Biden will give election-year roast at annual correspondents’ dinner as protests await over Gaza war

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will hold an election-year roast for a large crowd of journalists, celebrities and politicians on Saturday evening, against the backdrop of growing protests over his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.

In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, has used the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner to fuel media coverage of his administration and target political rivals, especially Republican rival Donald Trump to fall.

But with protesters vowing to gather outside the dinner venue, any effort by Biden to shed light on Washington’s weaknesses and the pitfalls of the presidential campaign will have to be weighed against concerns about the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the dangers for journalists reporting on events in Gaza. conflict. Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s six-month military offensive in Gaza has spread across American college campuses, with students setting up encampments in an attempt to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counter-protests support Israel’s offensive and complain of anti-Semitism.

Biden’s speech to an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 people at a Washington hotel will be followed by entertainer Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live,” who is sure to make a few jokes about both the president and his opponents.

Attention will also likely be paid to the many journalists detained and otherwise prosecuted around the world for doing their work, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023.

But before the president reached the Washington Hilton — where the event has been held for decades — he was expected to pass hundreds of people who gathered along the path of Biden’s motorcade and nearby to draw attention to the large number of Palestinian and other Arab journalists have been killed. by the Israeli army since the start of the war in October.

Law enforcement agencies, including the Secret Service, have instituted additional street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi calls “the highest level of safety and security for visitors.”

The agency worked with Washington police to protect protesters’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. But “we will remain intolerant of any violent or destructive behavior.”

More than twenty journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.

“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter said. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations and torture by the Israeli army, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”

One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — has been largely silent about the killings of Palestinian journalists since the first weeks of the war. WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.

Nearly 100 journalists covering the war in Gaza have been killed, according to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel has defended its actions, saying it targeted militants.

“Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Gaza, journalists have paid the ultimate price – their lives – to defend our right to the truth. Every time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.

Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a US-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said: “It is a shame for the media to have dinner and laugh with President Biden while he makes Israel’s destruction and famine possible. of the Palestinians in Gaza.”

In addition, the Adalah Justice Project launched an email campaign targeting twelve media executives from several news outlets – including The Associated Press – who were expected to attend the dinner and who had previously signed a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.

___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.