My 24 Hours In Benjamin Netanyahu’s Washington D.C.
As Zeteo's new political correspondent, my walk through the capital showed how stark the contrast is between the American people and the people in power.
INSIDE THE CHAMBER
On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did what Joe Biden and Donald Trump could not. He unified Congress.
From the moment his name was first uttered as he was gavelled into the House chamber, to the moment he left the room with Republicans latched onto his coattails, Netanyahu was applauded. And applauded. And applauded. Often by both sides of the aisle.
From my seat in the press gallery overlooking the affair, my attention was as much drawn towards Netanyahu’s words as they were to America’s elected officials taking them in.
While Republicans were more zealous in their enthusiasm for the man who may face arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court, Democrats (among the roughly half who were not absent in protest) shared their fair share of applause too. Senators including John Fetterman (Penn.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), and Joe Manchin (W.V.) and House Representatives like Ritchie Torres (N.Y.) and Jared Moskowitz (Fla.) were eagerly cheering on the leader accused by scores of human rights organizations of facilitating and overseeing war crimes.
(Before the speech, I asked Senator Fetterman — who, unlike usual days in the halls of Congress, was sporting a full-on suit for the occasion — how he was doing, what his thoughts were on the address or on his colleagues who may be boycotting. He maintained his forward-looking gaze, offering no response.)
Arizona Senator and vice-presidential contender Mark Kelly tepidly applauded, seeming to avoid expressing total enthusiasm while still showing support for Netanyahu’s address.
Senators like Raphael Warnock (Ga.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) were markedly less animated — the former two often stone-faced as they watched the Israeli Prime Minister.
Rep. Jerry Nadler — who on Tuesday called Netanyahu “the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2100 years ago” — spent his time before the address reading a book titled “The Netanyahu Years.” The book contends Netanyahu of having a self-rationalizing and messianic complex that leads him to think it’s a vital public interest that he maintains ever-increasing power.
And then there was Rep. Rashida Tlaib — the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress — seated in the row right in front of Nadler. While many members boycotted the address (some estimates indicate well over half of Congress’ Democrats), Tlaib chose to attend. Wearing a keffiyeh and sporting Palestine-inspired earrings and a belt, Tlaib sat while others almost automatically, repeatedly stood to applaud the Israeli Prime Minister.
Soon into the middle of Netanyahu’s remarks, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tlaib pull out a small double-sided sign with a stick handle. “WAR CRIMINAL,” one side read; “GUILTY OF GENOCIDE,” the other.
A smattering of boos over her sign could be heard in the gallery where guests sat; but the reaction was drowned out amid more applause for Netanyahu. Tlaib continued holding the sign up throughout the speech.
I spoke to Tlaib after Netanyahu’s address. She told me that the matter was of basic acknowledgement of Palestinian existence. “Palestinians already feel so invisible. Especially when we talk about what is happening right now,” she said. “And to have the person that’s literally pressing the button on the genocide getting my colleagues and everyone to support sending U.S. bombs and weapons, for me to be unapologetically visible, not silent — and, you know, I get emotional thinking about it — it’s like, we are not going to be erased.”
Zeteo will be publishing an exclusive interview with Rep. Rashida Tlaib soon.
ON THE STREETS
While the thunder of bipartisan applause rang inside the House chamber, things were very different outside. The split-screen physically embodied the contrast between the majority of Americans who are in support of a ceasefire and increasingly skeptical of unconditional aid to Israel, versus Congress’ own unconditional support for Israel’s possible war criminal leader.
Throughout Wednesday, dissent surrounded. Fencing wrapped around the Capitol. Typical paths in and outside the building were blocked or rerouted. Navigating the hill — and especially trying to get from the Capitol to the protests — was made notably difficult. At least four uniformed police agencies (including the New York Police Department) appeared to be keeping watch.
Several members of Congress held counter-programming. Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Greg Casar, Delia Ramirez, and Tlaib hosted a press conference in the morning alongside leaders from Indivisible, the Uncommitted National Movement, Working Families Party, and Biden administration officials who resigned in protest of the war on Gaza.
I listened as former Biden administration official Lily Greenberg Call described her own Jewish background, how October 7 impacted her and her loved ones — and how she knew very quickly that the response would be beyond belief. She described how Palestinians’ safety and freedom was just as important and connected to her own loved ones’.
Throughout the morning and into the day and evening, protestors flanked the Capitol. Demonstrators were most concentrated near the intersection of Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenue, with the Capitol dome looming in the backdrop. I spoke with a 42-year-old who splits time between his family in New York and Texas. He said he was activated in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on October 7. He said he was initially sympathetic to Israel, but the more he engaged with the history behind Israel and Palestine, and the more that events unfolded, the more concerned he became.
I also spoke with Riley Livermore, a former Air Force Major who resigned this year after serving for 16 years — including conducting missile research in Israel for 2 years. Livermore flew into Washington to attend the demonstrations and remarked on how “interconnected” they felt. “It’s great, it’s just a cross-section of people — generations, faiths, religions,” said Livermore, who credited his evangelical background for leading him to enlist in the first place.
“Even the resignees, something that stuck with me is it was people who are Jewish, people who are Muslim, people who are Palestinian, people who are white. I think there’s this cross-cutting thing where everybody realizes this is super wrong. Do whatever you can.”
While Congress raucously applauded Netanyahu attacking the protestors — quite possibly members’ own constituents — outside, not everyone shared the enthusiasm. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin gave me a straightforward message for the diverse protestors: “Keep marching, keep protesting, let’s keep working for a comprehensive bilateral ceasefire and return of the hostages. They’re doing absolutely the right thing.”
Raskin also told reporters that it’s too bad Netanyahu didn’t deliver his speech earlier. “You could have given it at the Republican National Convention,” he quipped, saying the speech advanced a right-wing approach to the war “that’s been rejected by a majority of people in Israel who no longer have confidence in Netanyahu’s leadership.”
Ironically, days after Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson warned of arrests “if anybody gets out of hand” and as Netanyahu pilloried those in America protesting the war (to massive applause from America’s elected officials), police arrested six family members of hostages who had been demonstrating in support of a ceasefire and hostage deal.
“At this point, everybody with their own two eyes are able
to see the reality on the ground.”
EARLY OPPOSITION
Dissent sprouted even before the day of Netanyahu’s address. On Tuesday, I encountered hundreds of Jewish people from across the country entering the Capitol rotunda, urging members of Congress to support a ceasefire and an arms embargo to Israel.
When asked about the protest, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler (NY) suggested the demonstrators (who included Rabbis, and who held signs and wore shirts that said things like “Jews for Ceasefire” or “Not in our name”) were “pro-Hamas.” He also questioned the protestors’ Jewish identity and likened believing their self-identification to believing the Gaza Ministry of Health’s death count.
Numerous protestors who identified as Jewish said their faith is why they were demonstrating in the first place — including one whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors and another whose family members were killed at Auschwitz.
Capitol police arrested several demonstrators, seizing their signs that urged peace.
Cameron Jones, a 20-year-old who studies at Columbia University — a central site of many anti-war and pro-Palestine protests — told me how such demonstrations reflect the hope for true co-existence. Jones, who grew up going to Hebrew school and still has family in Israel, harkened back to the spirit of the campus encampment protests. To Jones, they were the vision “for what a free Palestine will look like: people from all backgrounds can come together and coexist in a peaceful place that allows all people from all faiths to prosper successfully.”
Malkah Bird of Indiana, a self-proclaimed “longtime Jewish midwesterner”, told me they flew out to be present at the demonstrations. She said that more and more Jewish people — led by young people such as Jones, Jewish people and Palestinians working together — were coming to see things differently. “Young Jews more and more are saying ‘that is not my Judaism, my Judaism is not occupation, it’s not apartheid. You know, right now, I'm a student, I'm going to graduate with massive loans, I don't know if I'm going to have health care, I don't know if I'm going to be able to afford housing — and at the same time, what our government is doing is taking taxpayer dollars and sending them to Israel to kill Palestinians.’”
“At this point, everybody with their own two eyes are able to see the reality on the ground. And so, this mythology around us that the only way to be a Jew in the US has to be a Zionist is crumbling. And the polls show it, you know, you talk to young people, you see what they've been doing on college campuses. And it's undeniable, at this point.”
“So, I think it's just such an inspiration to me — even as somebody who's a little bit of a generation older than that, or a lot, whatever — to see how much this conversation has shifted, and how much young people understand about apartheid and equality and justice and are living that out.”
Prem Thakker is Zeteo's new political correspondent. Look out for his exclusive interview with U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib very soon, and his upcoming column at Zeteo.
It is a shameful day that a war criminal was welcomed into the Capitol building by his Congressional enablers. The bombs, missiles and war planes killing Palestinians day after day for months and months must end. Thank you Rep. Rashida Tlaib for your courage and tenacity to stand up in quiet but unequivocal protest during Netanyahu's brazen speech.
I can't even express how much I admire Rashida Tlaib❣️