Jammel Cutler reports for Columbia-Greene Media that on Dec. 1 the Hudson Muslim Youth and a group called Left in Focus held a rally near the roundabout on the Columbia County side of the Rip Van Winkle bridge to support the Palestinians. Jabin Ahmed, co-founder of Hudson Muslim Youth, said, “We’re having this rally to call for a permanent cease[fire].... We also want to end the occupation of Palestine. It’s absurd and horrifying that humanity can take a brief pause on genocide, and then it starts up again.” Bryan McCormack, of Left in Focus, spent time in the West Bank in the past decade working with a theater there. McCormack said, "My friends and loved ones are being attacked in the West Bank.... I spent time in the West Bank working with a theater organization. Their theater was occupied, and their family members had been murdered. I feel close to this issue because of the time that I spent there and because of the moral high ground of what this means.” The protesters at the roundabout wanted to extend a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Zach Lewis of Germantown, who served with the Israeli Defense Force and is a founder of the Jewish Alliance for Israel, said he believes in the freedom of speech of the demonstrators, but only to a point. He said, “That line gets crossed when they start talking about genocide, when free speech becomes about hate speech.” Some passing cars blared music or shouted at the protesters near the roundabout. WOOC reports that on Nov. 27, the group Queers for Palestine protested outside a LGBTQ fundraiser for Rep. Paul Tonko in Albany. One of the organizers, Jen Barkan, spoke with WOOC saying, CLICK HERE TO PLAY OR DOWNLOAD BRIEF QUOTE.