In the initial days of the war, US President Joe Biden had attested to Israeli claims that Hamas fighters from Palestine’s Gaza had beheaded Israeli children while launching the 7 October attack. This claim of a heinous crime was condemned by world leaders, before the claim ran into controversy as Israel could not provide evidence of their claim. 

Israel’s sworn ally US had also run into the controversy when they attested the unverified claim, considered blasphemous in a war like situation that has been going on between Benjamin Netanyahu‘s Israel and Hamas fighters from Palestine’s Gaza. 

According to two White House officials, Vice President Kamala Harris suggested to Biden that he should add a line to his speech denouncing Islamophobia and how Muslims and Arab communities faced discrimination and hate attacks for years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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While Biden accepted Harris’s suggestion, he ignored a warning from his staff members who advised him against adding his claim of ‘Hamas beheading babies’ in his speech.

Biden later met with five prominent Muslim Americans who were upset when the US President in October publicly questioned the death toll of civilians in Gaza. When he heard their accounts, including a woman who lost 100 members of her family, Biden said he was “sorry” and was “disappointed in himself”, two people familiar with the meeting told The Washington Post.

The meeting between Biden and Muslim Americans, which was supposed to end in 30 minutes, ended after more than an hour, a White House official said. Biden told the group “he would do better” and even hugged one of the participants, the official added.

In another meeting, Palestinian Americans told White House aides that Biden would lose Arab and Muslim votes over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, an official said. A White House aide responded to the group that Biden was merely trying to prevent World War III and not thinking about the matter politically.

Apart from this, several American diplomats, aid workers and defence officials have called for a complete ceasefire in the fighting in Gaza. The State Department has received dissent cables from diplomats, urging the administration to use their influence to stop the violence.

Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas are preparing for a fourth exchange of militant-held hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, as mediators seek to extend a cease-fire in Gaza that is set to expire after Monday.

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Updated: 27 Nov 2023, 03:03 PM IST