Arab and Muslim Americans demand Biden condemn Israel’s massacre in Rafah and the killing of Palestinian American teens.
President Joe Biden is quietly dispatching officials to Arab and Muslim communities in United States in an attempt at damage control while privately cursing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to contain civilian casualties in Gaza, where at least 1.7 million displaced Palestinians are trapped between Israeli forces and Gaza’s blockaded southern border with Egypt.
Now, Muslim advocates across the U.S. are demanding Biden stand up to Netanyahu and condemn both the recent killing of Palestinian American teenagers as well as the Israeli bombing and helicopter attacks that reportedly claimed the lives of more than 100 Palestinians taking shelter in border town of Rafah on Monday.
About 132 Israeli hostages are thought to remain in Gaza following Monday’s operations to extricate two hostages, and Netanyahu said on Sunday that “enough” of them remain alive to justify a continuation of the war. However, U.S. military officials have privately told members of Congress that Israel has degraded Hamas but is not close to eliminating resistance fighters or the group’s military capability, a stated premise of the war on Gaza, according to The .
Meanwhile, family members of hostages are still calling for Israel and Hamas to strike a deal on a ceasefire and say a prisoner swap remains their best chance for survival.
More than a dozen homes and three mosques in Rafah were hit by airstrikes during the Israeli operation, according to Gaza officials. Displaced Palestinians living in crowded camps near the border said they were shot by machine gunners in Israeli helicopters while sheltering in their tents, and young children are among the casualties.
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Biden’s failure to condemn Israeli atrocities allows Netanyahu’s government to continue killing innocent people with impunity.
“The Biden administration has repeatedly failed to hold the far-right Israeli government accountable for attacks like last night’s Rafah massacre and even attacks on American citizens, like the assassination of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the murder of another American teenager, Tawfiq Hijazi, last month,” Awad said in a statement on Monday.
Hailing from New Orleans, Louisiana, Hijazi is also known to the media as Tawfic Abdel Jabbar. He was shot and killed in January at the age of 17 after being targeted by an off-duty Israeli police officer and an extremist settler while driving in the occupied West Bank, according to his family.
Another 17-year-old dual citizen of the U.S. and Palestine, Mohammad Ahmed Mohammad Khdour, was shot in the head by Israeli forces on February 10 while sitting in a car with a family member at a wooded park in the occupied West Bank where “people from neighboring villages regularly visit to pick mushrooms, sage, and other plants,” according to Defense for Children International-Palestine.
