Pro-Palestinian protesters accuse US top diplomat of war crimes, have hurled fake blood onto his motorcade
A group of far-left pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters have been camping out at US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s home for nearly a month in protest of the Biden administration’s continued support for Israel in the war against Hamas.
The group calls its effort “Occupy Blinken,” with roughly 100 people participating over the past several weeks, The New York Times and other outlets reported. Some of the far-left activists have been staying the night in tents, braving the cold, but at most times during the day, there are only a dozen people on site.
Signs at the encampment read, “Bloody Blinken lives here,” “Caution: War Criminal Inside” and “Secretary of genocide.”
In early January, the protesters splashed fake blood on Blinken’s motorcade.
Blinken has gotten the brunt of the far-left protests, but the activists have also targeted the homes of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in addition to repeatedly heckling US President Joe Biden at public appearances.
While being exceptionally supportive of the Israeli war effort in Gaza from the beginning, the Biden administration has taken some steps at odds with Jerusalem, most notably by sanctioning Israeli settlers who carried out acts of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Blinken himself has expressed dismay at the high number of Palestinian civilian casualties reported by the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry since the beginning of the war, saying the civilian toll has been “gut-wrenching” for him.
The war began after 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border from Gaza and slaughtered 1,200 people in southern Israel on October 7, most of them civilians murdered amid brutal atrocities, and abducted 253 to Gaza, where 132 still remain.
Israel declared war to destroy Hamas and return the hostages. The terror organization says that at least 27,238 Palestinians have been killed and 66,452 have been wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7. Those numbers, however, cannot be independently verified and are believed to include some 10,000 Hamas terrorists as well as Gazans killed by Palestinian misfires.
Blinken is expected to visit Israel on Saturday for the sixth time since the beginning of the war.
