Şerife Çetin
28 April 2024•Update: 28 April 2024
NEW YORK
Pro-Palestine demonstrators protested the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday, denouncing the Biden administration's handling of the war in Gaza and media coverage of the conflict that has killed tens of thousands.
Organized by the US activist group, CodePink, the protest took place outside the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was being held.
Demonstrators greeted officials from the administration, journalists and celebrities entering the venue with chants of "Shame on you."
Protesters displayed a large Palestinian flag from the window of the hotel and staged a "die-in" to honor journalists killed in Israeli attacks against the Gaza Strip.
They held banners that read: "Ceasefire", "Free Palestine" and "Biden's legacy is genocide."
Protesters also chanted slogans including "Genocide Joe", "Free Palestine" and "Western media, shame on you! You are hiding genocide too!"
Many demonstrators wore keffiyehs, a scarf that has come to symbolize solidarity with Palestine, and waved Palestinian flags.
"The Correspondents' Dinner is nothing more than a celebration and endorsement of the administration's actions. It is not journalism. It is complicity," the group wrote on X.
Bloody press vests with the names of every journalist killed in Gaza and the West Bank were displayed on the street across from the hotel.
In April, a group of Palestinian journalists issued a letter addressing their colleagues to publicly boycott the annual dinner.
President Joe Biden is expected to speak at the event, which will host approximately 3,000 participants.
A total of 141 journalists have been killed since October in Gaza.
Israel has waged a brutal offensive on Gaza since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group, Hamas, on Oct. 7, which Tel Aviv said killed less than 1,200 people.
Nearly 34,400 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 77,400 injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
*Writing by Gozde Bayar, contributed by Servet Gunerigok in Washington
