BOSTON (AP) – For the fourth straight year, protesters greeted hundreds of people who gathered Sunday on Boston’s City Hall Plaza to celebrate the 57th anniversary of Israel’s independence.

Several dozen members of the New England Committee to Defend Palestine stood near the entrance to the celebration and chanted anti-Israeli slogans.

A line of police officers separated the protesters as over 1,000 people marched to City Hall Plaza from a pro-Israel rally at Copley Plaza. Police later moved the protesters to a different part of the plaza, but no arrests were immediately reported.

Alan Ronkin, deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said the protesters represent the “most extreme elements” of the pro-Palestinian movement.

“We’re very proud that Israel remains an oasis of democracy in a sea of hatred and intolerance in the Middle East,” he added.

But the protesters said the anniversary isn’t cause for celebration for the thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes in the fighting that followed Israel’s independence in 1948.

Joining the protest was a group of Orthodox Jews from New York, who held signs that read, “Torah Forbids a Jewish State.”

“Palestinian people never had a problem with Jews before Zionism,” said Rabbi Dovid Feldman, of Monsey, N.Y.