Seven months into Israel’s war in Gaza, Muslim and Arab American leaders say their channels of communication with President Biden’s White House have largely broken down, leaving the administration this week without a politically valuable chorus of support for his significant policy shift on the conflict have.
Mr. Biden’s announcement that he had stopped a shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel and would not help with a ground invasion of Rafah was a sea change in U.S. policy that Arab American and Muslim leaders have been demanding for months. But those who have wanted it most have long ago labeled the government complicit in a war that Gaza officials say has left more than 34,000 people dead, arguing it is essentially over little and too late.
“The president’s announcement is extremely overdue and woefully inadequate,” said Abbas Alawieh, one of the leaders of a protest voter movement against Mr. Biden that began in Michigan this year. “He must speak out against this war. Period. That would be significant.”
Mr. Biden’s White House advisers became deeply involved early in the Democratic primary season, when the movement to cast protest votes in early states emerged as a surprising political problem. A cadre of senior aides traveled to Dearborn, Michigan, and Chicago to demonstrate their interest in listening, but Arab American leaders told them that would happen without a meaningful change in U.S. policy – such as support for a permanent ceasefire There was no reason to continue talking.
By and large, prominent Muslim and Arab Americans have now concluded that they are irrevocably at odds with the Biden administration’s foreign policy, according to interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the discussions. And many of them say they are tired of hearing that they should vote for Mr. Biden just because former President Donald J. Trump would be worse off.
“I told them bluntly, ‘Don’t waste your time anymore unless you have something essential.’ “This is a waste of time,” Osama Siblani, publisher 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 vocal, if small, bloc of Democratic voters could pose a significant problem for Mr. Biden’s re-election, with the contest likely to be decided by just a few battleground states. Protest efforts against Mr. Biden drew double-digit support in some states during the Democratic primaries, although Biden advisers believe voters will ultimately see Mr. Trump as the greater threat and that issues such as abortion, democracy and the economy will take precedence over Gaza .
Mr Biden has ensured that the White House, rather than his re-election campaign, will focus on reaching out to Arab and Muslim communities angered by the war in Gaza, as their dispute is about policy rather than electoral politics. While the White House has appointed one official, Mazen Basrawi, as its “liaison to Muslim communities in the US,” no one in Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign has a similar responsibility. Mr. Biden’s campaign aides say they are leaving that outreach to the White House for now, at the request of community leaders.
Mr. Basrawi was among officials from White House delegations that met with Arab American and Muslim leaders in Dearborn and Chicago this year. The February meeting in Dearborn came only after the city’s mayor publicly demonstrated that he had refused to meet with campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
At the meeting in Dearborn, where a senior White House foreign policy adviser expressed regret over the administration’s response to the war in Gaza, Mr. Basrawi apologized for the Biden administration’s lack of engagement with Dearborn officials.
“Just so you all know, we have been working with the Arab community, particularly the Palestinian community, and the Muslim community in general on many of these issues since October,” Mr. Basrawi told the group, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by the New York Times reviewed. “The failure to include all of you in my engagement is my fault. You know, this is an important community across the country.”
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Basrawi said he was speaking to more officials now than before the war began in Gaza.
“My circle of contacts and regular conversations with leaders of 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 engage, particularly Democratic elected officials. White House officials met with a group of Lebanese Americans in Houston last month. And the White House Office of Public Engagement maintains an email list updating Muslim American leaders on the administration’s work on Israel and Gaza.
“We recognize that this is a painful time for many communities and that people have strong personal views,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman. “That is why the President remains deeply committed to a hostage-taking deal that would lead to an immediate and lasting ceasefire.”
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken plans 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 has been delayed at a time when Mr. Blinken has had to leave the country repeatedly because of his busy travel schedule.
There are limits to the people and groups with whom Mr. Biden’s White House will talk about the Gaza conflict. The government refused and cut off communications with the Council on American-Islamic Relations in December after its executive director said that Palestinians in Gaza had “the right to self-defense” but Israel “as an occupying power” did not. (The group said the comments were taken out of context.)
A White House official granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy said the administration would work with people who criticize Mr. Biden’s handling of the conflict, but had cut ties with those who criticized the Hamas attack on October 7 praised, made anti-Semitic statements or questioned Israel’s right to exist.
As the pro-Palestinian movement has expanded beyond the Arab American and Muslim communities to include young people and progressives, those with direct or ancestral ties to the region have tended to have the greatest influence in criticizing Mr. Biden and the White House’s outreach efforts.
Wa’el Alzayat, the executive director of Emgage, a group with close ties to the Biden administration that mobilizes Muslim voters, declined an invitation to an iftar dinner at the White House last month.
“We do not take the opportunity to meet the president lightly,” Mr. Alzayat said. “But at some point, when organizations that largely voted for Democrats expect us to confront these things and not implement our policies, they actually burn us.”
He called Mr. Biden’s threat to cut off arms shipments “promising and important” and a 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 had access to high-level Democratic politics, expressed feelings of deep alienation.
“I’ve 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 that doesn’t just apply to me. It’s leadership across the country.”
Mr. Zogby’s most recent letter to the White House has remained unanswered for three months, as have numerous text messages and phone calls.
If some voters break with Mr. Biden over Gaza, they are more likely to stay home or choose a third party than vote for Mr. Trump. The former president has a long history of using anti-Muslim statements and banned travel from several predominantly Muslim countries during his time in office. On Thursday, he expressed support for the invasion of Rafah and said Israel must “do the job.”
Democratic officials who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and have had discussions with the White House are careful how they characterize those discussions publicly, given the anger among Muslim and Arab American voters.
Two mayors with whom White House officials said they had discussed the Gaza conflict, Abdullah Hammoud of Dearborn and André Sayegh of Paterson, New Jersey, declined to be interviewed.
Mr Biden’s threat to cease arms was met with anger and concern among Democrats who support Israel’s continued offensive in Gaza. Politically, some fear Mr. Biden could lose support from Jewish Americans and moderates. Mark Mellman, the founder of Democratic Majority for Israel, said in a statement that weakening the American-Israeli alliance is “dangerous.”
Although polls have shown that Gaza is not a top issue for most voters, including young people, some Democrats who support Mr. Biden fear that his Israel policy has alienated activists who might support his campaign locally.
“The people who are knocking on doors, using social media and setting up the rallies, many of them care deeply about the war,” said Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a Biden campaign surrogate. “It’s more than just the survey. “How can we inspire our core group of organizers and activists to be fully out there in the fall?”
Michael Gold contributed reporting.
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2024-05-10 14:35:22
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