A Palestinian American doctor who walked out of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Muslim leaders on Tuesday revealed to CNN host Kaitlan Collins what he said to Biden before leaving the event.
Dr. Thaer Ahmad – who gave Biden a letter from an eight-year-old orphan in Gaza, asking the president to end Israel’s war – told Collins on The Source:
We had shown up to this meeting really concerned about what was taking place in the Gaza Strip, and I’m glad that you mentioned that we were insisting that there not be any food there. It made no sense for us to sort of break bread while talking about a famine taking place. We had shown up and the president and the vice president [and] the national security adviser are in the room, and there was very brief comments by the president saying he wants to hear from us and he wants to listen to us.
And so, I spoke first and I let him know that I am from a community that’s reeling. We are grieving, and our heart is broken for what’s been taking place over the last six months, and that the rhetoric that has been coming out of the Biden administration, that’s been coming out of the White House, it’s frustrated a lot of people, especially people who are Palestinian Americans, Muslim Americans, Arab Americans.
Ahmad continued, “I was able to share that with the president and let him know that out of respect for my community, out of respect for all of the people who have suffered and who have been killed in the process, I need to leave the meeting, and I want to leave with decision-makers and let them know what it feels like for somebody to say something and then leave and not hear them out and not hear their response.”
“Wow, I mean, what did– how did President Biden respond to that?” questioned Collins.
Ahmad replied, “You know, there wasn’t a lot of response. He actually said that he understood, and I walked away.”
Ahmad also told Collins that he was “the only Palestinian American in that room” during the meeting and that while many Palestinian-American leaders had declined invitations, there were many more “who for whatever reason” were not invited.
“I’m a humanitarian physician. I go to the Gaza Strip, I am a Palestinian American, but I’m not an organizer,” he told Collins. “I’m not a leader of any local community here. I’m not a part of any organization that I’m the president of. And so even me being selected to be invited to this place, it’s not really representative of the diverse community that makes up the Palestinian diaspora. It’s not representative of them.”
Support for Biden among Muslim and Arab Americans has plummeted in recent months due to the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. The Biden administration is presently pushing Congress to approve the sale of further arms to Israel, including F-15 fighter jets.
Watch above via CNN.
