New York City police arrested approximately 100 protesters outside United Nations headquarters as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to address the General Assembly. Among those detained were Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon, Emmy winner Hannah Einbinder, Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, and New York City Council member Chi Osse. The arrests followed standard dispersal orders after demonstrators blocked traffic on streets surrounding the UN campus. The protest was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and drew roughly 200 participants wearing identical white T-shirts with slogans including "Fund people not bombs," "No war," and "Free Palestine." After police ordered dispersal via loudspeaker, some moved to sidewalks while others remained seated on the pavement chanting "Netanyahu go to hell." Those who stayed were escorted to police buses. Inside the General Assembly hall, Netanyahu took the podium to defend Israel's actions in the Middle East while dozens of delegations streamed out — a visible diplomatic rebuke that underscored growing international isolation ahead of Israel's upcoming elections. The walkout and the street protest operated on different registers but carried the same signal: the platform itself is contested. Protester Manijeh Moradian, a 50-year-old university professor of Iranian and Jewish heritage, framed the issue in fiscal terms: "What's being done to Gaza, the obliteration of an entire society, in our name, with our tax dollars, this is our responsibility to speak out against." Protester Melissa Zuniga questioned why Netanyahu was allowed to speak at the UN "when he has an international warrant for his arrest" — a reference to the ICC arrest warrant. A separate rally on the steps of the New York Public Library featured Palestinian flags and banners reading "New York rejects Zionism" and "Palestine deserves freedom." Rabbi Yitzchok Deutsch of Neturei Karta International said Netanyahu was "using our religion, our identity, to justify all these crimes" and sent a message of gratitude to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani "for his courage to do whatever he can to arrest" Netanyahu. The structural question is straightforward: when an international body hosts a leader under ICC warrant, and its own member delegations walk out while civilians are arrested for objecting outside, the institution's claim to rules-based order is under stress from both directions. The UN neither enforced the ICC warrant nor prevented the speech — it absorbed the contradiction. This is not a story about celebrities getting arrested. It is a stress test of institutional legitimacy — the UN's, the ICC's, and the NYPD's role as enforcer of order around an institution that cannot enforce its own. The protest, the walkout, and the speech all happened simultaneously because no single authority could resolve the underlying conflict between sovereignty, international law, and democratic expression.
