Anti-Israel protesters in New York City’s Times Square held up pictures of slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and burned American flags during a demonstration on Wednesday.

The protest, organised by anti-Israel organisation Within Our Lifetime – United for Palestine (WOL), saw a crowd of demonstrators shouting “Free Palestine” while some waved Hamas flags and others raised portraits of assassinated terrorist leader Haniyeh – one of whom wore the yellow headband emblematic of Hezbollah – to protest a pro-Israel event honouring the IDF and former international IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus.

Hundreds attended the IDF celebration, which drew some 300 counter-demonstrators with WOL, and the two groups appeared to clash when a woman wearing a pro-Israel shirt, reacting to liquid thrown on her and a friend, sprayed the crowd with what is believed to have been pepper spray. According to ABC7 New York, six people were arrested.

At one point during the protest, anti-Israel demonstrators appeared to burn a US flag on the ground while waving a white Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades flag, according to a video reportedly posted by WOL.

“The supporters of the genocidal apartheid state of Israel will never have a moment of peace,” WOL wrote on social media.

The group, founded by Palestinian American Nerdeen Kiswani, expressed support for terrorist organisations in the wake of October 7, and has more recently eulogised Haniyeh after he was reportedly killed by Israeli operatives in Iran on Wednesday, calling him a martyred “leader of Palestinian resistance.”

The radical anti-Zionist group also condemned the IDF’s killing of Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr on Tuesday, writing on X:

“The Zionist project assumes that assassinations and massacres will halt the march of freedom from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, from the North to the South, but the 76-year-long history of the struggle for Palestine proves otherwise.”

New York Congressman Ritchie Torres denounced the protest, writing on X: “If you are waving a Hamas flag in the heart of Times Square to protest the death of one of the world’s worst terrorists, Ismail Haniyeh, you are not ‘pro-Palestinian.’ You are pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, anti-American—anything but ‘pro-Palestinian.’”