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Protests as Sisi, Netanyahu attend UN meeting in US

September 21, 2017 at 9:49 am

Scores of Egyptians demonstrate outside the UN headquarters in New York against a visit by President and coup leader Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi on 20 September 2017 [alarab.qa]

Scores of Orthodox Jews and Egyptians organised two demonstrations in front of the UN headquarters in New York city against the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

According to the Anadolu Agency, members of the Orthodox Jewish community in New York gathered in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in Manhattan outside the United Nations headquarters and protested against Netanyahu’s attendance ahead of his speech before the UN General Assembly.

Rally spokesman, Rabbi Hershel Klar, said: “Netanyahu and his state don’t represent Jews or Judaism … When Netanyahu speaks at the United Nations General Assembly, supposedly on behalf of all Jews, we declare that he does not speak in the name of world Jewry, including masses of Orthodox Jews residing in the Holy Land.”

He noted that the Israeli government passed a law in 2014, forcing Orthodox Jews to serve in the Israeli army.

Egypt’s Sisi to Israel: ‘We stand with you’

Meanwhile a similar demonstration was organised against Egyptian President Al-Sisi during which the demonstrators held pictures of the country’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi who was ousted by Al-Sisi in a military coup in 2013.

The demonstrators chanted anti-Sisi slogans and demanded he stand down.