For president Joe Biden, last weekend’s visit to France and the solemn remembrance of D-Day and reflection on the sacrifice of those who fought in the “Good War” might have been a welcome respite from home.
Had he decided to put in a phone call to the White House on Saturday, the president would have been informed that the consequences of a contemporary conflict had begun to reach the front door of the family home. Palestinian protests outside the White House are nothing new. But on Saturday a coalition of protest groups gathered in gorgeous June sunshine for speeches and rallies and a march through the city.
They formed a human chain around the perimeter of the White House, holding a strip of red material to denote the infamous “red line” on Rafah – Biden said in May that he would not supply weapons to Israel if it launched an all-out attack on the city. Prominent among the vast field of placards were signs reading “Biden’s Red Line Was A Lie”.
Thousands gathered in and around Lafayette Square, with buses arriving from New England, from Florida, from the Midwest. The mood was bright and defiant and conspicuous for a quality lacking in the presidential campaign this year: energy.
That was the localised context for the latest US attempt to broker a ceasefire, adopted by the UN Security Council after Monday’s meeting between secretary of state Antony Blinken and Israel prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who gave a guarded indication of support. Blinken, too, is made aware of the feelings of many Americans about the war whenever he looks outside his livingroom window.
“It is Shabbat so normally I don’t go anywhere but the genocide happening in the name of my people and religion is something I can’t ignore,” said Eliayhu, a Washington student who is an Ashkenazi Jew, as the speeches started on Saturday.
“I am out here every day in front of the White House, demanding peace. It is a nice group of people – Christians, Jews, atheists, agnostics: everybody is there. It’s beautiful. We are here at a critical moment when thousands of human lives are in danger, so I have a responsibility to be here.”
His friend Avigayil said that although she is not a religious Jew, “I still feel very connected to my ethnicity and it enrages me how people will use us as human shields to justify genocide, who did nothing to harm them, who don’t deserve this, who just want to live on their land.”
Both are potential Democrat voters and belong the to the cohort of young people that the Biden campaign is desperately anxious to re-engage ahead of November.
“There is a lot of apathy towards this election among our generation. But look at this today. Look at the young people,” said Eliayhu.
“The people who know what is happening are the ones who will vote. And we are saying, in no uncertain terms, that if Joe Biden continues his enabling, that he will not have my vote in November. He will not have my vote ever. He can turn it around!”
This week’s tentative move towards a peace deal is Biden’s latest attempt to do that: it is Blinken’s eighth visit to the Middle East since October. The loudening criticism that Biden faces over his failure to wield any meaningful influence over Netanyahu’s onslaught could be silenced if the latest proposal brings about some form of peace.
It is just one of many concerns he faces in what is shaping up to be a miserable summer. Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an in-depth piece chronicling Biden’s “signs of slipping” in his role. And even if the interviewees were not exactly confidantes – former House speaker Mike McCarthy and his successor Mike Johnson feature prominently – it revived a conversation that had gone quiet. There is no escaping Biden’s age, even when he jokes about it.
On Tuesday came the guilty verdict in the painful legal case against his son, Hunter, in Wilmington, Delaware. Another trial, on tax evasion charges, awaits in December.
Biden’s entirely reasonable election message – that his term in office saw a historic drive in job creation and a robust economy – has been obscured by stubbornly high inflation and shocking consumer prices, which are leaving many voters struggling and disillusioned.
On Sunday, the president did receive a bump from the latest election poll, conducted by CBS, which has Biden leading Donald Trump in the battleground states: 50 to 49 per cent in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But the entire practice and tradition of polling is under sharp scrutiny and, at best, it’s a perilously narrow lead.
The vexing presence of Robert Kennedy jnr as an independent candidate with the potential to attract voters who could make all the difference is an added complication. But the moral issue at the heart of Biden’s dealing with Israel is a key concern for voters.
“I was oblivious,” says Mattie Wilson of her knowledge of Israel and Palestine before the conflict. She drove two hours from her home in Maryland with her young family to attend the march.
“Just as it is designed to be by my government and society, I was blissfully ignorant. Palestine was not on my radar. So, I began reading and reaching out. I feel like I have a lot to make up for. After October 7th, I wanted to do something that could involve children because I wasn’t going to shield them. As a parent I don’t feel that is morally okay with me when other children are being starved, bombed, losing arms, legs.”
Wilson’s eldest daughter was among a protest group who slept in tents outside Blinken’s home on Friday night: there is a permanent encampment outside the property in McLean, Virginia. Johnson is hopeful that the nationwide Gaza protests will lead to the beginning of an alternative to the Republican-Democrat hegemony.
“I think there is going to be change. I don’t necessarily think that the change is going to be where it needs to be for us to have an independent candidate become the president. But my hope is that we can start it: that we can show that there is a significant part of the population who will say that even if my candidate is not going to win, I am not going to buy this two-party system any more. I am not gonna buy this lesser evil. A veil has been lifted for a lot of people and I am hoping that for my children and their children, we can start this movement now.”
But in November 2024, it is clear that the White House is going to become home to a second-term president. If Biden wants to rescue the votes of the thousands of young people engaged in Gaza protests, there is, many of those protesting on Saturday would argue, an obvious solution.
“Full unconditional ceasefire,” says Eliayhu.
“We give trillions of dollars every year to Israel. If he says unless there is a ceasefire, no more aid, it would end tomorrow. He could do that right now. He doesn’t. Why not? Simple. Follow the money. AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Political Action Committee] claims to represent me and that is what makes me so angry. People who claim to represent me as a religious Jew are telling him that what is happening in Gaza is necessary to defend Jews. And that’s just not true.”
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