WASHINGTON Just five minutes into a meeting with President Joe Biden, a Palestinian American doctor who has treated gravely injured patients in Gaza couldnt bear to stay, so he left.
Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who specializes in emergency medicine, recalled getting emotional when talking about the many Palestinians he cared for, describing the scale of death in the six months since the war began.
The decision to leave was a personal one, he told NBC News in a phone interview, explaining he wanted to show the White House that it was important to recognize the pain and the mourning that my community was in.
Ahmad stressed that he wanted to let the administration feel the way that we felt this past six months and kind of get up and walk away from them.
He was one of only six Muslim American community leaders who attended a small meeting on Tuesday with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and senior administration officials at the White House.
Many others who had been invited to attend declined, according to multiple sources familiar with the outreach, underscoring the deepening tensions between the administration and the Muslim and Arab American communities over the presidents support of Israel in its bombardment of Gaza. More than 30,000 people have died, according to health officials, since Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 and the group is still holding more than 100 hostages captive.
Another doctor who attended was taken aback when she showed Biden prints of photos of malnourished children and women in Gaza to which Biden responded that he had seen those images before. The problem, the doctor said, was that she had printed the photos from her own iPhone.
"This speaks volumes to the dismissive nature of the administration when it comes to strong-willed action towards a permanent cease-fire or, at a bare minimum, a red line on the invasion of Rafah," Dr. Nahreen H. Ahmed told NBC News.
Before leaving the meeting early, Ahmad handed a letter to the president from an 8-year-old orphan in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza.
There is an incredible amount of urgency around this, Ahmad said, expressing deep skepticism that Israels military campaign can be done in a sophisticated or tactical way that doesnt put innocent civilians at risk.
During the 90-minute meeting, which took place behind closed doors, Biden told attendees that he will not call for a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas until all the remaining hostages are released, according to two people familiar with his comments.
Biden said, according to one of the attendees, that if Israel tries to obstruct the ability to bring aid into Gaza, the U.S. will push back and advocate for more resources to be brought into the region.
Last Thursday, the United Nations highest court ordered Israel to open more land crossings to allow food, water, fuel and other supplies into Gaza after reports that the Israeli government was blocking lifesaving supplies from reaching the devastated enclave. Israeli officials have repeatedly denied obstructing aid from entering Gaza, and instead blame the U.N. for acute shortages of lifesaving supplies in the strip particularly the north.
The president did not specify what the U.S. would do to ensure aid can be safely delivered, the attendee said.
Ahmad, the doctor who left the meeting, said he plans to go back to Gaza soon and is legitimately concerned that I may be killed in the process.
If that happened, he said, its hard to think it could happen from a 2,000-pound bomb that the U.S. gave to Israel.
That my government would have had a hand in that, I just hate that, he said. Thats kind of the thoughts that are crossing my mind.
Biden has a growing image problem in terms of the gap between his empathy for Israelis and his empathy for Palestinians.