Protesters vandalized the White House with red paint and shouted, “F*** Joe Biden” at a rally backing Hamas in Washington on Saturday, one of many that took place in cities across North America and Europe.
The thousands of demonstrators gathered in the American capital chanted, “Long live the intifada,” “Free Palestine” and “Allahu akbar” while holding signs calling “resistance against occupation” a “human right” and for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.
An assortment of far-left groups and Palestinian and Muslim organizations sponsored the march, demanding a Gaza ceasefire, an end to the siege of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave and an end to American financial support for the Jewish state. Endorsing groups included at least two far-left Jewish anti-Israel groups.
Israel is waging a war to destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip after thousands of terrorists stormed across the border on Oct. 7, murdering 1,400 persons, wounding over 5,000 others and taking more than 200 captives back to Gaza. Hamas has fired more than 8,000 rockets at Israeli civilians since the invasion.
On Saturday, protesters attempted to climb over the White House’s wrought-iron gates and covered the General Marquis de Lafayette Statue in nearby Lafayette Park with graffiti and PLO flags.
The demonstrators “are wholeheartedly supporting a homicidal terrorist organization that slaughtered 1,400 Israelis in cold blood and has taken numerous civilians hostage including from our own country. They are just incredibly misguided, uninformed and reactionary, and history will judge they have put themselves on the side of supporting terrorists versus a democracy trying to defend itself,” Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, told the New York Post.
Other large demonstrations took place in cities including Paris, Berlin, London and Toronto. In London, police estimated a crowd of 30,000 rallied in Trafalgar Square with 29 arrests made including of a person who gave an antisemitic speech and two people who held up a banner supporting Hamas.
Video shows a mob of protesters on the London Tube chanting, “Smash the Zionist settler state.” Another picture from the rally shows a sign featuring a Hamas bulldozer breaking through the Gaza security fence, glorifying the Oct. 7 terrorist massacre of civilians.
