Pro-Palestinian Activists Interrupt Cory Booker Campaign Rally
(JTA) — Pro-Palestinian activists interrupted the “hometown kickoff” for the presidential campaign of Sen. Cory Booker.
Booker, D-N.J., held the event in Newark, New Jersey, where he served as mayor from 2006-2013. It was the launch of what he is calling his
The rally on Saturday kicked off a two-week national tour for Booker, titled “Justice For All.”
The pro-Palestinian protesters picked up on the theme, shouting “Justice for Palestine,” according to reports. They waved Palestinian flags and keffiyahs, a traditional Arab headdress.
“You say ‘Justice For All’ and he named, you know, clean water, housing, affordable health care, freedom but he doesn’t … talk about Palestine. They’re struggling just as much as us here — even more,” Wajeeh Abushawish, who was part of the group, told Yahoo News.
The protesters were part of the Students for Justice for Palestine chapter at Rutgers Newark campus.
Booker met with some of the protesters after the event.
Booker is a co-sponsor of a Senate bill that would penalize businesses that comply with Israel boycotts.
He announced his presidential bid in late January.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO