“We all become one, for one cause,” said David Correa, gesturing at the demonstrators all around him. Marching down Newtown Lane with several hundred others, Mr. Correa was on his way to the Stand With Israel rally held at Herrick Park on Sunday.
Mr. Correa, a 28-year-old from Colombia, said he was showing solidarity with Israelis by attending the rally. All around him, crowds sang songs and chanted. “Enough is enough,” they repeated. “Bring them home.” About 130 hostages are said to be still in the hands of Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 incursion.
Alicia Linder, 21, an L.I.U. Brooklyn student, attended the rally with her parents. Speaking before the march began, she said she hoped the rally would “combat negative perceptions that [people] have about Jews and Israelis.”
Ms. Linder, with other young Americans, traveled on a Birthright trip to Israel just before the attacks. The experience inspired her, and her parents as well, to join the rally, she said. Jeremy Linder, her father, agreed. Alicia was “instrumental in bringing us with her . . . ,” he said. “She was our motivator.”
“I’m a Jew. It’s really that simple,” said Maureen Goldberg, 89, when asked what had motivated her to attend. Ms. Goldberg was accompanied by a neighbor from Amagansett, Robert Seiden, who proudly introduced her as the oldest person there.
“It’s not about religion or politics. It’s about humanity,” Mara Sherwood said during the march to the park. The marchers traveled from Hook Windmill down Main Street, before taking a right onto Newtown.
They had to maneuver through sidewalk tables occupied by diners before being waved across to the park by police. Many demonstrators carried signs — “Help Us Beat Hamas” — or expressing solidarity with the victims of the attack.
Representative Nick LaLota, a Republican whose district encompasses East Hampton, was a surprise late addition to the event, said its organizer, Mitchell Agoos. “I am unequivocal in my support of Israel to bring the hostages home,” Mr. LaLota said before taking the stage to urge his colleagues in Washington to help.
Nassau County Legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip was on hand as well. Born in Ethiopia, Ms. Pilip moved to Israel at the age of 12 and served as a gunsmith in an Israeli Defense Forces paratrooper brigade before coming to this country.
Irina Tamayeva, who was waiting for the rally in the park to begin, said she’d heard about it from social media. “We saw the rally on Instagram and right away we wanted to come out,” she said.
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Several tables were set up toward the back of the park. One was operated by a nonprofit, Boots for Israel, which raises money to send boots to I.D.F. soldiers. The nonprofit was founded after an Israeli general went public about the poor conditions of his soldiers’ footwear.
Yakir Wachstock and Ayelet Goldberg, the nonprofit’s founder and social media director, said they have since sent some 88,000 pairs of boots overseas.
“Are there any Zionists out there?” Rabbi Josh Franklin asked the crowd during his speech. Zionism, he’d told The Star before going onstage, “is about the spiritual and emotional connection to the ancestral Jewish homeland in Israel and the right to self-determination there.” Rabbi Franklin traveled to Israel in November to provide humanitarian aid after the attacks.
Representative LaLota, speaking to the assembled crowd, stressed the importance of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. “There is no relationship more important to the United States than the one it has with Israel,” he said, calling the fight against Hamas “a fight between good and evil.”
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a plaintiff in a lawsuit charging antisemitism at Harvard University, delivered an impassioned speech about his time at the school. “I thought he knocked it out of the park,” said Mr. Agoos.
“The feedback I got was tremendous,” Mr. Agoos commented at the conclusion of the rally. He cited Rabbi Franklin’s speech as one of his favorites.
In the days leading up to the rally, the organizers canceled a speech by Judith Kasen-Windsor. The events leading to the cancellation are covered elsewhere in this issue.
