.S. Capitol.
“Ceasefire is the only way for the deaths to stop. Ceasefire is the only way to bring hostages home,” organizers of Friday’s New York rally said on their event page.
Biden visited Israel this week to reiterate his support and urge the country’s leaders to avert a humanitarian disaster as it prepares a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip.
His administration, facing mounting pressure to secure the release of the hostages, must walk a fine line. The task may require negotiating assistance from countries in the region, including Qatar, that have no diplomatic ties with Israel.
Rachel Goldberg, the mother of 23-year-old hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a dual Israeli and U.S. citizen, said the last messages she had received from her son were sent on the morning of Oct. 7, when he wrote, “I love you guys. I’m sorry.” She said police confirmed the last signal from her son’s phone showed it in Gaza that morning.
“I don’t know that he’s alive, I don’t know that he made it,” Goldberg said in an interview in Jerusalem.
U.S. officials have not released names of the Americans believed to be held hostage, but according to media reports Goldberg-Polin is one of them.
The missing people with American citizenship, according to media reports, also include a 66-year-old nurse, Adrienne Neta, 35-year-old Sagui Dekel-Chen, a father of two with a baby on the way, and Itay Chen, who serves in the Israel Defense Force.
Supporters of Israel in the U.S. have posted flyers displaying the faces of hostages – including children and elderly people – in cities over the past two weeks, demanding that officials do everything they can to return them to their families.
In some instances, the flyers have fanned tensions and have been taken down by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
This story originally appeared on Investing
