Pro-Palestinian protesters repeatedly interrupted Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday as he began testifying to a Senate committee, calling him a “war criminal.”

“The blood of 40,000 Palestinians is on his hands,” one woman shouted as she rushed the witness table where Mr. Blinken sat before officers carried her out of the room.

The heckling started as soon as Mr. Blinken entered the hearing room on Tuesday morning. Demonstrators — some with their hands painted red — quietly stood up and called him a “war criminal” and the “secretary of genocide.”

Moments later, when Mr. Blinken began his opening remarks, the group intensified its tactics.

“Blinken, you will be remembered as the butcher of Gaza,” Mohamad Habehh, the development director of American Muslims for Palestine, shouted at the secretary while holding up a Palestinian flag, bringing the hearing to a halt temporarily.

It took a number of Capitol Police officers to forcibly remove Mr. Habehh from the room as he shouted about Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl, saying that the United States and Mr. Blinken were culpable for her death and those of thousands of other civilians killed in Gaza.

Since the war began, Mr. Blinken, who has managed U.S.-Israel relations as the war in Gaza grinds on, has regularly drawn pro-Palestinian protesters at his public appearances, and an encampment even sprang up outside his Northern Virginia home featuring Palestinian flags and handmade signs expressing fury at the man who has become the face of President Biden’s policy toward the conflict.

On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, he did not respond to the protesters and members of the committee largely ignored them, instead continuing to ask questions about the department’s budget and the national security and foreign relations priorities Mr. Blinken laid out.

A similar scene unfolded in October when Mr. Blinken was on Capitol Hill appearing in front of senators to request billions in American foreign aid for Israel. At that time, protesters disrupted the hearing with chants accusing the United States of supporting genocide and carried signs calling for a cease-fire.

There was no call for a cease-fire from protesters on Tuesday, and the tenor of attacks was more personal. A number of demonstrators, some of whom were from the antiwar group CODEPINK, carried signs and wore T-shirts that read “bloody Blinken.”

Mr. Blinken’s appearance in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee came as Democrats continue to be divided over the administration’s Israel policy.

Mr. Biden earlier this month intervened to stop a shipment of weapons to Israel and said that he would withhold similar transfers if Israel conducted a major offensive military campaign in Rafah, where millions of Palestinians have relocated to flee the violence in other parts of Gaza.

Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/world/middleeast/pro-palestinian-protesters-heckle-blinken-as-he-testified-on-capitol-hill.html