Pro-Palestinian protesters block Seattle freeway for several hours

Pro-Palestinian protesters block Seattle freeway for several hours

AP

Protesters calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war blocked northbound traffic on Interstate 5 in Seattle for several hours Saturday.

Additional demonstrators on a nearby overpass cheered in support of the blockade, which began around 1:15 p.m., the Seattle Times reported. The state transportation department said on the social media platform X that traffic at one point was backed up more than 6 miles (9.7 kilometers), and the agency asked drivers to use alternate routes.

Demonstrators chanted “Free, free Palestine” and “Hey hey, ho ho, the occupation has got to go.”

Seattle police posted on social media at 3:40 p.m. that officers gave a dispersal order, though protesters disputed receiving any such orders. Stormy weather, including hail, moved through the area, and protesters left the freeway around 4:45 p.m., according to the Times.

Trooper Rick Johnson with the Washington State Patrol said via X that while people had abandoned the freeway, 12 vehicles were left behind. He said the roadway would reopen when they were towed.

REPORT: Biden Justice Dept ordered stop investigating po-Hamas/antisemitic activities

Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz

A report by the Washington Free Beacon claims that the US Justice Department issued a “stand-down order”, telling federal law enforcement and US attorneys to stop investigating “incitement, violence, and vandalism” committed by Hamas supporters who hold US visas.

A complaint was filed by the America First Legal Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy group, accusing the Biden administration of “turning a blind eye to the massive uptick in violence against Jews across America in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel”

“It appears that concerns regarding the potential electoral consequences of protecting Jewish Americans and enforcing American anti-terrorism laws and/or sympathy for Hamas’s aims are inappropriately biasing the Department’s decision-making,” America First wrote in the complaint.

The law requires that foreigners on F-1 student visas who support Hamas and terrorism should be deported. Naturalized citizens who support Hamas and terrorism should be denaturalized and deported as well. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits universities from encouraging, facilitating, or funding anti-Semitic professors and pressure groups. 

The America First investigation is trying to determine why the Biden Justice Department is not enforcing the law.

“The images from America’s colleges and universities over the past month are horrifying,”  Ian Prior, America First Legal Senior Advisor said. “As Hamas wages a brutal and inhumane terrorist campaign with the goal of wiping out Israel, the radicalization of America’s higher education system has shown itself to be a bastion of anti-semitic wokeness, with students demonstrating in support of Hamas’s human atrocities. The Biden Department of Education has been quick to move mountains to suppress parents speaking out against public school curriculum, but is seemingly nowhere to be found when it comes to enforcing civil rights laws and protecting Jewish students from threats, harassment, and intimidation from their radicalized classmates on campuses throughout the country,“ said Ian Prior.

“This silence is purposeful,” Reed Rubinstein, America First Legal’s senior counselor and director of oversight and investigations, told the Free Beacon. “[It is the product of] leftist anti-Israel ideologues in the bureaucracy and, in part, White House political concerns that protecting American Jews will suppress Democrat voter turnout among the pro-Hamas community.”