Two women protesting President Joe Biden’s policies towards the Israel/Palestine conflict were escorted out of the White House Pride Celebration. The event took place on June 26 with an appearance from First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, and was briefly interrupted by a protest by two queer Jewish women who were invited to attend by the White House.
The protesters were Abby Stein, a trans educator and rabbi, and Lily Greenberg Call, a former White House staffer. Greenberg Call was appointed by the Biden Administration, but she publicly resigned in protest of the United States supplying Israel with American weapons and bombs.
Their experiences were documented in an essay they co-authored for Autostraddle. Stein was invited to the Pride event by the White House, which came as a surprise, as she recounted other queer and Jewish activists were blacklisted from attending official White House events due to their outspoken calls for a ceasefire. She brought Greenberg Call as her plus-one and, after Dr. Biden’s opening remarks, the two introduced themselves as queer Jews and began a chant protesting Palestine’s occupation and called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
Stein and Greenberg Call were promptly stopped by White House staff and were escorted from the property by the Secret Service. Once outside, they went live on Instagram to publicly share the response to their protest. They described the experience as surreal and dystopian.
The two considered the White House hosting a Pride event to be disingenuous, a “pink-washed” and “corporate” depiction of what Pride was while queer Palestinians are being slaughtered by Israel overseas. Stein and Greenberg recalled the Stonewall Riots and how Pride meant struggling and fighting for the right for queer people to exist, long before it became a celebration.
In many ways, Palestine’s liberation would require the same measures. To them, attending a White House event and remaining silent on its complicity in Israel’s war on Palestine would essentially be the same as being complicit themselves, writing, “There can be no queer liberation under occupation.”
