Biden met with a group of Muslims
The last time Biden met with a group of Muslim leaders was in Gaza: “We need to get out there and talk with the White House”
The last time Biden met with a group of Muslim leaders was at the White House in October, when he met with two Palestinian-American community organizers.
A group of people were at the meeting. But the emergency medicine physician walked out of the meeting before it was over. He told NPR he left out of respect for his fellow Palestinians and as a signal that he believes the White House needs to do more to end the war and to get humanitarian aid into the region.
During his stay in the United States, Ahmad returned to Gaza where he treated patients in a hospital that was rendered useless due to fighting.
“We’ve been on the ground, we’ve seen just how overcrowded Rafah is — just how little aid is getting in — and that any sort of military activity there would be catastrophic,” Ahmad said.
It was tough, I wanted to communicate that, but I also wanted to make it clear that what the White House has done is not enough.”
During the private meeting the White House did not comment on the discussions. Biden respects the right to peaceful protest, according to the press secretary. “We understand it’s a very painful time,” she told reporters.
Dr. Nahreen was also at the meeting. The medical director of aid group MedGlobal, who has been to Gaza twice since the war started, said she felt Biden was “somewhat dismissive” during the meeting when she showed photos of the suffering that she had witnessed.
“Maybe he didn’t mean it that way, but you’re the president of the United States, you cannot sit there and be this dismissive of individual pictures of people suffering that are being put in front of you and then tell us all, ‘Well, I’ve seen these before,'” she told NPR.
“Even if you have — that’s not the right response to a community of people that are hurting from what’s happening in Palestine and are trying to express to you their hurt and their pain and their frustration.”
She felt that the meeting was to manage the community, but she did not think that the president was listening to their concerns.
The White House had planned to invite some Muslim leaders to an iftar to mark Ramadan, but scaled those plans back when some people said they did not feel comfortable with the plans.
It wouldn’t make sense to break fast at the White House during the holiest of days of the month, given our policies that are causing a famine in Palestine, argued Wa’el Alzayat, who runs Emgage USA.
“The reality is we have not seen, in the last five months, the president take any responsibility for the fact that perhaps his inability to reign in (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Nashashibi said that Netanyahu contributed to the loss of life.
Source: Biden met with a small group of Muslims yesterday. This doctor walked out
Dialogue with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Thursday During a Tribute to President Biden during the October 8 Reionization of Gaza
Biden routinely encounters protesters upset with his support for Israel’s war in Gaza — even during a star-studded fundraiser in New York City last month. Democratic voters in a number of states organized protest votes during the primaries to register their disapproval.
“We have said there have been too many civilians killed. We have talked about the infrastructure that has been destroyed. We have been very clear about our concerns and objections over some obstacles that have been put in the way of getting additional humanitarian assistance in,” John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said on Wednesday.
The president is evidently coming under pressure even from within his own family. Mr. Biden told Muslims at the White House that his wife, the first lady, had told him not to do it.
The president has resisted efforts to influence Israel’s approach to the war. Mr. Biden said after Hamas killed 1,200 people and took hundreds of hostages in October that his support for Israel was “rock solid and unwavering.” He has remained faithful to his vow despite disagreeing with what he sees as the excesses of the military operation.
During an evidently tense 30-minute call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Biden went further than ever before in pressing for change in the military operation that has inflamed many Americans and others around the world. The White House did not directly say the president would stop arms supplies or impose conditions for their use, as some Democrats have wanted him to do.
President Biden threatened on Thursday to condition future support for Israel on how it addresses his concerns about civilian casualties and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, prompting Israel to commit to permitting more food and other supplies into the besieged enclave in hopes of placating him.
“The president made clear that absent changes in the protection of civilians on the ground, absent changes to the volume of humanitarian assistance getting in, absent any movement on a cease-fire that will allow hostages to get out and more aid to get in — absent a calming-down — that he will have to reconsider his own policy choices with respect to Gaza,” Kirby said.
In the middle of the night, Israel made its first gesture to Mr. Biden. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council said Israel had agreed to use the Ashdod port to direct aid into Gaza, to open the Erez crossing into northern Gaza for the first time since the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, and to significantly increase deliveries from Jordan.
If we lose the reverence for human life, we could be indistinguishable from those we confront. Despite important steps that Israel has taken to allow assistance into Gaza, the results on the ground are woefully insufficient.
The Biden administration was prepared to make a price if Israel persisted in rebuffing its counsel. He said that there will be changes in policy if we don’t see the changes they need to see.
The president’s aides have argued that a lot of the weapons sent to Israel are air defense missiles. But even some of Mr. Biden’s close Democratic allies have increasingly come around to the view that Washington should exercise more control over the weaponry, including Senator Chris Coons, a fellow Democrat from Delaware and confidant of the president.
I think we are at the point where Mr. Netanyahu would order the military to bomb the southern Gaza city of Rafah and send a battalion to go after Hamas, according to Mr. Coons.
Mr. Netanyahu did not immediately release a description of his call with Mr. Biden, but in other comments on Thursday he appeared unbowed. In a meeting with visiting Republican lawmakers, the prime minister pushed back against Mr. Biden’s insistence on a two state solution to the Palestinian conflict.
“There is a contrary move, an attempt to force, ram down our throats a Palestinian state, which will be another terror haven, another launching ground for an attempt, as was the Hamas state in Gaza,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “That is opposed by Israelis, overwhelmingly.”
In a separate video statement, he focused on the threat he sees from Iran. “For years Iran has been acting against us, both directly and though its proxies, and therefore Israel is acting against Iran and its proxies, in both defensive and offensive operations,” he said, referring to an Israeli airstrike that killed seven Iranian military officers in Syria this week.
“We will know how to defend ourselves,” he added, “and we will operate according to the simple principle by which those who attack us or plan to attack us — we will attack them.”
We want to see some real changes on the Israeli side. And if we don’t see changes from their side, there will have to be changes from our side,” Kirby told reporters.
The seven aid workers, who were killed in Gaza, were employed by the charity World Central Kitchen. Mr. Biden called himself “outraged and heartbroken” over the incident and made a point of calling Mr. Andrés to express his condolences.
The seven were killed by three successive strikes on three cars traveling along a road in Gaza. The episode was called a tragic mistake by officials in Israel, but they haven’t explained how it happened. The cars were marked with World Central Kitchen logos, although the attack took place at night. Mr.Andrés said that his organization kept in contact with Israeli officials about travel plans.
The Biden administration official who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal conversations said that the Israelis had not given any initial findings from their investigations as of Thursday morning.
Mr. Biden’s shift on Thursday came as he absorbed withering criticism from Democrats. Among those speaking out have been former colleagues in the administration he served as vice president under President Barack Obama, who assailed him for voicing shock without taking action against Mr. Netanyahu, known by the nickname Bibi.
“The U.S. government is still supplying 2 thousand pound bombs and ammunition to support Israel’s policy,” Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama, wrote on social media on Wednesday. “Until there are substantive consequences, this outrage does nothing. He doesn’t pay much attention to what the U.S. says.
“He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” the White House said in a statement after the call.
Israel did not provide an immediate response to the White House’s readout of the conversation, but on Wednesday, an Israeli official blamed the impasse in the cease-fire talks on the U.S. decision to allow a U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolution to pass on March 25.
The U.S. move has hurt the talks because Hamas is more willing to negotiate, the official told the U.S. media. He spoke on a condition that he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The vote did not indicate a change in policy according to the National Security Council, and they were confused by Israel’s outrage.
Negotiators had been working toward a temporary cease-fire that would take effect during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in exchange for the release of hostages. The end of the month is just a week away.
