“Genocide Joe, how many children have you killed in Gaza?”
The shout of the pro-Palestinian activist briefly interrupted a speech given by the president of the United States, Joe Biden, during a campaign event in the state of Virginia.
It was a matter of seconds, because immediately a group of militants escorting the president on stage began chanting “four more years, four more years,” making the protester’s words inaudible.
It happened on January 23, when Biden had not yet obtained all the necessary delegates in the primary elections to become the virtual candidate of the Democratic Party for the presidential elections next November.
By then, however, the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas was already emerging as a difficult issue for the president to deal with on his path to re-election.
That obstacle seems to have grown substantially in recent weeks with the wave of anti-war protests that have taken place in more than a hundred universities around the United States and have resulted in the arrest of more than 2,000 protesters.
The nickname “Genocide Joe” began circulating on social media shortly after October 7, 2023, the day the Palestinian group Hamas launched an armed attack on Israel – which left more than 1,200 dead and more of 250 hostages – which triggered the current war.
By October 28, it was already a slogan widely chanted by protesters who attended a pro-Palestinian protest in Detroit.
In those first months of the war, the discontent that the firm support that Biden gave to the government of Israel against Hamas was generating among the Arab-Muslim population of the United States and the most left wing of the Democratic Party was evident.
What was not clear then was that the war in Gaza would last so many months and cause so many casualties – Israeli attacks have killed some 34,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities – which has generated a wave of discontent among young students who have been demonstrating on university campuses across the country in recent weeks.
These young people and other minorities who support them in their claim – Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, members of the LGBT community – represent a group of voters who tend to vote in favor of the Democratic Party and whose vote can make a difference in what until now They look like close elections against the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.
“Biden’s war”
After the October 7 attack, Biden gave Benjamin Netanyahu’s government full support to respond to the Hamas attack,
The American president personally traveled to Israel and deployed aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean as a warning signal so that neither Iran, nor the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, nor the other armed groups in the region allied with Hamas would try to escalate the conflict.
And, later, he remained unwavering – at least in public – his support for Israel despite criticism from the UN, NGOs and different governments around the world, not only because of the high number of civilian victims and the destruction that the Israeli military campaign was causing. about Gaza, but also about the reduced entry of food and humanitarian aid to the Strip due to the harsh limitations imposed by the Netanyahu government.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian groups called for a definitive ceasefire, the Biden government supported a temporary cessation of hostilities, such as the one that occurred at the end of November 2023 and which allowed a greater flow of aid to Gaza, the release of a hundred Israeli hostages and some 240 Palestinians who were imprisoned in Israel.
At the same time, the Biden administration’s repeated requests for Israel to facilitate the entry of more humanitarian aid to Gaza did not seem to find a favorable response from Israel in practice, to the point that the United States began an operation to drop supplies from planes. over the Strip and began building a floating dock off the coast to deliver aid directly.
The White House has also repeatedly expressed its displeasure over the high number of civilian deaths in Gaza.
In early April, it was publicly known for the first time that Biden had told Netanyahu that “the humanitarian situation was unacceptable” and that US policy regarding Gaza was going to be determined by “specific, concrete and measures” that Israel would take to address “harm to civilians, humanitarian suffering and the safety of humanitarian workers.”
At the same time, however, The White House has maintained the shipment of weapons to Israel and has used its veto power in the UN Security Council to protect Israel of adverse resolutions. These measures generate strong rejection among pro-Palestinian groups.
Jeremy Konyndyk, who worked for the Biden and Barack Obama governments and now chairs the NGO Refugees International, believes that the current US president has made this war his own.
“They have provided the material support that sustains the war. They provide the political support that sustains the war. “They provided the diplomatic cover at the UN that kept the war going,” Konyndyk told The New York Times.
“Is this the war Biden would have wanted? No. But is this the war for which they give material support? Yes. And, then, in that sense, this is his war,” he added.
Electoral impact
The possibility that the policy towards the war in Gaza will affect Biden’s re-election chances has been on the table practically since the beginning of the conflict.
In November 2023, Michigan Democratic legislator Rashida Tlaib released a video in which she openly accused Biden of supporting the “genocide of the Palestinians.”
“Mr. President, the American people are not on your side on this issue. We will remember it in 2024,” said Tlaib, who is the only parliamentarian of Palestinian roots in the US Congress.
After his message, the screen went black and a message appeared that said: “Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people. The American people will not forget it. Biden, support a ceasefire now. Or don’t count on us in 2024.”
This unrest was also expressed politically during the primaries when an anti-war movement emerged that advocated electing representatives to the Democratic Convention who had not committed to voting for Biden as a candidate.
This “uncommitted” movement emerged in Michigan, where they obtained more than 100,000 votes (equivalent to 13%). They also achieved notable results in Minnesota (almost 19% of the vote), Hawaii (29%) and Washington (almost 10%).
By mid-March, on average 10% of voters had voted for the “uncommitted” option in the states where it existed, while in states where there was no such option around 12% of the votes had gone. to candidates other than Biden.
According to the “uncommitted” movement, they have at least 500,000 votes.
These results are not minor, since the current president won the 2020 presidential elections in part thanks to the fact that he achieved great mobilization in certain highly competitive states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In many of those places the margin of victory was small and to obtain it the vote of certain groups of voters, such as young people, was key.
However, Recent polls indicate that the president is losing ground among this group of voters.
A survey published by USA Today in mid-April indicated that Biden had the support of 45% of those under 30 years of age, while Trump would get 37%.
That figure, apparently favorable, actually means a great setback compared to its 2020 position when at this stage of the campaign Biden had 60% of these young people and Trump only 30%.
According to the survey, one of the reasons behind the president’s drop in voting intention is the war in Gaza, since a majority of young people consider that Israel’s actions are unjustified compared to those who believe they are justified.
Another survey released at the end of April by CNN indicated that the issue on which Biden obtained the worst rating was his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas with an approval of only 28% and a disapproval of 71%, the latter result rising to 81% among those under 35 years of age.
But could the unrest among young people over the war in Gaza cost Biden his re-election?
“What the student movement does is create fear that Biden is losing one of his most important groups of voters over the issue of war: young voters. Which could have electoral implications,” says Robert Cohen, a historian at New York University, to BBC Mundo.
By this Thursday, student protests against the war in Gaza had already reached some 140 universities in 45 states, according to the BBC’s own calculations.
Additionally, there have been more than 2,000 arrests.
These figures reveal a clear increase in the number and intensity of protests, creating a double dilemma for Biden.
“Like the war itself, these campus protests have put Joe Biden under increasing pressure. Young voters are a key constituency for his re-election campaign, and he lets them become angry with his administration at his peril. But appearing soft on law and order, or turning a blind eye to accusations of anti-Semitism, could also have a high political cost,” says Anthony Zurcher, the BBC’s Washington correspondent.
That would explain, in part, the statements that Biden made this Thursday at the White House, when he defended the right to dissent and peaceful protest, while warning that this must be done within the law.
“If violence occurs, there is destruction of property, it is not a peaceful protest. It is against the law. Vandalism, breaking and entering, breaking windows, closing campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest,” he said.
“There is the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos,” he added later.
Given these circumstances, Cohen highlights the importance for Biden that a ceasefire in the war occurs soon, which could perhaps allow protesters to turn the page.
The historian recalls that this year the Democratic Party Convention (DNC) will be held in Chicago, as happened in 1968, when there were massive demonstrations against the Vietnam War that ended in strong repression and chaos. .
“In 1968, student protests against the Vietnam War combined with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s repressive police force led to all this televised violence between protesters and police. And that really hurt the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, because he made it seem like the Democrats were the party of chaos and that the country was out of control. That “He helped Richard Nixon become president,” says Cohen, adding:
“So the potential is there, except this movement is mostly nonviolent. So those fears may be exaggerated.”
Although it is not known what will have happened between now and August with the student protest movement, last April several pro-Palestinian groups announced a massive mobilization against the DNC
Hatem Abudayyeh, leader of the Palestinian-American community network, announced that “the march against the DNC will be the largest pro-Palestinian mobilization in the history” of Chicago.
“In August, we look forward to tens of thousands of Palestinians, Arabs, Black, Latinx, Asian and other protesters from all over the US to say loud and clear that ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden, Killer Kamala {Vice President Kamala Harris} stop aid to Israel, stop arming Israel,” he said in a video broadcast by The Wall Street Journal.
These ads once again underline the difficulties that the Biden campaign faces due to the war.
In the words of Anthony Zurcher, “the campus unrest could be the start of a damaging summer of protests for Biden if his diplomatic team cannot soon negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.”
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