President Biden said the pro-Palestinian protesters who interrupted his speech have a point, adding that more care has to get into Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Biden, while talking about the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday in North Carolina, was interrupted by a protester yelling, “What about the health care in Gaza?”
Biden stopped his address and responded, “Everybody deserves health care.”
A lengthy interruption continued, with protesters yelling, “Hospitals in Gaza are being bombed.”
Several seconds later, the president said to “be patient with them,” referring to the protesters. The protesters were escorted out of the venue as they continued to shout “cease-fire now.”
“They have a point, we need to get a lot more care into Gaza,” the president said.
Biden’s comment was met with applause and cheers from the crowd. He then continued his remarks without another interruption.
The White House has been under pressure from the left to take a tougher stance with Israel over its bombardment of Gaza.
Relations between the Biden administration and Israel’s government have become more tense with this week’s decision by the U.S. to abstain from a vote of the U.N. Security Council calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. The measure passed, leading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel a high-level delegation meant to travel to Washington this week.
Biden and White House officials have warned that Israel’s plans for a ground invasion into Rafah, the southern city where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering, would create a humanitarian disaster.
The president has been met with protesters across the country since the war in Gaza began, with some interrupting him in similar speeches.
He was heckled during a speech on reproductive right in Manassas, Va., in January, when a protester carrying a Palestinian flag shouted, “How many kids have been killed?”
He was also met with protesters calling for a cease-fire in Gaza in South Carolina earlier that month.
The president has encountered protests in venues or on the streets during nearly every trip he has made since the war in the Middle East over his pro-Israel stance in its response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that killed more than 1,100 Israelis.