Gaza protests spread across U.S., to the doorstep of the White House

Joe Biden tried taking a vic‐ tory lap this week, cele‐ brating a coveted foreign policy win. Yet in the streets near his house, he was being jeered over a dif‐ ferent foreign crisis - the one that's threatening his presidency.

A few blocks from the White House, students set up tents, building another im‐ promptu encampment as part of Mideast protests pro‐ liferating across the country.

This was as Biden was cel‐ ebrating a hard-fought, longsought success: the adoption of a foreign-aid law that will arm Ukraine throughout the year.

But the continued arms for Israel in that same law stoked the anger of students from several schools who filled a square with tents out‐ side George Washington Uni‐ versity.

One student, Selina Al-Shi‐ habi, said of the president: "He's a really disgusting hu‐ man being."

"No human could just watch this unfold," she said. "He's a disappointment. It's so sad to see him still provid‐ ing Israel with those weapons."

Her family lives in Gaza and, she said, she's had rela‐ tives killed.

She voted for Biden in 2020. She's volunteered for the Democrats. And now she can't imagine going to a bal‐ lot booth this fall and sup‐ porting him again. In fact, she says she'd envisioned someday working for the U.S. government, and is now disil‐ lusioned by that too.

Of all the threats to Biden's potential re-election, this is atop the list.

'A pathetic embarrass‐ ment'

A drop in youth turnout could be politically lethal in several close states, meaning Biden needs votes from a group with a rock-bottom opinion of Israel's leadership.

It's no accident that on the very day that foreign-aid bill was signed, Republicans turned the page on a Ukraine debate that had roiled their party.

They sprinted immedi‐ ately for safer political ter‐ rain: the Middle East.

Facing a threat to his lead‐ ership, House Speaker Mike Johnson and several of his al‐ lies ventured to the encamp‐ ment at Columbia University in New York.

They scolded the students as being, effectively, allies of Hamas and were greeted with heckles like, "Mike, you suck!"

This is the fight Republi‐ cans wanted - with left-wing students, over Hamas. This is the opposite of Ukraine, be‐ cause it unites them and splits the Democrats.

One New York Republican bellowed at the students that they were protesting the wrong target: They should be pressing Hamas if they truly want a ceasefire.

"It is shameful, shameful, that you would support a ter‐ rorist organization," Rep. Mike Lawler told the booing students.

"The fastest way for a ceasefire to occur is for Hamas to surrender, and to release the hostages. If you can't call for that, you are a pathetic embarrassment."

These encampments have elicited sharply contrasting perhaps irreconcilable - views in this country.

What the protests look like, close up

An oft-stated view among the protests is that the current state of Israel should not ex‐ ist - only rarely stated so vio‐ lently as by one Columbia or‐ ganizer who, in a recent video, said several times that he approves the killing of Zionists. He later said he wished he'd chosen less vio‐ lent language.

But there are also Jewish students, in both the protests and counter-protests.

In Washington, on Friday, they co-existed metres from each other. One young woman held an Israeli flag. Jewish students carried slo‐ gans such as: "Jews say ceasefire now."

There were similar scenes in New York. "It's been very complicated," said one Co‐ lumbia professor, Emil Ben‐ jamin, who is Jewish, whose family survived the Holo‐ caust.

He says he's heard hateful slogans outside the camp. But from students inside, he's heard interfaith solidar‐ ity and kindness.

WATCH | Campuses rocked by protests:

Benjamin says he sup‐ ports the protest, and also wanted to observe it so he could talk later to members of his own community about what he saw, to counter what he called "dystopian" depic‐ tions in the news.

He says people tend to conflate anti-Israeli and antiJewish sentiment. And he says it's easy to do, when dif‐ ferent protesters might have different intentions even when chanting the exact same slogan.

For example, "I think there are people who chant, 'From the river to the sea,' and maybe they are antisemitic," he said, referring to the com‐ mon yet controversial proPalestinian chant.

Others, he thinks, chant it "because of the literal con‐ straint of movement in the Palestinian territories. They literally cannot move into the lands they once came from."

He said: "I don't hear a call to erase Jews. I hear a call for the liberation of a people who are not free." 'Truly beautiful'

Back near the White House, Al-Shihabi said she was in‐ spired by what she saw - by students who have been threatened with suspension or arrest, but are still coming out to demonstrate on behalf of strangers, civilians being bombed on the other end of the Earth.

She and a few dozen fel‐ low students from George‐ town and other area schools set up tents around campus overnight Thursday. Police erected barriers the next day, and the students were told they could not leave and come back.

So they've been using a bucket for a toilet. People are bringing food, and she's been moved to see her professors drop by to express support.

"It's truly beautiful," AlShihabi said.

WATCH | 'Go back to class,' Johnson says:

'Zionism will fall'

The sentiment is far from universal.

One man shook his head in disgust while walking past the Washington encamp‐ ment on Friday.

Another tried debating people in the crowd. Counter-protester Michael Wille shouted questions like: "Who here agrees Israel has a right to exist?"

He asked if anyone con‐ demned the slaughter of Is‐ raeli civilians on Oct. 7, and also shouted that Hamas should surrender.

He received no answers. He was drowned out by boos, air horns in the face and chants like: "Brick, by brick, wall by wall, Zionism will fall," and, "Settler, settler, go back home!"

When Wille asked which home Israeli Jews should re‐ turn to, people in the crowd shouted things like: "Go to Poland" and "Go back to Eu‐ rope!"

One man heckled Wille as a colonizer, calling him him, "Christopher Columbus," and complained that counter-pro‐ testers like him are "all white people - of course."

Wille shot back: "You don't want peace."

He explained later in an

interview that he's not Jewish, but an Irish-Italian-German pizzeria worker, a Catholic and a former Mitt Romney campaign aide. He said he's disturbed by rising antisemi‐ tism.

But he added that he is fully supportive of the stu‐ dents' right to protest.

While he was shouted down, he was never threat‐ ened. People eventually ig‐ nored him. That's unlike Jan. 6, 2021, when he said he was roughed up while demon‐ strating against a far-right march by the Proud Boys in Washington.

"Those guys attacked me [on Jan. 6]. This is nothing," he said. This is child's play" "

The students have several goals, Al-Shihabi said. They include their universities withdrawing investments from companies that supply the Israeli military, and amnesty from arrest for stu‐ dent protesters.

As for the long-term goal? "A one-state solution," she said, meaning a new country that replaces Israel. "A true democracy. Where people can all coexist."