The White House was forced to cancel its planned Ramadan dinner after many Muslim American leaders refused to go to protest Biden’s Gaza policy. Instead of a dinner, Biden held a scaled-back meeting Tuesday with Muslim American community figures — but that, too, was met with protests. The Palestinian American doctor Thaer Ahmad, who recently volunteered in Gaza, walked out of the White House meeting after giving President Biden a letter from an 8-year-old orphaned Palestinian girl named Hadeel that read, “I beg you, President Biden, stop them from entering Rafah.” Dr. Thaer Ahmad spoke to Middle East Eye after walking out of the White House.

Dr. Thaer Ahmad: “You cannot engage and try to get us to come out and show up in the primaries or in November, at the same time approving billions of dollars of 2,000-pound bombs, that I personally saw devastate Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah and all the areas in Gaza. That sort of cognitive dissonance is not something that just our community glosses over.”