The Pro-Hamas Protest Outside the White House Got Out of Hand

John Sexton 1:00 PM | June 10, 2024
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

There was a big protest outside the White House Saturday. Thousands of people showed up to make demands and to vandalize public property. The coverage of this ranges quite a bit depending on where you look. But I have to say the worst has to be the NY Times which completely buries the bad behavior by the group at the very bottom of the story. Instead, their focus was on politics:

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Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters in Washington converged around the White House on Saturday, urging President Biden to stop all military aid to Israel and calling for an immediate cease-fire in Israel’s war in Gaza.

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...

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 nonwhite voters — to reconsider their support for the president ahead of the election this fall. 

Political implications deserve a mention but how about telling us what happened first. The Washington Post did a much better job of that, opening its story with the vandalism.

Statues and structures around the White House were graffitied and vandalized during the Gaza cease-fire protest on Saturday, though the National Park Service said officials were still assessing the extent and cost of the damage Sunday amid a cleanup effort focused on Lafayette Square...

Jasmine Shanti, a spokesperson with the National Park Service, said in a statement Sunday afternoon that the agency’s staff was “still evaluating the extent of the damage from Saturday’s demonstration and march around the White House.”

Again, that's an improvement but it's still pretty generic. There's no sense of the mood of the protesters who created this mess and we only get a few phrases of actual graffiti in the story including "Boycott Israel products." It's odd they chose to leave this out because there is video from the scene that was available before they wrote the story. One member of the Park Police is being harassed and having things thrown at him by a large mob.

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And that still wasn't the worst behavior on display. Here I have to give some credit to NBC News. Their story about the protests mentions that many of these folks were bused in from other states and also includes some of the chants and symbols that the NY Times whitewashed out.

The messages from protesters ranged from pushing for an end to the war and a change in U.S. policy to calls against a two-state solution.

“We don’t want no two state, we’re taking back ’48,” some protesters chanted, referring to the 1948 war that led to the establishment of the state of Israel...

A handful of protesters wore green headbands that appeared to be similar to those worn by members of Hamas.

One protester wearing the headband said that it was “Hamas’ one,” though the protester said he does not speak Arabic and was not sure what it said. When asked if he supported Hamas, the protester, who would not give his name, said that he “wouldn’t say supporter, I would say maybe sympathizer.”

The NBC story adds that most of the protesters didn't express pro-Hamas views. That's the kind of distinction I don't remember the media making at other protests. Going all the way back to the Tea Party protests more than a decade ago, if there was one sign which used extreme language the entire group was considered suspect. 

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Similarly, the left has spent years arguing that Trump's attempt to make distinctions about who attended the Charlottesville protest was one of the low points in his presidency. But how are these people any better than the tiki torch marchers who were seen giving Hitler salutes? Their sign reads "Jihad & Victory or Martydom."

Anti-Semites on the left don't seem as interesting to the media as anti-Semites on the right. Here's another example. This guy with the Hamas headband held up a bloody Joe Biden mask while his comrade lit a small American flag on fire.

It seems to me a more evenhanded story about this would at least mention stuff like this.

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And what can you say about these people.

As always, there is nothing leftist protesters love more than attacking the police. Here's one scrawny kid telling a park police officer to kill himself.

Police did attempt to arrest one person but they were quickly mobbed and had to release them.

The Park Police union released their own video yesterday explaining they had 71 officers who were trying to control about 9,000 people. They criticized the decision not to staff up for this event.

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The vandals did all this and not one person was arrested.

Lots of people on X are comparing the complete lack of arrests in DC Saturday to this incident involving teens defacing a pride crosswalk which resulted in felony charges:

It was bad enough that the White House denounced some of the rhetoric.

The Biden administration slams the “repugnant” rhetoric voiced at yesterday’s anti-Israel protests outside the White House, during which Pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah demonstrators called for “jihad” and for the killing of Zionists.

“President Biden has always been clear that every American has the right to peacefully express their views. But he has also always been clear that antisemitism, violent rhetoric, and endorsing murderous terrorist organizations like Hamas is repugnant, dangerous and against everything we stand for as a country,” White House deputy spokesperson Andrew Bates tells The Times of Israel.

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The bottom line is that the left can openly express support for terrorism and vandalize public monuments with impunity. Not only does nothing happen to the vandals, some news outlets don't even report it. If 9,000 right-wing protesters had gathered and done anything like this, the coverage would have been very, very different.

Tags: HAMAS ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR PRO-PALESTINIAN

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