Biden administration refuses to meet Muslim Americans publicly critical of Gaza policy: Report
The administration of US President Joe Biden refuses to meet Muslim Americans who are outspoken critics of Washington’s policy regarding Israel’s ongoing war on the besieged Gaza Strip, according to a report.
Citing several unnamed sources, the UK-based news website Middle East Eye said Biden did not include Muslim Americans who have been publicly critical of the White House’s stance toward Israel’s brutal war on the inhabitants of the impoverished enclave.
The meeting with Muslim Americans was part of Washington’s outreach to Arab and Muslim American advocates, they said, adding that Washington focused on projecting concern rather than taking action.
Hours before the meeting between the US president and a group of Muslim Americans, a number of activists had called on a group of advocates to boycott the meeting in an attempt to make it clear that the Muslim community would not accept the White House’s excuses for its unwavering support for the Israeli war on Gaza, said one of the sources, who is in the State Department.
“There was no purpose for this meeting. The Biden Administration also refused to speak to anyone that publicly disagreed or criticized them,” the source said.
As relentless airstrikes and missile attacks by the Tel Aviv regime claim more lives, including children, the United States has remained almost silent over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the killing of civilians around the clock there.
On Sunday, the US submitted a draft UN Security Council resolution on Israel’s onslaught in Gaza without any mention of a ceasefire in it. The US-drafted resolution condemned the Hamas resistance group’s Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, urged the release of war prisoners, and supported Israel’s “right to defend itself.” However, it did not stipulate a call for a ceasefire.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the group that met Biden included Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison; Wa’el Alzayat, of the Muslim political advocacy group Emgage; Imam Mohamed Magid, executive religious director of All Dulles Area Muslim Society Center in Virginia; Rami Nashashibi, a Palestinian-American and director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network; and Suzanne Barakat, a professor of family medicine at the University of California.
“Also, if the Biden administration refused to meet with anyone that disagreed with them publicly or criticized their policies, these five should have declined on the basis of not supporting censorship or suppressing democracy,” said the source in the State Department.
Biden and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met with groups of American Muslims on Thursday and Tuesday respectively. However, Muslim Americans stress that the Biden administration seemed focused on constructing an image of concern rather than taking action.
“While Blinken appeared empathetic to our concerns, that means very little to me at a time when innocent lives are literally at stake,” said a source familiar with the meeting with Blinken.
“We need action, not words. We don’t need more aid right now, we need Israel to stop killing and blockading Palestinians, we need an end to US complicity in allowing Israel to do so, and most importantly we need accountability, especially at a time when Biden himself denied Palestinian deaths and shrugged them off as the ‘cost of war’,” the source added.
In response to a surprise attack by the Palestinian Hamas resistance group against Israel on October 7, Israel launched a full-scale war on the impoverished and densely-populated Gaza Strip, where shortages of food, water, and medicine threaten the lives of Gazans and hospitals are overwhelmed amid incessant Israeli bombings.
The ceaseless airstrikes, missile attacks and shelling on Gaza have so far killed 7,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 20,500 others.
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