Gaza: protests at US universities show how war has become a threat to Biden’s campaign

“Genocidal Joe, how many children did you kill in Gaza?”

This phrase, said by a pro-Palestinian American protester, briefly interrupted a speech by US President Joe Biden during a campaign event in the State of Virginia.

It was a matter of seconds, as immediately a group of supporters accompanying Biden began a chorus of “four more years”, defending the president’s re-election and making the protester’s speech inaudible.

This happened on January 23, when Biden had not yet won all the necessary delegates in the primary elections to officially become the Democratic Party candidate in the November US elections.

The term “genocidal Joe” began to circulate on social media in the weeks following October 7, 2023, the day on which the Palestinian group Hamas carried out an armed attack on Israeli territory that resulted in the death of 1,200 people and the taking of 250 hostages – and when the current war was started.

On October 28, the motto was already chanted at pro-Palestinian protests in the city of Detroit, in a reaction by the Arab-Muslim population of the USA (as well as the most left-wing wing of the Democratic Party) to American support for Israel.

What was not clear at that time was that the war in Gaza would last for so many months, and with so many victims: Israeli attacks have already claimed 34,000 lives in Gaza, according to the local Ministry of Health (which is controlled by Hamas). This has generated a wave of discontent among young Americans and culminated in demonstrations on college campuses across the country.

Young university students and other minorities – Latinos, Asians, African Americans, the LGBT community – tend, for the most part, to vote for the Democratic Party, and their vote could make a difference in an election that is expected to be fiercely contested with Republican Donald Trump.

After the Hamas attack, Biden expressed his support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government, personally traveled to Israel and sent aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean as a warning to Iran and groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah, not to escalate the conflict.

This support remained, at least publicly, despite criticism of Israel from the UN, NGOs and some governments – due to the high number of victims and destruction in the Gaza Strip, and also because of limited access to humanitarian aid. to that territory.

While pro-Palestinian groups called for a definitive ceasefire, the Biden administration supported a temporary truce, like the one that occurred at the end of November 2023 and which allowed aid to enter Gaza and an exchange of 112 Israeli hostages for 240 detained Palestinians. in Israel.

The White House has sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with the high number of victims in Gaza.

In early April, it was publicly learned for the first time that Biden had told Netanyahu that “the humanitarian situation was unacceptable” and that American policy would be determined by “specific, concrete and measurable” measures by Israel in the face of “the harm to civilians , humanitarian suffering and safety of humanitarian workers”.

Even so, the White House continued to send weapons to Israel and used its veto power in the UN Security Council to veto resolutions against Israel – measures that generated strong criticism among pro-Palestinian groups.

“They (USA) have provided the material support, political support and diplomatic coverage at the UN that support the war”, Jeremy Konyndyk, who worked in the Biden and Obama administrations and today presides over the NGO Refugees International, told the New York Times.

The possibility that American policy regarding the war in Gaza will affect Biden’s re-election campaign has been raised practically since the beginning of the conflict.

In November 2023, Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, from the State of Michigan, released a video in which she openly accused Biden of supporting “the genocide of Palestinians”.

“Mr. President, the American people are not on your side on this issue. And that will be remembered in 2024,” said Tlaib, who is the first Palestinian-American to be elected to the American Congress.

Similar unease was publicly expressed during the Democratic primaries, when the anti-war movement emerged that advocated the election of representatives to the Democratic Convention who had not committed to voting for Biden’s candidacy.

This movement of “disengaged” voters emerged in Michigan, where it won more than 100,000 votes (13%) in the primaries and spread to states such as Minnesota, Hawaii and Washington.

By mid-March, about 10% of primary voters had voted for the “uncommitted” option rather than for Biden. At the same time, in states where the campaign did not take place, 12% of the votes went to different candidates, instead of Biden.

The “uncommitted” movement claims to have around half a million voter votes – something that is not insignificant, considering that Biden won the 2020 elections thanks in part to mobilization in hard-fought states (such as Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan itself) with a small margin before Trump. And in this small margin, the votes of specific groups, such as young people, were important.

Recent opinion polls indicate that Biden is losing ground in this electoral group.

A survey commissioned by the newspaper USA Today in mid-April showed that Biden has the support of 45% of Americans under the age of 30.

Although this still represents an advantage over Trump (who has 37% in this demographic group), it is actually a big retreat from Biden, who in the same month of 2020 had 60% support from young people, compared to 30% for Trump.

According to the survey, one of the reasons behind the drop in voting intentions is precisely the war in Gaza, as many young Americans would consider Israel’s actions unjustified.

Another survey released at the end of April by CNN indicated that the issue on which Biden had his worst rating (28%, against 71% disapproval) was the handling of the war between Israel and Hamas. Disapproval was particularly high (81%) among voters under 35.

But is this discontent enough to cost Biden re-election?

“What the student movement does is create a fear that Biden is losing one of his most important electoral groups: young people, which could have electoral implications”, says Robert Cohen, to BBC Mundo (BBC Spanish service). historian at New York University.

In recent days, student protests related to Gaza have reached 140 American universities, in 45 states, according to BBC estimates.

More than 2 thousand people ended up detained.

The figures indicate an increase in the number and intensity of protests, which opens up a dilemma for Biden, says Anthony Zurcher, BBC correspondent in Washington.

“He sits between a group on the left demanding peace, and among Americans concerned that the riots are disrupting university education and becoming a threat to civil order,” explains Zurcher.

So far, Biden has stated in this regard that he defends “the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.”

In this scenario, historian Cohen highlights the importance, for Biden, of there being some type of ceasefire in Gaza – which alleviates internal pressure against him.

Cohen recalls that, this year, the Democratic Party Convention – when Biden’s re-election candidacy will be made official – will take place in August in the city of Chicago.

In the same city, in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, the Democratic convention registered a huge wave of protests that resulted in repression and chaos.

“The anti-war protests of 1968, combined with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s repressive police force, provoked televised violence between protesters and police,” recalls Cohen.

“This really hurt the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, because it made it seem like the Democrats were the party of chaos and that the country was out of control. This helped in the election of Richard Nixon”, continues the historian, who makes a reservation:

“The potential is there, although this (current) movement is mostly non-violent. So it may be that these fears are exaggerated.”

Although it is not possible to predict what will happen with the student protests until August, several pro-Palestinian groups have called for a mobilization against the Democratic convention.

Hatem Abudayyeh, leader of the Palestinian-American community network, has said the march against the Democratic convention will be the “largest pro-Palestinian mobilization in the history” of Chicago.

“In August, we expect tens of thousands of Palestinian, Arab, black, Latino, Asian and other protesters from all parts of the US to say loud and clear that ‘genocidal Joe’ and Killer Kamala (in reference to Vice President Kamala Harris) stop aid to Israel, stop arming Israel,” he said, in a video published by the Wall Street Journal.

In the words of Anthony Zurcher, “the protests on college campuses could be the start of a damaging season of demonstrations if his diplomatic team fails to quickly negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.”