NEW YORK — Anti-Israel activists in New York City on Thursday set up a display with images of several terror chiefs to mark the first anniversary of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death.
Israeli forces killed Sinwar, the architect of the October 2023 invasion of Israel, in Gaza on October 16, 2024.
A far-left, anti-Israel activist group called the Bronx Anti-War Coalition organized the vigil for Sinwar, held in the South Bronx neighborhood.
The group’s exhibit showed photos of Sinwar, other Hamas leaders, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian leaders, according to images shared by the activist group. Hamas and Hezbollah are US-designated terrorist groups.
The images were arrayed around flowers and candles, a banner that said, “Glory to the axis of resistance,” Hamas flags, and a Quran.
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“The same way that Palestinians are violently removed from their homes and are murdered, is the same way that residents here in the Bronx are displaced when landlords raise the rent,” a speaker said at the event.
An announcement for the event was shared by other anti-Israel activist groups in the city, including the anti-Israel campus coalition at Columbia University.
“His embrace of death was not nihilistic but rooted in the conviction that martyrdom sustains the struggle,” Columbia University Apartheid Divest said in a Thursday statement hailing Sinwar.
Activists also posted flyers with Sinwar’s image and the event information on streetposts.
Vigil for Yahya Sinwar & all Martyrs in the struggle against Zionism & US-led Western imperialism
“We must continue on the same path we started, or let it be another Karbala.” —Martyr Yahya Sinwar ????
????The Bronx, NYC pic.twitter.com/wUuNiVulH1
— ????????????????????????Bronx Anti-War ???????????????????????????????? (@BXAntiWar) October 17, 2025
US Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat from New Jersey, condemned the vigil.
“This is blatant support for terrorism — and in the city with the largest Jewish population in America, no less. They should be ashamed of themselves,” he said on X.
Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar holds the child of an Al-Qassam Brigades member who was killed in fighting with Israel, during a rally in Gaza City on May 24, 2021. (Emmanuel Dunand / AFP)
The Bronx Anti-War Coalition describes itself as an “anti-imperialist, direct-action coalition resisting state violence while advancing decolonization.”
The group’s platform commits to “the abolition of the Zionist entity” and says on its website, “We view the Palestinian Resistance and the Axis of Resistance as the only realistic path toward achieving liberation for Palestine.”
A screenshot of video released by the IDF on October 19, 2024, shows Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar carrying a flatscreen television while escaping into a tunnel with his family the night before the Gaza-ruling terror group’s October 7, 2023, onslaught against Israel. (Screen capture; used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
The coalition, one of the smaller anti-Israel groups in the city, brings activists to mainstream protests, but the vigil was not publicly advertised by the leading pro-Palestinian groups in New York.
Those groups, such as the Palestinian Youth Movement and the People’s Forum, have nonprofit status or route their funding through registered nonprofits. Publicly endorsing a US-designated terrorist group could be construed as illegal, material support for a terrorist group and expose them to legal action, jeopardizing their funding.
This screen grab from a handout video released by the IDF on October 17, 2024, shows drone footage of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar moments before he was killed a day earlier in Rafah’s Tel Sultan neighborhood in the southern Gaza Strip. (IDF / AFP)
Earlier this year, New York activists held a funeral ceremony for Nasrallah, the head of the Hezbollah terror group, after the IDF assassinated him.
Recent polls have found that younger and more left-wing Americans are increasingly accepting of political violence.
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