WASHINGTON, DC — In protest of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the United States Congress today, Wednesday, July 24, thousands of activists flooded the streets in massive rallies against the Israeli leader’s ongoing attacks on Gaza. Demonstrators calling for Netanyahu’s arrest and the end of US aid to Israel were able to bring parts of the city to a halt despite heavy police presence and hundreds detained.
Beginning at Pennsylvania Avenue and 3rd Street, outside the National Gallery of Art, activists paraded larger-than-life puppets of a bloody-handed Netanyahu and, less frequently, President Joe Biden. As the prime minister began his speech, protesters headed toward Congress, leaving behind effigies of coffins with Palestinian flags along Massachusetts Avenue. A theatrical staging by the local activist group Code Pink invited people to “arrest” an actor wearing a Netanyahu mask and dressed like a cartoon inmate, and some demonstrators burned effigies and photographs of the politician.
Artistic expression met the anger and frustration felt in Capitol Hill today as the death toll in Gaza tops 39,000 and Israel continues its assault on the Khan Younis area nine months after Hamas’s October 7 attack. See photographs of the most creative interventions across the march below.
