Arab, Muslim And Palestinian Leaders Refuse To Meet With White House Aides In Chicago

CHICAGO — More than three dozen Arab, Muslim and Palestinian-American leaders blasted a White House effort to meet with community organizations in Chicago over the administration's position on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

In a joint letter addressed to the White House, the groups criticized the outreach as a bid to “whitewash months of White House inaction,” arguing there was no point in agreeing to more meetings until President Joe Biden changes his approach to the conflict.

“We are interested in serious action,” the letter sentto the White House and obtained by POLITICO said. “That is what history will judge us by, not more token meetings when every day is of the essence.”

Several people involved with the letter confirmed they had declined the invitation to the White House meeting. The Coalition for Justice in Palestine, which includes Chicago's six main Arab and Palestinian groups, organized the letter. Dozens more groups and individuals have signed on, including prominent community leaders and Democratic state Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, the first Palestinian-American to serve in the Illinois General Assembly.

The rebuke serves as the latest sign of the challenge that Biden faces in winning back voters alienated by his steadfast support for the Israeli offensive. A campaign urging Democrats to express their discontent with Biden's position has spread to several states, after roughly 13 percent of Michigan voters chose to vote "uncommitted" instead of for Biden in their primary last month.

The White House declined to comment on the record. But a White House official granted anonymity to discuss the planning said senior aides were still scheduled to meet with local representatives. The official described the meetings as "part of an ongoing process to engage with communities impacted by the Mideast conflict," but would not specify who from the Chicago area was set to attend.

White House director of intergovernmental affairs Tom Perez was among those expected to lead what were supposed to be two or three sit-downs with Illinois community leaders. Public engagement director Steve Benjamin and National Security Council chief of staff Curtis Ried were also among those set to represent the administration.

But the public blowback quickly overtook the administration's bid to make quiet inroads with a community outraged over the war in Gaza.

“All the Palestinian leadership we work with in Chicago have rejected this overture, and USPCN [U.S. Palestinian Community Network] considers anyone — Palestinian, Muslim, Arab — who takes a meeting with the White House to be an absolute sell-out. There’s no more time for meetings,” Hatem Abudayyeh, an organizer with one of the groups that wrote to the White House, said in an interview with POLITICO.

Abudayyeh, who organized dozens of protests over America's support of Israel since Oct. 7, was not among those invited to the meetings. Deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told the publication Jewish Insider that the Council on American-Islamic Relations — another of the letter's signatories — was also not invited.

But Rashid, the Democratic state representative, confirmed he was among those contacted by White House but ultimately declined the invitation, saying he’s met with White House officials before.

“There’s nothing new to be said. We need an immediate and permanent cease-fire. And we need the United States to stop supplying arms to Israel,” Rashid told POLITICO.

White House officials have bristled at the attention paid to protest efforts around the war, downplaying them as over-covered and unrepresentative of Biden's overall strength within the Democratic base.

Biden has also taken a series of concrete steps in recent weeks to bolster support for Palestinians and signal his frustration with the way Israeli leaders are conducting the war, including warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly against invading the southern city of Rafah, a city that has filled with refugees from other parts of Gaza.

Still, the rebuffed overtures mirrored instances in the last few months in which Arab American and Muslim leaders decided against meeting with administration officials, worrying Democrats who say large swathes of the community in key states could opt to stay home in November.

Several community leaders and local officials in Michigan rejected invites to meet with Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez in January, over perceptions that Biden was simply trying to lock down their votes rather than hear substantive feedback about his approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The White House later dispatched a contingent of senior policy aides to the state for a series of meetings with Arab American and Muslim officials, though some of those invited still refused to attend. The sessions were tense affairs, participants said. While Biden aides offered apologies for some of the administration's rhetoric in the weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, they refused to commit to calling for a permanent cease-fire. Several leaders afterward warned that they would not meet with the Biden administration again until it changed course.

More recently, a meeting at the White House between Vice President Kamala Harris and a handful of Arab American and Muslim leaders was postponed, after those invited decided they could not speak for the entire community.

The Biden reelection effort seems most at risk in Michigan, where Dearborn is home to America’s largest Arab-American population. But other states hold large communities protesting the conflict, too. The largest Palestinian community is in Illinois, with a population between 70,000 to 100,000 in the Chicago metropolitan area. There is also a large Jewish community in the Chicago area, making Illinois a hotbed for tension since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct.7.

Illinois is a blue state with no risk of turning on Biden. But the planned meetings did come five days before the Illinois primary. Though there's no line on the ballot for “uncommitted,” which has been the vessel for the protest in other states, Illinois will play host to the Democratic National Convention in August. Biden is hoping to present a united front at the convention where he will be officially nominated, but the refusal to meet with White House officials this week could portend more dramatic acts of protest then.

"They will bring this on themselves" without a dramatic change in policy, said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and a DNC member. "I don’t know how they think they’re going to forestall it continuing on the path they’re on."