Congressional candidate and Democratic Socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier was arrested by the NYPD Thursday during protests outside the United Nations General Assembly, where demonstrators gathered to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address, and call for his arrest. 

Chevalier, a name that emerged from the socialist political surge just months ago, was among protesters denouncing Netanyahu as a “genocidal murderer.” The demonstration unfolded as the Israeli leader was permitted to speak at the U.N., an honor apparently too scandalous for him, though not for the leaders of China, Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, and other countries with far more established records of human-rights abuses. 

Netanyahu’s offense, according to protesters, was Israel’s war in Gaza, which they have characterized as genocide. Israel, meanwhile, has fought Hamas in one of the most densely populated and difficult urban combat zones in the world, and has managed a lower civilian to combatant death ration than even the United States.

“As the Democratic Nominee for New York’s 13th Congressional District, I refuse to allow a war criminal to roam the streets of our city unchallenged,” Avila Chevalier said in a statement on her arrest.

“I refuse to play host to a man who has overseen the slaughter or injury of more than 64,000 children in Gaza with American taxpayer dollars.”

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It remains unclear why Chevalier was arrested or what offense, if any, police believe she committed. Online observers have speculated that the arrest appeared orchestrated, a characteristic image that can be compared to the increasingly familiar, but now tired spectacle of climate activist Greta Thunberg being arrested by European police, again and again, for the cameras. 

Plenty of questions remain unanswered. One thing, however, appears almost certain: Chevalier is unlikely to spend much time behind bars.

Chevalier made headlines just months ago when she defeated incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) in June’s congressional primary. She was one of three Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates in New York City to unseat establishment Democrats in their respective primaries, and is expected to be elected to Congress this November in her overwhelmingly blue district.