Antiwar activist says Republican lawmaker knocked her phone from hand during protest

A GOP congressman appears to slap the phone out of an antiwar protester’s hand while in the US Capitol, footage of the incident reveals.

Representative Mike Ezell of Mississippi was walking through a US Capitol building on Tuesday as protesters from the feminist antiwar organisation Code Pink approached him about the Israel-Hamas war, according to footage posted on X.

The video shows two Code Pink members, Medea Benjamin and Sumer Mobarak, walking with Mr Ezell. The video, filmed by Ms Mobarak, shows Ms Benjamin asking Mr Ezell about the war. The video then cuts to Ms Benjamin and Ms Mobarak walking behind the congressman.

“You want the killing of my people?” asked Ms Mobarak, who is Palestinian-American.

Mr Ezell turns around to say, “Shut up, back it off.” He then appears to knock the phone out of Ms Mobarak’s hand.

Ms Benjamin told The Independent the incident came as a shock.

“This has never happened before,” she said. “And we’ve been doing this for six months.”

“The fact that Sumer is a Palestinian woman who wears a head covering makes us wonder,” Ms Benjamin continued. “Was this a race issue as well?”

When The Independent asked Mr Ezell for his reaction to the incident, he said he would continue to stand by Israel in their war with Hamas.

“These China-backed protesters want to harass and intimidate members of Congress into ending our support for Israel and our opposition to Hamas terrorists,” Mr Ezell said. “I will not be harassed or intimidated by the Chinese Communist Party, Hamas, or their supporters, and I will continue standing with our Israeli allies against terrorism.”

The pair later confronted Mr Ezell inside a congressional hearing.

“You are disgusting, racist,” Ms Mobarak told him. Video footage showed that he did not respond.

Ms Benjamin said she hopes the Kentucky representative apologises to Ms Mobarak. “That would be the minimum,” she said.

The US Capitol Police told The Independent they are “looking into the matter”. Meanwhile, Ms Benjamin told The Independent that the Capitol Police took Ms Mobarak’s report “very seriously”.

Ms Benjamin and Ms Mobarak are among the many antiwar activists protesting the Israel-Hamas war. The Palestinian health ministry says Israel’s continued assault on Gaza has killed almost 35,000 people, most of whom were women and children. The United Nations also says that restrictions on humanitarian aid have created a “man-made famine”, with half the 2.3 million strong population of the strip at catastrophic levels of hunger.

The attacks on Gaza come after 7 October, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 people hostage.