Thousands of protesters demonstrated around Capitol Hill voicing opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who addressed a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday.
With tensions over Israel’s nine-and-half-month war on Gaza running high, police mounted a huge security operation to seal off the US Capitol from protesters.
Streets in Washington’s downtown area were closed to traffic, while officers experienced in dealing with mass protests were drafted in from the New York police department. The Capitol building itself was ring-fenced off.
“Shut it down,” a large group of protesters chanted as they marched toward the Capitol after blocking a nearby intersection, adding “Bibi, Bibi, we’re not done!” Capitol police deployed pepper spray at protesters they claimed had crossed the police line.
Netanyahu’s speech – arranged weeks ago and instigated by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson – comes at a singularly dramatic moment in US politics, days after the withdrawal of Joe Biden from the presidential race and less than two weeks after a failed assassination attempt on the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
But the fevered domestic backdrop has done little to reduce the furore surrounding Netanyahu, seen as a renegade figure even among some pro-Israel Democrats for prosecuting a war that has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians.
The military offensive was launched in response to an assault by the Palestinian group Hamas last October that left about 1,200 Israelis dead and saw another 250 taken hostage.
Netanyahu’s presence was protested by demonstrators coming from a broad range of mostly leftwing groups, some of them Jewish, and many of them having travelled from as far as Indiana, Georgia and Illinois, according to protest organisers.
In a sign of the many fractures created by the war, anti-Netanyahu protesters from different factions clashed angrily with one another, after pro-Palestinian demonstrators apparently mistook another group displaying Israeli flags as supporters of Israel’s prime minister.
Police intervened after scuffles broke out, as a march passed a group of protesters denouncing Netanyahu for his failure to end the war in Gaza and strike a deal that would free the remaining hostages being held by Hamas.
Marchers chanted “free, free Palestine” as they passed the Israeli groups gathered in a park near the US Capitol. Things turned heated when two men close to the Israeli gathering shouted “from Hamas” in response.
As tempers frayed, a young pro-Palestinian marcher appeared to grab several Israeli flags, leading to scuffles and shouts of “do not attack” and “leave her alone” from a man holding a Palestinian flag.
As a shouting match ensued, the same man was clearly heard shouting “go back to Poland” at members of the Israeli group, some of whom wore T-shirts bearing slogans like “Saving Israeli Democracy”.
Officers nearby appeared to be slow to react but arrived on the scene after being summoned by the members of the Israeli gathering.
“Both sides have a trigger when they see the other flag,” said Offer Gutelson, an organiser with UnXeptable, an Israeli group protesting against Netanyahu. “They get the feeling when they see the [Israeli] flag that we are not on their side, but we are,” he said. “We are on the side of the people who want peace, but not the ones who want to free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
Among those organising the main rally were Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, Jewish Voice for Peace, Code Pink, the US Palestinian Community Network, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), the People’s Forum and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Speakers lined up to address the crowd included Jill Stein, the Green party presidential candidate, and the actor Susan Sarandon.
Protesters demanded Netanyahu’s arrest, as requested by the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor in May. The request was later denounced by Biden.
“If Biden were fit to lead, he would stop funding genocide and turn Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over to the ICC,” Ahmad Abuznaid, an executive director at the USCPR, said in a statement.
The demonstrations started on Tuesday, a day after Netanyahu’s arrival in the US on Monday night, when members of the Jewish Voice for Peace group occupied the rotunda at the Cannon building, where many members of Congress have office space. Police carried out arrests and the group said about 400 of its members were detained.
At the main demonstration – a safe distance from the fenced-off Capitol on a square off Pennsylvania Avenue – protesters chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan some supporters of Israel have alleged is antisemitic and potentially genocidal.
A giant effigy of Netanyahu with horns on his head and blood dripping from his mouth was on display, while one woman holding a Palestinian flag had a baby doll held in a makeshift child’s sling fashioned out of a keffiyeh, apparently as a symbol of the large number of children killed in Israel’s Gaza offensive.
One of several speakers to address the crowd, Abuznaid of USCPR said Palestinians were fighting “for our stolen past [and] our liberated future”.
He added: “We reject Netanyahu not because he is more brutal or racist than those before him … [but] because he’s exactly the manifestation of the colonial project known as Zionism. We reject genocide Joe [Biden] and the US government’s support of this monstrosity historically and today.”
Emily De Ferrari, 72, a retired midwife and volunteer for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), which campaigns for economic and cultural embargoes to pressure Israel to change its policy, called Netanyahu’s visit to Washington “criminal”.
“I don’t know what to say about the people who invited him,” said De Ferrari, who had driven five hours from Pittsburgh with a group of fellow activists to be present. “It’s a cynical, manipulative, criminal move to invite him here today.”
Asked if she believed Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state, she replied: “A place where Jews are free and safe, I think that’s a justifiable aim. But it doesn’t make any sense for the Jews to say: ‘We’ve got to be free and safe and you don’t.’
“Shouldn’t the Palestinians be allowed to live where they have lived for thousands of years? That’s not to deny the Holocaust or thousands of years of antisemitism.”
Several Democratic members of Congress, including the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, boycotted Netanyahu’s speech.
Some made statements of condemnation on the eve of its delivery. “It will be the first time in American history that a war criminal has been given that honor” of addressing a joint session of Congress, Sanders said on Tuesday in remarks on the Senate floor.
Jerry Nadler, a senior Democratic House member from New York, also issued a withering denunciation, calling the Israeli prime minister “the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2100 years ago”. However, he said he would be present during the speech out of respect to the state of Israel.
He called the speech “the next step in a long line of manipulative bad-faith efforts by Republicans to further politicise the US-Israel relationship for partisan gain and is a cynical stunt by Netanyahu aimed at aiding his own desperate political standing at home. There is no question in my mind it should not be happening.”
