Dozens of demonstrators protesting Israel’s war in Gaza were arrested Friday at the Midtown Manhattan offices of New York’s senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, days after they broke with many of their fellow Democrats by voting against a resolution to halt U.S. arms sales to Israel.
Pressure has mounted on Democratic lawmakers to press Israel to end its military activity in Gaza, where famine and starvation have spread in recent weeks, and allow in a flood of aid.
On Friday, more than 100 protesters, who were organized by the antiwar group Jewish Voice for Peace, chanted and banged pots and pans in the lobby of the Third Avenue building where both Mr. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and Ms. Gillibrand have office space.
“New Yorkers are heartbroken, America is heartbroken,” said Alexa Avilés, a city councilwoman who protested on Friday. “We want an end to the war, we want peace.”
The traditional bipartisan consensus in support of Israel among American lawmakers has collapsed over the course of Israel’s nearly two-year war in Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000 people, according to Gazan officials.
Support for the war has plunged into the single digits among Democratic voters, and on Wednesday 27 Democratic senators voted to halt American weapons transfers to Israel in protest of the war and the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Democratic officials across the country, including in New York, are pushing for embargoes on military and financial support of Israel.
Earlier this summer, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a strong critic of Israel, stunned the city with a 12-point victory in the Democratic mayoral primary.
And on Friday, two elected Democrats, Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán and Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, were arrested outside Mr. Schumer and Ms. Gillibrand’s offices.
But the senators have not been among those growing more sharply critical of Israel.
Mr. Schumer has long been a passionate defender of Israel, and even when criticizing its government he has described himself as a “lifelong supporter” of the country.
Ms. Gillibrand, too, has been a strong ally of Israel. Last month, she said on social media that she was “proud to have secured major wins” in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which she said included “$500 million for Israeli Missile Defense Cooperative Programs.”
Gaza has teetered on the brink of famine since the early months of the war, but the crisis has exploded since March, when Israel blocked the entry of humanitarian goods into the enclave in a bid to squeeze concessions from Hamas.
Israel later established a new aid distribution system that largely cut out humanitarian organizations and funneled aid through a private organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by Israel and run by private American contractors.
That organization has been heavily criticized for failing to meet the needs of Gaza’s two million people, as well as for the deaths of hundreds of people, many of whom were shot by Israeli soldiers as they tried to access the aid. Israel has described some of those shootings as an effort at crowd control.
The Gaza ministry of health reported more than 40 hunger-related deaths last month, including 16 children, and at least 111 since the beginning of the war, 81 of them children.
The data could not be independently verified. But last month, the World Food Program, an arm of the United Nations, said that the hunger crisis in Gaza had reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation, with a third of the population not eating for multiple days in a row.”
In recent weeks, images of emaciated and skeletal children in Gaza has led to widespread condemnation of Israel. Eliza Klein, a staff member with Jewish Voice for Peace who took part in Friday’s protest in Manhattan, compared those pictures to images from the Holocaust.
“We can’t just stay silent,” Ms. Klein said. “The images coming in from Gaza today remind us so much of what happened to our own ancestors.”
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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