Protests planned for Washington's premier party weekend

WASHINGTON — Pro-Palestinian protesters are looking to puncture the festive bubble this weekend surrounding the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner — one of the capital’s biggest parties of the year, with attendees including President Joe Biden, top government officials and leading journalists.

Activists are expecting several hundred people at a rally in Kalorama Park, just two blocks from the Washington Hilton, which is hosting the event. The protesters will criticize Biden for his support for Israel in its war in Gaza and the U.S. news media’s coverage of it, according to organizers.

The gathering is being branded as an effort to “shut down” the dinner, according to a social media post announcing the demonstration.

A group of Palestinian journalists wrote an open letter this month calling on their American counterparts to boycott the annual dinner “as an act of solidarity with us — your fellow journalists.”

The New York City-based Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 97 journalists and media workers have been killed in Israel and the Palestinian territories since the war began after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, while the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate places the number higher, at 125.

The Palestinian journalist group claims many were targeted intentionally by the Israeli military during its operation. Israel has mostly denied intentionally targeting journalists, while saying some of those killed belonged to militant groups and were therefore legitimate targets. And it previously said it could not guarantee the safety of journalists covering the dangerous conflict.

“To sit and schmooze with the president while he sends billions of dollars in weapons to Israel to kill their colleagues in Gaza is unethical and immoral,” said Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, the U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy organization that helped organize and release the letter. “To dine with him as he allows Palestinians to die of starvation by cutting off funding to critical humanitarian aid is despicable.”

Criticism about the dinner and its surrounding festivities, where reporters and media executives mingle with people they cover, is nothing new. The debate reached a fever pitch during the presidency of Donald Trump, who labeled independent journalists the “enemy of the people,” but was neutralized in part when Trump and officials in his administration decided not to attend the event.

“This culture of being invited to rub shoulders with the administration is problematic as is, but only more so now,” said Eman Mohammed, a freelance photojournalist from Gaza who is now based in the U.S. and plans to attend the rally Saturday.

She argued that there is some bias at play when Western journalists champion the causes of American or European reporters kidnapped, arrested, prosecuted or killed abroad while, she said, seemingly looking the other way when nonwhite journalists are harmed.

“More than 100-plus journalists have been killed because they are exposing war crimes. And there’s been the bare minimum of speaking up for them from the Western media,” she said.

The White House Correspondents’ Association declined to comment. NBC News Senior White House Correspondent Kelly O’Donnell is serving as the group’s 2023-24 president and will preside over the dinner.

The concentration of lawmakers, media personalities and the president and his retinue in one place have long made the dinner an attractive target for activists looking to take advantage of a high-profile Washington event.

Last year, climate protesters occupied the sidewalks around the hotel and temporarily blocked its main driveway, forcing guests to depart their vehicles early and walk past the picketers into the venue.

Protests inside the event itself are much less common and perhaps unprecedented, given the tight security, and people involved in organizing the protests said they knew of no plans to try to infiltrate the exclusive invite-only dinner.

The Secret Service, which controls security at any event the president attends, is prepared for any possibility, since Biden has consistently drawn protesters at nearly every public event he has held in the past few months, including at a private fundraiser in New York City in late March with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

“We’re kind of used to them,” said a Secret Service official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The D.C. Metropolitan Police will be responsible for securing crowds outside the venue and at the nearby rally.

The president visits the Washington Hilton frequently, and the Secret Service has the security operation there down to a “science,” according to the official. The hotel was the site of the assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan in 1981, an event that led to many changes in presidential security protocols.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com