WASHINGTON – Seven months after the start of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, Muslim and Arab American leaders say their channels of communication with the President Joe BidenThe White House has largely collapsed, leaving the administration without a politically valuable chorus of support for its significant shift in conflict this week.
Biden’s announcement that he suspended a shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel and would not assist in a ground invasion of Rafah was a radical shift in U.S. policy that Arab-American and Muslim leaders have been demanding for months. But those who wanted it most had long considered the administration complicit in a war that Gaza authorities said killed more than 34,000 people, arguing that it was essentially too little, too late.
“The president’s announcement is extremely late and woefully insufficient,” said Abbas Alawieh, one of the leaders of a protest and vote movement against Biden that began in Michigan this year. “He needs to speak out against this war. Period. That would be significant.”
Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times
Biden’s White House aides engaged in considerable effort early in the Democratic primary season, when the movement to cast protest votes in early states emerged as a surprising political headache. A group of high-level advisers traveled to Dearborn, Michigan, and Chicago to demonstrate their interest in listening, but Arab-American leaders told them that without a major change in U.S. policy — such as support for a permanent cease-fire – there would be no need to continue talking.
In general, prominent Muslim and Arab Americans have now concluded that they are irrevocably at odds with the Biden administration over its foreign policy, according to interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the talks. And many of them say they’re tired of being told they should vote for Biden simply because former President Donald Trump would be worse.
“I told them frankly, ‘Don’t waste any more of your time unless you have something substantial. This is a waste of time,’” Osama Siblani, editor of The Arab American News, an influential newspaper in Dearborn, said of White House officials.
The inability to maintain useful lines of communication with groups that represent a significant, albeit small, bloc of Democratic voters could pose a significant problem for Biden’s re-election, given that the race will likely be determined by narrow margins in some key battleground states. The protest effort against Biden garnered double-digit support in some states during the Democratic primaries, although Biden aides believe voters will ultimately see Trump as the greater threat, and that issues such as abortion, democracy and the economy will have precedence over Gaza.
Biden has ensured that the White House, and not his re-election campaign, deals with raising awareness among Arab and Muslim communities angered by the war in Gaza, as their dispute centers on politics and not electoral politics. While the White House has designated one official, Mazen Basrawi, as its “liaison to American Muslim communities,” no one on Biden’s reelection campaign has a similar responsibility. Biden campaign aides say they are leaving that outreach to the White House for now, at the request of community leaders.
Basrawi was among officials in White House delegations who met with Arab-American and Muslim leaders this year in Dearborn and Chicago. The February meeting in Dearborn occurred only after the city’s mayor made a public show of refusal to meet with campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
At the Dearborn meeting, in which a senior White House foreign policy adviser expressed regret over the administration’s response to the war in Gaza, Basrawi apologized for the Biden administration’s lack of engagement with Dearborn officials.
“Just to let everyone know, we have been engaged with the Arab community, particularly the Palestinian community and the Muslim community in general, on many of these issues since October,” Basrawi told the group, according to an audio recording of the meeting. reviewed by The New York Times. “To the extent that I failed to include all of you in my engagement, that is on me. You know, this is a nationally important community.
In an interview on Thursday, Basrawi said he was speaking to more officials now than before the war in Gaza began.
“My circle of contacts and regular conversations with leaders from the Muslim and Arab communities has grown since October 7 to include more leaders at the local level,” he said.
The White House continues to reach out to Muslim and Arab-American groups who remain willing to get involved, especially elected Democratic officials. White House officials met with a group of Lebanese-Americans last month in Houston. And the White House Office of Public Engagement maintains an email list updating American Muslim leaders about the administration’s work in Israel and Gaza.
“We recognize that this is a painful time for many communities and that people have strong personal opinions,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates. “That is why the president remains deeply committed to securing a hostage agreement that would result in an immediate and sustained ceasefire.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning to meet with several prominent Arab American groups, according to three people familiar with the meeting who insisted on anonymity to discuss private planning. But the event was postponed, at a time when Blinken’s intense travel schedule has repeatedly taken him out of the country.
There are limits to the people and groups the Biden White House will engage with over the Gaza conflict. The administration rebuffed and cut communication with the Council on American-Islamic Relations in December after its executive director said he was “happy to see” the Palestinians leave Gaza on October 7. context.)
A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said the administration would engage with people who were critical of Biden’s handling of the conflict but cut ties with those who praised the Hamas attack on September 7. October, made anti-Semitic statements or questioned Israel’s attitude. right to exist.
As the pro-Palestinian movement has spread beyond the Arab-American and Muslim communities to young people and progressives, those with direct or ancestral ties to the region have tended to have greater influence in criticizing Biden and the outreach effort. of the White House.
Wa’el Alzayat, chief executive of Emgage, a group closely linked to the Biden administration that mobilizes Muslim voters, declined an invitation to attend an iftar dinner at the White House last month.
“We did not take the opportunity to meet with the president lightly,” Alzayat said. “But at some point, as organizations that voted largely Democratic, by expecting us to demonstrate these things and not comply with policy, they are actually burning us.”
He called Biden’s threat to cut arms shipments “promising and important” and the result of pressure from anti-war leaders, but said it “may be too late for Rafah” as Israeli tanks and warplanes continue to bomb the city.
Some Arab-Americans who have long participated in high-level Democratic politics have expressed feelings of deep alienation.
“I have never felt as excluded as I do now,” said James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute in Washington and a member of the Democratic National Committee since 1993. “And it’s not just me. It’s leadership across the country.”
Zogby’s most recent letter to the White House, he said, went unanswered for three months, along with countless texts and phone calls.
If some voters break with Biden over Gaza, they are more likely to stay home or opt for a third party than vote for Trump. The former president has a long history of using anti-Muslim language and banned travel from several predominantly Muslim countries while in office. On Thursday, he voiced support for the Rafah invasion, saying Israel had to “get the job done.”
Democratic officials who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and who have engaged in talks with the White House are very careful about how they publicly characterize those discussions, given the anger among Muslim and Arab American voters.
Two mayors with whom White House officials said they spoke about the Gaza conflict, Abdullah Hammoud of Dearborn and André Sayegh of Paterson, New Jersey, declined to be interviewed.
Among Democrats who support Israel’s continued offensive in Gaza, Biden’s threat to suspend weapons was met with anger and concern. Politically, some fear Biden could lose support among American Jews and moderates. Mark Mellman, the founder of the Democratic Majority for Israel, said in a statement that it was “dangerous” to weaken the US-Israel alliance.
Although polls have shown that Gaza is not an important issue for most voters, including young people, some Democrats who support Biden fear that his policy toward Israel has alienated activists who could help his campaign on the ground.
“The people who are going to be knocking on doors and using social media and organizing the rallies, many of them care deeply about the war,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a Biden campaign surrogate. “It’s more than just voting. It’s how do we inspire our core group of organizers and activists to be fully out there in the fall?”
c.2024 The New York Times Company
