A Meeting of the White House to Address the Persistence of the Gaza War and the Rejection of Humanitarian Aid During the First Day of the War
Alzayat and others tried to get Biden to meet the White House instead of a dinner but he still turned them down. A group of Muslims who work for the president gathered at his house for an iftar.
Dr. Thaer Ahmad was 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.
Ahmad returned to the United States from Gaza, where he had been treating patients in a hospital which became inoperable due to fighting.
“We’ve been on the ground in Rafah, and have seen just how overcrowded it is, and how little aid is getting in, so we think military activity there would be catastrophic,” Ahmad said.
I wanted to communicate the message, but I also wanted to make it clear that what the White House has done is not enough.
The discussions were not comment on by the White House. 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 at the meeting. The medical director of MedGlobal, who has been to Gaza twice since the war started, said that Biden was “more interested in furthering his political career” than seeing the suffering she had witnessed.
“Maybe he didn’t mean it that way, but you are the president of the United States, you can’t be this condescending towards individual pictures of people that are suffering and not tell us that you have seen them before.”
“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 said the meeting was a way to manage the community and that the President was not sympathetic to their concerns.
The White House scaled back their plan to invite Muslim leaders to an iftar because people said they were not comfortable with it.
“During this holiest month of the year, it would not be appropriate to break fast at the White House, given that our policies have been responsible for a famine in Palestine,” said Wa’el Alzayat, who runs Emgage USA.
The president doesn’t take responsibility for his inability to reign in Benjamin because the reality is that he has not seen it yet. Netanyahu much earlier has contributed to some of the catastrophic loss of life,” Nashashibi said.
The First Gesturies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Israeli Intervention During the September 11th Gazan Retaining Attack
Biden has had to face protesters angry about his support for Israel during a charity event in New York City. Democratic voters in a number of states organize protest votes to register their disapproval during the primary elections.
There have been a lot of civilians killed. The civilian infrastructure 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 getting pressure from within his own family. At the White House on Tuesday evening, Mr. Biden told Muslim community leaders that the first lady had told him to stop.
When Mr. Biden complained that Israel hadn’t done enough to curb the killings of civilians he was referring to the World Central Kitchen workers, who were killed in Israel. In the aftermath of the incident, Mr. Biden expressed his distress by calling the celebrity chef who founded World Central Kitchen, JoséAndrés, to express his sympathies.
During a 30-minute call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Biden went further than ever in pressing for change in the military operation.
The two leaders had a discussion about public Iranian threats against Israel. President Biden said that the United States supports Israel in the face of those threats.
John F. Kirby said the president wants to see tangible actions to reduce violence and increase access for humanitarian aid to Gaza. He said the White House expects Israel to make announcements of specific changes within hours or days.
By the middle of the night in Jerusalem, Israel made its first gestures 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 that reverence for human life, we risk becoming indistinguishable from those we confront,” Mr. Blinken said during a stop at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Despite important steps that Israel has taken to allow assistance into Gaza, the results on the ground are woefully insufficient and unacceptable.
The secretary of state made clear that the Biden administration was now ready to exact a price if Israel continued to rebuff its counsel. There will be changes in policy if we don’t see the changes we need to see.
But with rising agitation on the political left, particularly in electoral swing states like Michigan, even some of Mr. Biden’s closest Democratic allies are coming 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’re at that point,” Mr. Coons said on CNN on Thursday morning, adding that if Mr. Netanyahu were to order the Israeli military into the southern Gaza city of Rafah in force and “drop thousand-pound bombs and send in a battalion to go after Hamas and make no provision for civilians or for humanitarian aid, that I would vote to condition aid to Israel.”
The White House statement noted that Mr. Biden stood by Israel against Iran during his Thursday call with Mr. Netanyahu, which in addition to Mr. Blinken included Vice President Kamala Harris and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser.
“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 through its proxies, and therefore Israel is acting against Iran and its proxies, in both defensive and offensive operations,” Mr. Netanyahu said, referring to an Israeli airstrike that killed seven Iranian military officers in Syria this week.
He said that he would know how to defend himself, and they would use the principle of attacking those who were planning to attack them.
The Oasis of the World Central Kitchen: Israel’s Promised Action on Warfare and the Implications for the U.N. Security Council
Kirby did not say what the consequences would be if those actions don’t come to fruition or if there will be a stop to military aid to Israel.
The World Central Kitchen, founded by the celebrity chef Jose Andrés, was the group that sent seven aid workers to Gaza. Mr. Biden phoned Mr. Andrés to express his sympathies and let him know that he was upset.
The seven were killed by a series of strikes on their cars. Israeli officials have said that the episode is a tragic mistake due to misidentification of vehicles, but have not explained how it happened. The cars had World Central Kitchen logos on them. He said that his organization kept in touch with Israeli officials.
As of Thursday morning, the Israelis had not yet communicated any initial findings of their promised investigation into the strikes to the United States, according to a senior Biden administration official who insisted on anonymity to detail internal conversations.
Mr. Biden was criticized by Democrats as he shifted on Thursday. 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.
Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama, wrote on social media that the U.S. government is still giving 2 thousand pound bombs and weapons to Israel. This outrage does nothing unless there are consequences. Bibi doesn’t care about what the U.S. does, its about what the US 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 move by the U.S. hurt the negotiation, because Hamas hardened its positions, according to the official. He is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
John Kirby said that the administration was “perplexed” by Israel’s apparent outrage and that the vote did not mean a policy shift.
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 holy month is a week away.