US elections 2024: Biden campaign will blame pro-Palestine protests for violence and 'disorder'
The reelection campaign for US President Joe Biden is shifting strategy by pulling attack ads on Donald Trump following the assassination attempt on his life, and instead is looking to blame pro-Palestinian protesters for the current political climate in the country.
Reuters reported on Sunday, citing campaign officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, that instead of targeting former President Trump, the White House and Biden campaign will "draw on the president's history of condemning all sorts of political violence including his sharp criticism of the 'disorder' created by campus protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict".
"This changes everything," one campaign official told Reuters of the assassination attempt. "We're still assessing. Making the case against Trump, drawing that split screen, will get much harder."
"The president is trying to lower the temperature," the official added.
In several instances over the past eight months amid the backdrop of Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, Biden has been quick to condemn pro-Palestinian protesters and has accused them of promoting violence and antisemitism.
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In April, Biden released a statement condemning the pro-Palestinian protests occurring on college campuses, saying that while he "respects the right to free expression … forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful - it is wrong".
The comments were in response to student protesters at Columbia University occupying the institution's Hamilton Hall. That protest was met with a brutal police response, with officers in riot gear violently clearing the demonstrators and arresting dozens.
Then, late last month, Biden condemned a protest against an event in Los Angeles where real estate firms were being accused of advertising land in the occupied West Bank as residential homes for sale in "the best Anglo neighbourhoods in Israel". The West Bank is Palestinian land occupied by Israel, and Israeli settlements in the area are considered illegal under international law.
Biden, however, condemned the protest as "antisemitic" because it was outside of a synagogue, where the real estate event was taking place.
Mislabelling of pro-Palestine protests
Since Israel's war on Gaza began on 7 October 2023, following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel that killed more than 1,100 people and took 240 people hostage, Israeli forces have decimated the Gaza Strip and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
While the official death toll from the Gaza health ministry stands at just over 38,000, the English medical journal, The Lancet, recently published an article where it estimated that the death toll may likely exceed 186,000 Palestinians.
In the US, Israel's war has been met with massive pro-Palestinian protests across the country, the focus of which has been on college campuses where Gaza solidarity encampments began to spring up on university lawns over the past several months.
While these student protests have been largely peaceful, and with clear demands for their schools to divest financial stakes in companies profiting from Israel's war on Gaza, the protests have faced numerous attacks of antisemitism.
US lawmakers have also used these antisemitism claims to attack the leadership of a number of leading American universities.
Major American news outlets also framed these protests as being antisemitic and as promoting hate and violence.
Middle East Eye, however, spoke to Jewish students who have not only taken part in the pro-Palestine demonstrations at several universities but have played key roles in their organising.
The Jewish students said that claims of antisemitism were disingenuous and an attempt to distract from the demands of student protesters. MEE also found that at several student encampments, anti-Zionist Jewish students vastly outnumbered Palestinian or Arab student protesters.
"The narrative that the Gaza solidarity encampments are inherently antisemitic is part of a decades-long effort to blur the lines between criticism of Israel and antisemitism," several hundred Jewish students said in a letter published in May.
"It is a narrative that ignores the large populations of Jewish students participating and helping to lead the encampments as a true expression of our Jewish values."
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