They came with a political warning, the tens of thousands of people who held signs, chanted slogans and marched through U.S. cities on Saturday.
Their warning was to U.S. President Joe Biden and the message was clear: Keep supporting the Israeli military mission in Gaza and it could cost you the 2024 election.
Near the White House in Washington, they held up signs like reading “Genocide Joe” and “Israel married the devil and had Biden.”
The rallies came one day after a sitting member of Congress, Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib, released a video that accused her party’s leader of supporting a genocide and ended with a sombre promise: “We will remember in 2024.”
The admonitions of this disproportionately — but not exclusively — young, progressive, Muslim-American crowd don’t appear to represent majority opinion in the United States. A slim majority of Americans, and even a plurality of Democrats, expressed support for U.S. military aid for Israel in a poll this week by Quinnipiac University.
But that doesn’t mean the protesters’ warning can be easily dismissed. Biden can’t afford to lose any constituencies — not in a country where the last election was decided by a mere 42,918 votes across three swing states.
From the stage at a Washington rally, one speaker said the only thing politicians understand is pressure. Another said he’s discovered the only language Biden understands.
“[It’s] the language of votes,” said Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the Council on American Islamic Relations, before rattling off a list of swing states with significant Muslim populations.
“Our message is no ceasefire, no votes…. No votes in Michigan. No votes in Arizona. No votes in Georgia…. No votes for you anywhere, if you do not call for a ceasefire now,” Awad said.
A large chorus of people chanted the slogan, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.” The slogan, which also appeared on T-shirts in the crowd, is frequently described as a call for the abolition of Israel and is criticized by Jewish groups as being antisemitic.
Others insist it carries other meanings, like a demand for Palestinian freedoms.
The Washington rally was one of a multitude of massive pro-Palestinian rallies held in major cities around the world, including the United States and Canada.
Support for Israel
Biden has been mostly supportive of the Israeli government’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks that killed 1,400 people and took more than 240 hostages.
Biden has deployed U.S. warships to the eastern Mediterranean, sought $14 billion in military assistance for Israel, and rejected calls for a ceasefire.
He has downplayed the Palestinian death count, which on Saturday was estimated at more than 9,488. When some Democratic lawmakers called for a ceasefire, his press secretary called their remarks repugnant.
On the other hand, Biden has negotiated the opening of the humanitarian corridor into Gaza, and has publicly — and repeatedly — urged Israel not to give into vengeful impulses and to protect civilian lives.
He’s now calling for a humanitarian pause.
To the protesters in Washington streets on Saturday, however, those efforts aren’t good enough.
“I was not pleased with Biden before. But I am highly, highly disappointed with his actions now,” said Summer Treece, who travelled with friends on a long road trip from Tennessee to attend the Washington rally.
She said Israel could have used its technological edge, surveillance capabilities and human assets to have conducted a more targeted campaign against Hamas “with significantly less civilian casualties.”
Tariq Nayfeh, a medical doctor who attended the Washington rally, said he’s hearing horror stories from colleagues and friends in Gaza and the West Bank.
“I’ve lost five physician friends in Gaza. Dead,” said Nayfeh, an orthopedic surgeon in Maryland who has relatives living in the West Bank.
Nayfeh occasionally volunteers in Palestinian hospitals and said they were already in dire straits before this crisis. On his last volunteer tour to Gaza in August, he brought his own gauze and anesthetics, he said.
Hamas never should have conducted the Oct. 7 attacks, he said, but the United States should not be supporting — and funding — a campaign that has killed thousands of Gaza civilians.
He said he has an American friend in Gaza who was injured and whose sibling was killed from bomb shrapnel. He said he is angry that his own tax dollars had supported it.
He is also upset at American public opinion.
“It’s not Biden — it’s all of them,” he said. “I’m disappointed that the American population are clapping like seals, trained seals waiting for their fish. Anytime the Israelis say something … it’s the entire American population that’s willing to fund genocide.”
While the U.S. has urged Israel to avoid civilian casualties, it has also acknowledged deaths and injuries as inevitable, given the presence of Hamas tunnels in civilian areas.
Nayfeh said he won’t vote for anyone who accepts civilian deaths. That includes Biden, or his likely general-election opponent Donald Trump.
Standing near him at the march, Marwan Ahmad, executive director of the Palestinian American Medical Association, said he concurred: “We’re not voting for those two.”
While it’s still too early to conclude whether events in the Middle East will have any discernible effect in American politics, it’s notable that those threatening to withhold their votes weren’t necessarily people who voted for Democrats before and are looking to switch now.
Some of the people who’ve written and been quoted in news stories as turning their backs on Biden have, in the past, usually supported the Green Party and Republicans.
Among those attending Saturday’s rally in Washington, Neyfeh said he voted for Trump in the last election. Treece said she reluctantly voted for Biden in 2020 and may do so again because, she said, he’s not Trump.
Trump has promised to ban refugees from Gaza and bar immigrants who express sympathy for Hamas, while some other Republicans are proposing legislation to expel Palestinians from the U.S.
Mixed portrait in recent polling
Among some voter groups, in some polls, there are trouble signs for Biden. Like a survey of Arab-Americans that found plunging approval for Biden. Another showed a dip in approval among younger voters, from the beginning to the end of October.
But the bigger picture remains stable. The national polls still show a statistically tied race, no change since the summer.
One pollster said he’s not seeing evidence yet of a Middle East effect on American voters.
“[Biden’s] approval went up a few points from a couple of weeks ago. He has not dropped because of how he’s handled Israel,” said Tim Malloy, an analyst at Quinnipiac University.
“We have not seen a negative effect…. What we have here is a complete dead heat.”
There’s a corollary to that: In a complete dead heat, every vote matters. And some of those voters are demanding a stronger defence of Palestinian civilians from their president.