It turns out I look more Jewish than I thought. That’s one thing I learned covering the pro-Palestinian protest at the White House on Saturday.
From my on-the-ground report:
Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters surrounded the White House on Saturday afternoon, calling for President Joe Biden to end U.S. military aid to Israel. . . .
A group in keffiyehs and black ski masks held a banner that read “Jihad of Victory or Martyrdom” and “Al Qassam.” They chanted “Hezbollah, Hezbollah, kill another Zionist now.”
When I took a picture of the banner, one of the men in the group wearing a black ski mask approached me and assumed — possibly because of my curly hair — that I was Jewish, or at least a “Zionist.” I am not of Jewish heritage, but maybe my dress slacks’ shade of blue was too close to that of the Israeli flag.
Thus began a slew of questions, including “Where are you from, white man?” I said, “I’m a reporter,” but he took that to mean “Zionist.”
He warned those nearby: “Beware of the Zionist! Beware!”
He took a video and posted it to TikTok, where he has more than 110,000 followers. One of my roommates found the video when scrolling through the app.
Harassment is this guy’s bit, and there are enough people interested in this kind of entertainment to fill Beaver Stadium for a Penn State football game.
As I wrote in my report:
He told me he was “with the H-Team, the people who start with ‘H.’”
Another man nearby pointed to my nose and asked if I was Jewish. . . . A third asked me if I was Jewish and said “mazel tov” and “l’chaim.”
These were not the only comments. As I was walking back to my apartment, a man in a car stopped at a red light pointed at me and shouted, “F*** you!” from his open window. As the light turned green, he wished the same for my mother and father. What appeared to be his wife and kids were in the car.
“Young man,” said a man walking by, “don’t pay him no mind.”
My experience was mild compared to others’. Olivia Reingold, a reporter for the Free Press, was harassed while covering a similar protest in New York City. Protesters surrounded her, grabbed her notebook, and stomped on the pages. You can read her report here. One of her last paragraphs sums up my thoughts:
The protesters have a right to march. They have a right to scream vile things—and we have a right to watch, to listen, and to report on what they’re saying. That’s the deal you make when you host a rally on a public sidewalk in America or take over the quad of a public university.