WASHINGTON-
An election-year roast of US President Joe Biden before journalists, celebrities and politicians at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday ran into growing public discord over the war between Israel and Hamas, with large protests outside the event. condemning Biden’s handling of the war. conflict and Western media coverage of it.
In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, has used the White House Correspondents’ Association’s glitzy annual gala to drum up media coverage of his administration and attack his political rivals, particularly Republican rival Donald Trump.
With hundreds of protesters demonstrating against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns about the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the dangers to journalists covering the conflict, war loomed over this year’s event.
US President Joe Biden speaks during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, April 29, 2023. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)
“What a shame!” Protesters clad in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running behind men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses holding handbags, as guests and other participants rushed inside.
The chants accused American journalists of covering up the war and distorting it. “We Western media see you and all the horrors you hide,” the crowds chanted at one point.
Other protesters lay motionless on the sidewalk, next to mock-ups of bulletproof vests with “press” insignia.
Protesters chanted “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton, where the dinner has been held for decades, unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor window of the hotel.
Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s six-month military offensive in Gaza has spread across American college campuses, and students have set up camps in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. The counter-protests support Israel’s offensive and complain of anti-Semitism.
Biden’s speech to an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 was followed by “Saturday Night Live” host Colin Jost.
Attention is also likely to be focused on the many journalists detained and persecuted around the world for doing their work, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023.
Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, have instituted additional street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of security for attendees.”
The agency was working with Washington police to protect protesters’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will continue to be intolerant of any violent or destructive behavior.”
Demonstrators protest the 2024 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. (Kevin Wolf/AP Photo)
Protest organizers said they wanted to draw attention to the high number of Palestinian journalists and other Arabs killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.
More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week asking their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner entirely.
“The price imposed on us simply for carrying out our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to arrests, interrogations and torture by the Israeli army, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”
One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association, which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president, has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.
According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have died covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.
“Since the war between Israel and Gaza began, journalists have been paying the highest price (their lives) to defend our right to the truth. Every time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.
Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project, a US-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful that the media is dining and laughing with President Biden while he allows Israeli devastation and starvation.” of the Palestinians in Gaza.”
Additionally, Adalah Justice Project began an email campaign targeting 12 media executives from several media outlets, including The Associated Press, who were expected to attend the dinner and who previously signed a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza .
“How can you keep coming when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” one protester asked guests as they entered. “You are accomplices.”