Gaza protests shadow White House correspondents’ dinner

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

Biden, like most of his predecessors, used the glitzy annual White House Correspondents’ Assn. banquet to jab at his rival, Donald Trump. He followed the jokes with solemn warnings about what he said would happen if Trump won the presidency again.

With hundreds of protesters rallying outside and concerns over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict, the war hung over this year’s event. But speakers inside made only passing mention of it despite the gantlet of demonstrators. Biden’s speech, which lasted about 10 minutes, made no mention of the war or the growing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

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

Chants accused U.S. journalists of covering the war too little and misrepresenting it. “Western media, we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.

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

Protesters cried, “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.

Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s 6-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and accuse pro-Palestinian activists of antisemitism.

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

Biden’s speech before nearly 3,000 people was followed by entertainer Colin Jost from “Saturday Night Live.” Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Chris Pine were among other stars.

NBC News correspondent Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, opened the event by reminding the audience of the important work that journalists do but noting that the dinner is happening at “a complex moment for our nation” and in an election year.

O’Donnell went on to list the scores of journalists who have been imprisoned across the world, including Americans Evan Gershkovich and Austin Tice. The families of those journalists were in attendance as they have been at previous dinners. She briefly mentioned journalists killed in the war between Israel and Hamas.

Biden began the roast with a focus on Trump, calling him “sleepy Don,” in reference to courtroom scenes of Trump appearing to nap during his New York criminal trial and a nod to a nickname Trump has used against Biden. He went on to say that despite being of similar age, the two presidential hopefuls have little else in common.

“My vice president actually endorses me,” Biden said. Former Vice President Mike Pence has refused to endorse Trump’s reelection bid.

The president made a sober speech about what he believes is at stake this election, saying that another Trump administration would be even more harmful to America than his first. “We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk,’ but not after Jan. 6,” Biden told the audience, referring to a mob that stormed the Capitol in 2021 after Trump encouraged supporters to stop the certification of Biden’s election win.

Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, have instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”

The agency was working with Washington police to protect demonstrators’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant to any violent or destructive behavior.”

Protest organizers said they wanted to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.

More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner.

“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”

One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Assn. — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. The association did not respond to a request for comment.

According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.

“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,” committee Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.

Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said that “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.”

In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including the Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.

“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”

Amiri and Knickmeyer write for the Associated Press. AP writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.