The president’s comment that he has “no confidence” in the civilian death toll in Gaza provided by Palestinians incensed community leaders.
By Hannah Allam and Michelle Boorstein, The Washington PostPresident Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the White House on Oct. 25, 2023, during Albanese's state visit.
One organizer said community concerns could be boiled down to a critical question: “Are we dealing with warmongers or are we dealing with peacemakers? Who are we dealing with?” “We mourn every innocent life lost. We can’t ignore the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace and have an opportunity,” Biden said then.
“Why are you sitting down with him without any agreement that he’s going to retract that statement and apologize?” said one community organizer involved in talks. “What seat at the table are you negotiating, the toilet seat?” The administration’s week of damage-control meetings with U.S. Arabs and Muslims began Monday at the State Department, where a small group of community representatives sat down with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“None of us want to return to the status quo, except bad actors who are profiting off of it,” the participant said. “And we said Hamas is not the only bad actor profiting off this, and we left it at that.” “They feel like they’re being censored and they feel like they’re being met with suspicion, they’re not trusted” in their jobs, said one person with direct knowledge of the meeting.
The attendees hadn’t expected a policy shift from the meeting, according to the accounts, but felt confident that their concerns would be conveyed to Biden, to be taken into consideration in his public remarks about Palestinians. Two days later, the president made the comments questioning the accuracy of Palestinian casualties at a time when Arabic-language TV channels were showing nonstop footage of lifeless, dust-covered children being pulled from the rubble after Israeli strikes.
Rescue workers search the rubble left by a strike in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, on Oct. 21, 2023. The most controversial meeting of the week came Thursday with the White House extending an invitation to five national Muslim figures who were picked by the White House in a process one person involved with the talks described as “a sh--show.”
One of the five invitees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment candidly about a sensitive issue involving the White House, said the decision to attend was one of the hardest dilemmas they had ever faced.A second Palestinian American, who had lost scores of relatives in the Gaza strikes and was publicly critical of the U.S. response, had been invited and then was disinvited, according to several advocates who were upset by what they interpreted as a snub.
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