Thousands of protesters encircled the White House with a sea of red fabric on Saturday, demanding President Biden call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Demonstrators chanted “Free Palestine!” and held signs reading “Genocide is our red line” and “Israel bombs, your taxes pay,” The Washington Post reported.
As they marched, many helped carry a 2-mile strip of red fabric, aimed to criticize the White House’s statement that Israel has not crossed Biden’s “red line” with its operations there.
Last month, President Biden promised he would halt the delivery of offensive weapons to Israel if it targeted population centers in Rafa.
Many protesters chanted “Biden, Biden you can’t hide, we are your red line.”
Saturday’s rally at the White House came on the same day that Gazan officials reported at least 210 Palestinians killed in a refugee camp.
“If Joe Biden’s red line was a fiction meant to silence us, we will only get louder,” declared Brian Becker, a leader of the ANSWER Coalition, which organized the march. “We must be the red line against genocide.”
Currently in France, Biden has recently become more critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent weeks.
In a Time magazine interview from May 28, Biden suggested Netanyahu might be prolonging the war for political reasons, and has previously described Netanyahu’s war handling as a “mistake.”
Nas Issa, a protester from the Palestinian Youth Movement, told NBC News the meaning of using the red fabric during the protest Saturday was “to draw a red line where Biden won’t draw one when it comes to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and say we as the people are drawing the red line today to say enough is enough.”
“It’s time for an arms embargo, and it’s time to end this,” he added.