Leftwing US Jewish groups gathered outside the White House on Monday to urge the Biden administration to pressure Israel into dropping its plans for a military invasion of Gaza and instead declare an immediate ceasefire.
Accusing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of planning “genocide”, several hundred volunteers from campaign groups IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace chanted slogans, carried placards and sang ancient Jewish songs in protest of what they said was an immoral response to the deadly assault on 7 October by the Palestinian group Hamas that killed at least 1,400 Israelis.
At least 30 people were arrested during the protest, according to reports from ABCNews. One organiser, identifying himself only as Yotam, told demonstrators shortly before they departed an initial rallying point at Farragut Square for the White House that 150 activists had volunteered to be arrested if security personnel ordered them to vacate the entrance points.
More arrests in front of the White House — chanting “ceasefire now” pic.twitter.com/MHR14X8q1g
— IfNotNow🔥 (@IfNotNowOrg) October 16, 2023
The demonstrators also trained their sights on Joe Biden, who they said was complicit in an Israeli retaliatory bombardment that had destroyed Gaza neighbourhoods, cut off water and electricity, and left around 2,200 Palestinians dead, including 700 children.
The criticism of the US president came as he was considering an offer by the Israeli prime minister to visit Israel as it grieves in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks. Biden has offered unequivocal support for the country since it was attacked, but cautioned that a re-occupation of Gaza – from which Israel formally withdrew in 2005 – would be a mistake.
Monday’s demonstration came as Gaza faced an intensifying humanitarian crisis as more than half a million people fled their homes in the north of the tiny coastal enclave in advance of preparations for an apparent Israeli ground invasion with the stated goal of destroying Hamas.
Standing outside the White House gates, Eva Borgwardt, political director of IfNotNow, demanded an urgent meeting with Biden. “The stakes are life or death,” she said.
“We are here to tell President Biden, as the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world he needs to do everything in his power to demand a ceasefire, to demand a de-escalation, to release the Israeli hostages and to address the underlying circumstances that have led us into this nightmare.”
Protest organisers said they were prepared to engage in civil disobedience to influence US policy, including blocking entrances to and from the White House.
Holding placards bearing slogans including “My grief is not your weapon” and “Stop genocide in Gaza”, they said their focus was in ending US support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and what they described as the Jewish state’s “system of apartheid”.
Several described Israeli rhetoric towards Palestinians in the wake of the Hamas attacks as explicitly genocidal.
Some attendees waved Palestinian flags, while others carried “Free Palestine” placards. Some of those present wore Jewish kippas, or skull caps.
For all the focus on Israel’s policy, there was little reference to or direct criticism of Hamas for its attack on Israeli towns and communities that has triggered the latest crisis in the decades-old dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.
Instead, activists put the focus on the Biden administration’s sale of expensive military equipment to Israel.
Omas Baddar, a Palestinian American analyst, said the White House was guilty of hypocrisy for condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while appearing to condone Israel’s actions.
“When you compare the rhetoric of this administration, talking about being a human rights-first foreign policy administration, about the need to put an end to the violence that has taken place in Russia’s war with Ukraine and you contrast it with its rhetoric on what is happening with Israel and Palestine today, it is nothing short of a level of hypocrisy that deserves to be called out as aggressively as we possibly can,” he said.
Borgwardt said the demonstration was evidence that the Jewish left was coalescing into a movement aimed at “throwing itself into [Israel’s] war machine” and stopping the onslaught on Gaza.
However, some of those present acknowledged that wider support among the Jewish community is hard to come by.
“I have a conflict with my family. I believe in a bi-national state,” said Sami Gold, 19, a political science and history student at George Washington University, who said his mother was Israeli-born. “Jews have been discriminated against for thousands of years and if there was a way of forming a Jewish state without discriminating against other people, I would be all for it. But we don’t live in that world.
“My family still loves me, but they are sad that this is what I believe. But I think they are going to become more and more sympathetic to what I believe in.”
