Hannah Einbinder is speaking out after being arrested earlier Thursday while protesting an appearance by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The “Hacks” star, who was protesting alongside Sarah Sherman, Susan Sarandon and others, posted on her Instagram story asking her followers to focus on “the devastating genocidal war Israel is waging against the people of Palestine and Southern Lebanon,” and not to “mistake the spectacle for the story.” About 100 protestors were arrested, according to the New York Times.
“If the pictures of my friends and me getting arrested in protest of Netanyahu’s shameful visit to New York draw attention to anything, let it be to the devastating genocidal war Israel is waging against the people of Palestine and Southern Lebanon — to the settler attacks, the home demolitions, the bombing of people as they sleep; to the crimes that happen every SINGLE day but garner almost no international press coverage,” Einbinder wrote.
“The US government has the power to bring an end to all of this killing, pillaging, and land theft, yet instead it chooses to welcome the butcher of Gaza with open arms,” Einbinder continued, “The fact that the orchestrator of all this bloodshed is roaming freely in our cities is an indictment of BOTH REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS who enable and protect architects of genocide like Netanyahu. Let us not mistake the spectacle for the story: genocide is the headline, and it is time for it to end.”
Netanyahu spoke at the U.N. General Assembly in New York and called the demonstrators “phony human rights protestors” as he asked where they were when Iranian security forces killed thousands in January.
“Did you organize mass rallies, hunger strikes?” Netanyahu asked in his speech. “Did you protest outside the Iranian mission to the U.N.?