Protest against Gaza war draws thousands to White House

WASHINGTON – Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters in Washington converged around the White House on June 8, urging US President Joe Biden to stop all military aid to Israel and calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.

Holding signs calling Mr Biden a liar, the protesters, mostly clad in red and bearing Palestinian flags, marched around the block of parkland where the White House sits.

They spilled across two six-lane boulevards, pushing out tourists, whose faces showed variations of confusion, anger or intrigue.

Police presence was heavy, and the US Park Police used pepper spray against a protester at least once.

Mr Biden was in France, where he joined President Emmanuel Macron for a state dinner in Paris on the night of June 8.

But the dissenting voices in the American capital highlighted the challenges he faces domestically as he tries to carve out a narrow position that both supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas and

calls for a quick cessation of hostilities

.

The pro-Palestinian activists outside the White House, who were highly critical of the Biden administration’s response to the war, encouraged a key portion of Mr Biden’s base – young and non-white voters – to reconsider their support for the President in the election this autumn.

“There is no world in which I can confidently vote for” Mr Biden, said Ms Nas Issa, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Youth Movement, one of the left-leaning groups that organised the June 8 protest.

If Mr Biden “doesn’t change course and hold Netanyahu and the Israeli government at large to account, under what circumstances would it be acceptable to any person of conscience to vote for him?” she added, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On the afternoon of June 8, some protesters created a ring along the mile-long White House perimeter, unspooling consecutive lengths of red paper on which the names of the more than 36,000 Palestinians who had been killed during the war were written. The others marched along the perimeter.

The format was

intended to evoke a red line

that, if crossed by the Israeli military in Gaza, would cause Mr Biden to withhold weapons shipments to Israel.

But Mr Biden and his administration have said recent strikes that killed dozens of Palestinians in the Gaza city of Rafah did not amount to his red line for Israel. White House spokesman John Kirby has said the US would need to see “a major ground operation” – not air strikes – to step up its pressure on Israel.

“Biden’s red line was a lie!” read one of the pickets frequently used by the protesters.

The protesters who gathered on June 8 to apply political pressure on Mr Biden said their biggest demand was the freezing of all weapons shipments to Israel until the war stops. The US has committed US$38 billion (S$51 billion) in military aid to Israel over 10 years.

“We’re funding it,” said protester Alexia Samano, who travelled to Washington from Orlando, Florida. “Stop funding this.”

No arrests had been made by late afternoon on June 8, when tens of thousands of protesters finished marching around the perimeter, according to law enforcement.

But statues in Lafayette Square, on the northern side of the White House, were vandalised with handwritten scribbles that read “free Palestine”. Two statues of cherubs were also covered in a red, gooey substance that seemed to represent blood.

And many protesters chanted slogans that some Jewish groups have said incite violence against Jews, such as “there is only one solution: intifada, revolution”, as well as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

But according to one protester, such slogans were not a call for violence against Jewish people, but for a broader resistance against the status quo.

“We don’t have anything against Jews,” said Mr Adam Kattom, a founding member of Peoria for Palestine, who had travelled 12 hours from Peoria, Illinois, to join the demonstration. NYTIMES