Washington — Last year, President Biden didn’t even say a word during the White House’s Ramadan celebration before someone shouted “we love you.” Hundreds of Muslims were present to mark the end of the holy month which requires fasting from sunrise to sunset.
There are no such joyful scenes during this Ramadan. While many Muslim Americans are outraged at Mr. Biden’s support for Israel’s siege of Gaza, the White House opted to host a smaller iftar dinner on Tuesday evening. The only guests at the dinner were people who work for his administration.
“We’re just in a different world,” said Wa’el Alzayat, who heads Emgage, a Muslim advocacy organization. “It’s completely surreal. And it’s sad.”
Alzayat attended last year’s event, but declined an invitation to break his fast with Mr. Biden this year, saying: “It is inappropriate to hold such a celebration when there is a famine in Gaza.
After pushback from Alzayat and others, he said the White House adjusted its plans Monday, telling community leaders it wanted to hold a meeting focused on administration policy. Alzayat always said no, believing that one day was not enough to prepare for an opportunity to influence Mr. Biden’s mind on the conflict.
“I don’t think the format will lend itself to serious political debate,” he said Tuesday afternoon.
In a statement to CBS News, a White House official said Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris held a meeting with Muslim leaders and were joined by senior administration officials.
Mr. Biden and Harris “understand that this is a deeply painful moment for many members of the Muslim and Arab communities,” the statement said. “President Biden has made it clear that he mourns the loss of all innocent lives in this conflict. The president also expressed his commitment to continue working toward an immediate ceasefire as part of a deal to free the hostages and significantly increase humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a Chicago-based Palestinian-American emergency physician who recently visited Gaza, attended the meeting.
He told CBS News that Mr Biden spoke first, making “very vague comments”.
Ahmad said he then spoke and then left in protest after handing the president a letter he said was written by an 8-year-old orphan named Hadeel who is now sheltering in the town of Rafah, south of Gaza. He told CNN he was disappointed to be the only Palestinian invited to the White House.
Democratic sources told CBS News that a number of Arab-Americans who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 were disappointed they were not invited to the meeting and suspect they were excluded because of their recent posts on social media about the president’s war policy between Israel and Hamas.
It is unclear how exactly the White House selected the participants.
Political clouds thicken
The refusal to break bread – or even share a room – with the president showed how relations between Mr Biden and the American Muslim community have fractured in the six months since the latest conflict between them began. Israel and Hamas.
When the Democratic president took office three years ago, many Muslim leaders were eager to turn the page on Donald Trump’s intolerance, including his campaign promise to implement a “total and complete shutdown of entry of Muslims into the United States.
But now Democrats fear that Mr. Biden’s speech loss of support among MuslimsMs. could help pave the way for her Republican predecessor to return to the White House. This year’s elections will likely hinge on a handful of battleground states, including Michigan, which has a large Muslim population.
“There are real differences between the two,” Alzayat said. “But emotionally, there may be no difference for some people. And that’s the danger.”
He added: “It’s not enough to tell people that Donald Trump is going to be worse.”
Several Muslim leaders attended Tuesday’s meeting. The White House did not want to name them.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “community leaders have expressed a preference” for a “task force meeting,” which she described as an opportunity “to get their feedback.”
Regarding the iftar, Jean-Pierre said that Mr. Biden “will continue his tradition of honoring the Muslim community during Ramadan.”
No journalists were allowed to film either the iftar or the meeting with community leaders, a difference from previous years. Neither was on the president’s public schedule. Some people who had attended events in previous years, such as Dearborn, Michigan Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, were not invited.
Outside the White House, activists gathered in the rain for their own iftar Tuesday evening in Lafayette Park. Organizers handed out dates, a traditional Ramadan food, so people could break their fast at sunset.
José Luis Magana / AP
The boycott of Mr. Biden’s invitation is reminiscent of a trip White House officials took to Detroit earlier this year. They faced a frosty reception from Muslim-American community leaders in the swing state, where more than 100,000 Democratic primary voters cast ballots in protest against the “uncommitted” in an organized demonstration of disapproval of Mr. Biden’s approach to war.
A similar campaign was underway in Wisconsin, another political battleground. Organizers encouraged residents to vote “without instruction,” the equivalent of “without commitment,” in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
The fighting began on October 7, when Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis in a surprise attack. In response, Israel killed approximately 33,000 Palestinians. The figure comes from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. It is unclear how many were fighters, whom Israel accuses of operating in civilian areas, but the ministry said two-thirds of the dead were women and children.
The Biden administration has continued to approve arms sales to Israel, even as the president urges Israeli leaders to be more careful about civilian deaths and encourages them to authorize more humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he encourages other Muslim leaders to decline invitations to the White House if they receive them.
The message, he said, should be: “Unless he calls for a ceasefire, there will be no meeting with him or his representatives.”
“I believe the president is the only person in the world who can stop this,” Awad said. “He can pick up the phone and literally say to Benjamin Netanyahu: no more guns, arrest him, and Benjamin Netanyahu will have no choice but to do it.”
Awad has previously clashed with the White House over his comments on the October 7 Hamas attack. Gaza has spent years under an effective blockade by Israel – with help from Egypt – and Awad said he was “happy to see people breaking the siege” so they could “enter freely into their lands where they were not allowed to enter.”
After the comments were released by a Middle East research organization founded by Israeli analysts, the White House issued a statement condemning “these shocking anti-Semitic statements in the strongest possible terms.”
Awad called it a “manufactured controversy” and said he criticized the targeting of Israeli citizens in his same speech.
