Anti-Israel protesters’ painted red hands a ‘symbol’ rooted in ‘craze to see blood’: expert

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Anti-Israel agitators demonstrate on Capitol Hill

Anti-Israel protesters marched through the U.S. Capitol complex Tuesday, April 9, 2024.

After anti-Israel demonstrators with painted red hands flooded the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, an Israeli expert said that the red hands have a deeper meaning that is meant to signify the “emasculation of Jews” and represent a “bloody defeat.”

Protesters inside the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Tuesday displayed “bloody” red palms, face forward.

Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices, and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, explained the meaning of the red hands to Fox News Digital after anti-Israel protesters marched through the U.S. Capitol complex.

“Palestinian hands drenched in Israeli blood are indeed a symbol – a symbol of brutality and human depravity,” she said.

“No Israeli Jew, or anyone who follows the decades-long attempts to annihilate the Jewish state and everyone in it, can forget the image or the horror of what exactly those blood-stained hands meant.”

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Anti-Israel agitators marched through the U.S. Capitol complex Tuesday, April 9, 2024. (Fox News)

A Capitol Police Officer removes a protester from the room during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, April 9, 2024.  (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Bayefsky said that the red hands became a symbol of the Ramallah Lynching of 2000, during the 2nd Intifada of the violent uprising, and premiered before celebrities wore red hand pins at the Oscars this year.

On Oct. 12, 2000, two IDF reservists, Yossi Avrahami and Vadim Nurzhitz, were lynched by a massive mob in Ramallah, West Bank, after they made a wrong turn in the Palestinian Authority-controlled region. 

After rumors spread about their whereabouts at a police station, around 1,000 Palestinians gathered around the station. 

One of the soldier’s wives listened by cell phone after a Palestinian butcher answered the victim’s phone, and told her, “We are now slaughtering your husband.”

A Palestinian youth, left, proudly shows Israeli blood on his hands as he is cheered by Palestinians yelling “Allahu Akbar” in October 2000. 

One particular image from the carnage became infamous when one of the killers, Aziz Salha, waved his bloodied hands to the crowd from the police station’s window after dozens broke in. 

Salha later explained that the Palestinians present were “in a craze to see blood.” As he waved his hands, the Palestinian mob cheered: “Allahu Akbar,” which means “God is great” in Arabic. 

Salha had said, “We were in a craze to see blood. I entered the room… I saw an Israeli soldier sprawled on the floor in front of the door,” according to court documents, obtained by the Times of Israel. 

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“I came closer to him and saw a knife lodged in his back, near his right shoulder. I removed the knife and stabbed him in the back two or three times… while others in the room continued to kick him. I put my hand over his mouth and the other on his shoulder, in order to strangle him.”

“I saw that my hands were drenched with blood, and so was my shirt,” Salha continued. “So I went over to the window and I waved my hands at the people who were in the courtyard.”

The mob then threw the bodies out of the station and desecrated them.

A protester stands with an Israeli flag emblazoned with an image showing the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu covered with a red hand stamp, during an anti-government demonstration at HaBima Square in Tel Aviv.  (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)

Bayefsky said that there is a “direct line” between the Ramallah Lynching of 2000 and the Oct. 7 attacks.

“A direct line runs between then and October 7 – and those who continue to excuse, ignore, celebrate or enable the murder, rape and torture of Jews still going on in the hellholes of Hamas-run Gaza,” she said.

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She said that the painted red hands represent “violent antisemitism” and reinforces that Israel is in an “existential war.”

Those hands represent the terrible reality of violent antisemitism gripping America and the world today.

— Anne Bayefsky, Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust

“Those hands represent the terrible reality of violent antisemitism gripping America and the world today,” Bayefsky said. “Such a symbol reinforces one fact: Israel is engaged in an existential war against the destroyers of civilization and every civilized society – starting with the United States – should understand the stakes if Israel is denied the right to defend itself against such nihilism.”

Members of the anti-war activist group Code Pink sat behind the speakers who were testifying about the Iranian-backed Houthis’ threat to the Middle East stability, global shipping and US service members, raising their hand painted in red during the whole testimony.  (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Protesters block the cafeteria of the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on April 9, 2024 in Washington, DC. The protest, organized by Christian’s for a Free Palestine, chanted and sang while calling for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

On Tuesday, individuals from the far-left anti-war group, Code Pink, gathered to protest the Israeli war inside the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Capitol Police confirmed to Fox News that more than 50 people were arrested during the protest.

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The protesters chanted, “Senate can’t eat until Gaza eats!”

Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report.

Sarah Rumpf-Whitten is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. 

She is a native of Massachusetts and is based in Orlando, Florida.

Story tips and ideas can be sent to sarah.rumpf@fox.com and on X: @s_rumpfwhitten.