Protests engulf Biden at White House dinner over Israel's journo killings

An election-year roast of President Joe Biden before journalists, celebrities and politicians at the annual White House correspondents' dinner Saturday butted up against growing public discord over Israel's Gaza war, with protests outside the event condemning both Biden's handling of the conflict and the Western news' media coverage of it.

With hundreds of protesters rallying against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns over the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict, the war hung over this year's event.

“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses who were holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.

Chants accused US journalists of undercovering the war and misrepresenting it. “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.

Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.

Ralliers cried “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 hotel window.

Boycott call

With President Biden heading a long list of VIP guests, more than two dozen Palestinian journalists this week issued an open letter urging their American colleagues to boycott the dinner.

"You have a unique responsibility to speak truth to power and uphold journalistic integrity," said the letter.

"It is unacceptable to stay silent out of fear or professional concern while journalists in Gaza continue to be detained, tortured, and killed for doing our jobs."

According to the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ), at least 97 journalists — including 92 Palestinians — have been killed since October 7. At least 16 others have been wounded.

In addition to the boycott call, an anti-war coalition is planning a demonstration not far from the Washington Hilton hotel where the dinner is to take place.

Mounting protests against Biden

For months, Biden's every move has been shadowed by protesters angry over US support for the Israeli war on Gaza. He has been met by shouts of "Genocide Joe" and noisy calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Biden’s motorcade on Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.

“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each 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 Adalah Justice Project, a US-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza."

The gala dinner and a surrounding series of society events are taking place as the Gaza protest movement has been spreading to colleges across the country, and as police crackdowns on some campuses have led to hundreds of arrests.