Pro-Palestinian Activists Dig In and Fan Out, as D.C. Pivots Toward Israel

WASHINGTON—As tensions between Israel and Iran escalated in recent weeks, spurring Washington to rush to Israel’s aid, pro-Palestinian activists across the U.S. reacted with new urgency to refocus attention on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

More than 100 people participating in a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University were arrested on Thursday by the New York Police Department. In downtown Scranton, Pa., pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered to protest President Biden’s visit there this past Wednesday. And Google said it fired 28 employees who protested against the tech giant’s cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government.

The events, played out across three different cities, were yet another sign that the fierce debates around the Israel-Hamas war engulfing college campuses, U.S. businesses and the 2024 election are here to stay. Washington’s swift pivot in recent days toward more financial and military support for Israel has only emboldened calls among pro-Palestinian groups to take to the streets in the pursuit of a permanent cease-fire and suspension of U.S. aid to Israel.

“The reason you’re seeing more direct action take place—different ways to defund projects and governments, disrupt businesses and disrupt things the government actually does care about—is because they’re not listening to us,” said Ashish Prashar, a pro-Palestinian activist based in New York and a former adviser to Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who became the Middle East peace envoy representing the U.S., Russia, the United Nations and the European Union in 2007.

“That’s why the movement is taking more direct action, directly to the citizens themselves, because that’s where they see the most influence happening,” Prashar said.

The push is expected to only intensify as the election nears. Pro-Palestinian organizers are planning mass protests in Chicago outside the Democratic National Convention in August, where Biden’s party will formally declare him its 2024 presidential nominee. On Monday, several protesters were arrested near the convention site, after activists took to streets downtown and blocked traffic near Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Organizers with the March on the DNC coalition say they hope to mobilize the largest pro-Palestinian protest to date around the United Center and McCormick Place, where much of the convention’s business is set to take place.

Pro-Palestinian groups also released a letter from Palestinian journalists urging members of the media to boycott the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner set for this coming Saturday, citing “the Biden administration’s ongoing complicity in the systematic slaughter and persecution of journalists in Gaza.” Demonstrations are expected around the Washington Hilton, where the black-tie dinner—at which the president typically participates in a roast alongside the press that covers him—is set to be held.

Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people, pro-Palestinian activists have decried the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s response. More than 34,000 people have died in Gaza, many of them women and children, according to Palestinian authorities.

Israeli officials have defended their military operation while citing some mistakes. The Biden administration applied pressure on Israel to take civilian casualties into account in March and early April, a time when pro-Palestinian political activism seemed to be swaying U.S. voters.

That appeared to change on April 13, when Iran launched what it said were retaliatory strikes against Israel, in response to an earlier suspected Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic complex in Syria. Almost immediately after Iran’s drone and missile launches, pro-Palestinian organizers in the U.S. grappled with the potential fallout, in private WhatsApp and Signal channels that have become a fixture of their mobilization efforts amid the war.

On Saturday, a week after Iran’s attack, the U.S. House of Representatives approved roughly $26 billion in aid for Israel and about $9 billion in humanitarian assistance to help Gaza residents and other populations. Several weeks ago, it was unclear whether such a bill could speed through Congress, but the Iran launches appeared to change the dynamic on Capitol Hill.

Pro-Palestinian activists, who have helped orchestrate mass demonstrations in U.S. cities and protests at Biden’s public events, viewed lawmakers’ reaction as predictable. They also began preparing for a change in narrative by flooding social media with images and videos of the continuing civilian casualties and famine in Gaza as well as planning even more rallies and disruptions.

“This is an attempt to have us lose focus on the situation on the ground in Gaza,” Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project said, noting that Palestinians in Gaza have been living under intense bombardment and starvation for more than six months. “How do we stop the bombs from falling? It’s very simple. We demand a permanent cease-fire.”

Civil disturbances in the U.S. since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza are intensifying.

Law enforcement was summoned to Columbia University this week after hundreds of students set up a tent encampment on a campus lawn and pledged to occupy the space until the university divests from companies with ties to Israel. As tensions escalated, competing rallies of pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups emerged.

Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action—which has led major pro-Palestinian rallies and demonstrations across the country—said the shift in U.S. elected officials’ focus toward Iran and away from Gaza reinforced that there is “a disconnect” between Washington and public opinion.

“What we’re seeing is that there’s this knee-jerk reaction from so many in Congress and in the administration to respond to something like Iran’s retaliatory attacks with more weapons and more funding,” she said. “And what that does is thrust us further and further, closer and closer, to a full-blown regional war.”

Miller said Jewish Voice for Peace Action won’t cease its protest activities until there is a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and plans to hold events in coming days tied to the Jewish festival of Passover. “It needs to be made very, very clear to Congress that Congress can’t use this retaliatory attack from Iran as a pretext to send more weapons to Israel that will be used to kill Palestinians,” she said.

Republicans, meanwhile, have seized on the Iran attack to suggest Biden has failed to sufficiently back Israel during the war. Some of them have accused Biden of acquiescing to political pressure from the left and sharply criticized pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

“Imagine if you’re sitting in Tehran today and you’re watching those images of those radicals in Columbia or blocking streets in San Francisco, and you begin to think to yourself, we’re not only winning—‘we’re winning the war inside of America,’ ” Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said in an interview with Fox News. “How much longer are we going to tolerate this craziness in our own country?”

Biden, who said U.S. support for Israel was “ironclad” in the wake of Iran’s attack, imposed new sanctions targeting Tehran’s missile and drone program on Thursday. But the president has also urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to exercise caution in response, and warned against escalating a conflict in the Middle East that could entangle the U.S. and its allies.

A Wall Street Journal poll conducted in February found that 60% of voters disapproved of Biden’s handling of the war, up 8 points from December. The president has faced intensifying backlash over his unconditional support for Israel from Democratic constituencies including Muslim and Arab-American voters, young voters and Black voters who say Biden has failed to sufficiently address the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

Write to Sabrina Siddiqui at [email protected]