Charges vs. balloonatics
34 parade protesters
Thirty-four pro-Palestinian protesters were busted for disrupting the iconic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, cops said Friday — including a man who once heckled a patron out of the establishment where he worked as a bartender because of the visitor’s Zionist views.
Alvin Dan, 32, of Staten Island—– who this past April refused to serve a conservative Jewish journalist at a Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, bar and taunted him, according to a lawsuit — was arrested and charged with obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest in connection to Thursday’s anti-Israel demonstration that brought the 97th annual parade to a halt.
The anti-Israel protesters’ most dramatic display came when they glued their hands to the middle of Sixth Avenue and covered themselves in fake blood.
Jay Waxse, 34, Natalia Scollo, 29, and Sarah Al Azzawi, 26, were also arrested Thursday and each charged with obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct, the NYPD said.
Scollo and Waxse face additional raps for trespass, while Scollo was also charged with resisting arrest and Al Azzawi was slapped with a harassment charge, cops said.
Dan and other 30 people, whose names were not released, were issued summonses to appear in Criminal Court, police said.
Waxse and Scollo were both released on their own recognizance at their arraignments.
The mayhem began around 11 a.m. when several protesters — wearing white jumpsuits emblazoned with inflammatory slogans such as “colonialism,” “ethnic cleansing” and “fascism” — forced the parade to be stalled.
Boos from the crowd
Several pretended to be dead on the ground while others walked around pouring fake blood over their heads — as a loud chorus of “boos” came from spectators.
The rowdy band then glued their own hands to the asphalt.
Soon after the parade ended, at least 400 protesters gathered at a prearranged spot in Madison Square Park and marched toward Macy’s in nearby Herald Square as they shouted “Long Live Intifada” and “American public do you see? Your taxes fund our misery.”
The demonstrators also defaced the New York Public Library, leaving handprints in red paint all over the two largest pillars at the entrance on Fifth Avenue, as well as scrawling “Free Palestine” in green spray paint.