“A total lack of leadership at the city and the state level,” is the way one city councilwoman describes the crisis over anti-Israel protests disrupting the lives of New Yorkers on a near-daily basis at the moment.

Almost every night in New York City, another mob of pro-Palestinian demonstrators takes to the street to disrupt traffic and harass pedestrians in what Councilwoman Vickie Paladino says is a “war” being waged across Manhattan. Residents are increasingly demanding that the police hold protesters accountable. 

In the latest incident, a fleet of cars waving Palestinian flags blocked a primary thoroughfare to John F. Kennedy airport on Monday, one of the busiest travel days of the year. The “Flood JFK for Gaza” demonstrations impeded traffic to the airport for more than two hours and caused mayhem at other locations across New York.

Residents are now up in arms over the failure of local authorities to quell the illegal protests. 

There are well-defined exceptions to the First Amendment right to protest on public property. Disrupting the normal flow of operations could count as such an exception. Yet the demonstrations that took place on the Belt Parkway at Queens on Monday led to no disciplinary action against the participants, suggesting to Ms. Paladino “a total lack of leadership at the city and the state level.”

“These are not peaceful protesters — these are terrorists,” Ms. Paladino, whose district includes parts of Eastern Queens, tells the Sun. She says that the Palestinian-led activist group which planned the protests, Within our Lifetime, seeks to sow seeds of chaos throughout the metropolitan area.

“It’s time to declare war,” she tells the Sun. “They’ve declared war on our city, and maybe it’s time for us now to meet them on their own terms.”

“You do not have the First Amendment right to disrupt traffic, whether it’s on a highway or on a sidewalk blocking pedestrian traffic or preventing the normal operations of that public space,” a senior program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Zach Greenberg, tells the Sun. “These content and viewpoint neutral restrictions have to be enforced regardless of the message being expressed by the protesters.”

Politics, though, might be at play in the failure of local authorities to impose such restrictions. Mr. Greenberg says that while police officers, prosecutors and politicians might sympathize with the protesters’ views, “there’s an obligation here to both protect free speech and also ensure safety and smooth operations.”

Ms. Paladino speculates that “if the protestors were of a different political persuasion, they would be locked up.”

The Supreme Court has consistently argued that the government can impose limits on public demonstrations based on their time, place and manner. “The lines have been around for decades,” the co-founder of FIRE, Harvey Silverglate, tells the Sun. The framework for prosecuting against the exercise of speech rights is, he says, “one of the few areas of Supreme Court law where the liberals and the conservatives have agreed.”

Those who emphasize the importance of protecting free speech argue that any legal action curtailing it must “show some kind of intent on the part of the protesters,” the legal director of American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, Rebecca Glenber, tells the Sun. “Sometimes it seems like people look for reasons to treat protesters criminally even if there isn’t a criminal law that obviously applies,” she says. 

The protesters surrounding JFK made clear their intent to disrupt travel. “VICTORY!” the group Within our Lifetime exclaimed on X, after noting that the Port Authority “effectively” shut down all entrances to JFK for people without boarding pass, as well as suspended the AirTrain service and prevented cars from entering terminal 4 without proof of ticket.

The group also urged protesters to grab their car keys and “head to LaGuardia Airport Terminal C to shut it down,” and then to gather at the offices of the Israeli airline, El-Al, at downtown Manhattan to create more havoc. Later in the day, a swarm of protesters crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, shouting anti-Israel slogans and snarling traffic for miles around.

The flight tracking service FlightAware disclosed that 60 flights were delayed at JFK on Monday. Fifteen of these were due to the late arrivals of flight crews trapped in the gridlock surrounding the airport, according to the Port Authority.

“The Port Authority, in coordination with our local, state, and federal partners, deployed safety and security measures to help ensure an uninterrupted travel experience at JFK,” a spokesperson for the Port Authority, which is in charge of overseeing operations at JFK, Seth Stein, tells the Sun. 

The NYPD’s Chief of Transportation, Philip Rivera, advised people flying out of JFK on Monday to travel ahead of time in anticipation of delays caused by the planned protests. Yet X users have been in uproar over the calamity that took hold of the city as many residents returned home after the holidays. 

“Why not get the people OFF the darned streets, and arrest the ones who block traffic anyway? WHY are these people allowed to ruin the lives of other people?” one X user commented on Mr. Rivera’s message. Another responded, “You’re basically saying you’re allowing these protesters to hold drivers hostage.”

A former New Jersey police lieutenant, Navy officer, and member of the FBI, Steven Rogers, went so far as to say in an interview last week that the protesters are “terrorist sympathizers,” and “should be charged with aiding and abetting the enemies of the United States and of Israel.” He said they should be legally tried not in civil courts, but in military tribunals.

“The police better do their job. The leaders of the state and the city better do their job,” Ms. Paladino says. “It’s going to be time for the people to take to the streets if they don’t get this curtailed.”