Anti-Netanyahu protest leaders accuse White House of 'slander'

After a group of protesters set American flags on fire at the end of an hours-long march against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, protest organizers have called White House claims that the march was antisemitic “slander” and an attempt to distract from “actual police violence” at the march. 

“To try and misdirect people’s attention, some parts of the corporate media and the White House itself are now trying to minimize the significance of these actions. They are attempting to demonize the protests, and focus on one individual sign or some individual's burning of the American flag,” the ANSWER coalition, which was the lead organizing group of the protest, wrote in a statement to The Hill. 

“The White House is directly slandering the protest as 'violent and antisemitic.' Everyone who was there knows this is an outright lie,” they added.

After the protest, White House deputy spokesperson Andrew Bates released a statement calling the protesters “disgraceful.” 

“Identifying with evil terrorist organizations like Hamas, burning the American flag, or forcibly removing the American flag and replacing it with another, is disgraceful,” Bates wrote.

“Antisemitism and violence are never acceptable. Period,” he added. “Every American has the right to peaceful protest. But shamefully, not everyone demonstrated peacefulness today.”

Vice President Harris released a similar statement calling the protesters who burned the flag “unpatriotic” and “hateful.” 

Near the end of the march, protesters gathered in front of Union Station, and the protest descended into chaos after a group of protesters brought down the three U.S. flags in front of the train station and raised Palestinian Flags. Protesters also set two of those flags on fire, as well as an effigy of Netanyahu, according to police on the scene.

“The rising of the Palestinian flag on multiple flagpoles in front of Union Station and in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol grounds is a clear indication that the tide has turned,” the organizers wrote to The Hill. 

In a statement to The Hill, a Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) spokesperson condemned the flag burning and vandalism saying that they "reject this unauthorized and unrepresentative behavior, which does not reflect or represent the movement to end the Gaza genocide." CAIR was one of the co-organizers of the protest.

"We also reject politicians and media personalities who have cynically attempted to conflate rogue criminal behavior by a small number of individuals with the actions of the peaceful protesters who gathered on Capitol Hill to oppose Netanyahu, his government's genocide and U.S. support for it," the spokesperson continued. "Selective condemnations must end. If vandalism and offensive rhetoric is offensive, then so is committing, funding, lying about, and applauding the genocide of 40,000 human beings."

Police arrested 23 people yesterday and shot pepper spray and stun grenades at protesters multiple times throughout Wednesday’s march. 

“​​As soon as this mass assembly began to march towards Congress, police attacked,” organizers wrote. “So not only does the Biden-Harris administration direct U.S. tax dollars to fund the Israeli war machine, they unleash pepper spray on people who object. Dozens of marchers exercising their First Amendment rights were subject to a brutal and unprovoked police attack.” 

U.S. Capitol Police has disagreed with organizers’ characterization of events, writing, “Part of the crowd [became] violent at First Street and Constitution Avenue, NW. The crowd failed to obey our order to move back from our police line. We are deploying pepper spray towards anyone trying to break the law and cross that line.” 

In response to the organizer’s claim that protesters were peaceful, a spokesperson with the Capitol Police wrote to The Hill, “All you have to do is take a quick look at social media and you will find videos of the crowd throwing things at our officers. That is not only unacceptable — it is violent and illegal.” 

In total, the U.S. Park Police made eight arrests for people involved in demonstrations in front of Union Station, while the Metropolitan Police made nine arrests throughout the day related to the march around the Capitol and demonstration in front of Union Station. Capitol Police arrested five people for disrupting Netanyahu’s address in the House gallery.