Reports of anti-Muslim bias hit record levels after start of Israel-Hamas war, group says
The Council on American Islamic Relations said it received the highest number of bias reports in its 30-year history in 2023.
A report released Tuesday from the Muslim civil rights organization CAIR shows it got 8,061 complaints nationally last year from Muslims who said they experienced discrimination or hate incidents.
It was the largest number the group has ever received and represents a 56% increase from 2022, the report said.
It was also more than what was reported in the aftermath of 9/11, when anti-Muslim sentiment was at a peak in the U.S., said Corey Saylor, CAIR’s research and advocacy director. He pointed out that CAIR was a smaller organization then, and fewer people may have known they could report.
Nearly half of all complaints in 2023 came in the final three months of the year, after the start of the Israel-Hamas war. The report cites the war as the primary force behind heightened Islamophobia.
Saylor said “both parties” — Democrats and Republicans — “have indulged in rhetoric stereotyping and dehumanizing Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.”
Biden called chef José Andrés with promise to make aid worker safety 'clear' to Israel, White House says
President Joe Biden called chef José Andrés to share that he was "heartbroken" over the Israeli airstrike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers working in Gaza.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters today that Biden expressed his condolences to the World Central Kitchen founder. Biden expressed to Andrés that he was grieving alongside the organization's members.
"The president felt it was important to recognize the tremendous contribution World Center Kitchen has made to the people in Gaza, and people around the world," Jean-Pierre said. "The president conveyed he will make clear to Israel that humanitarian aid workers must be protected."
John Kirby, White House national security spokesperson, then took the podium to add that U.S. officials were "outraged" over the strike. He described World Central Kitchen as "relentless" in its work to feed civilians in Gaza.
"More than 200 aid workers have been killed in this conflict, making it one of the worst for aid workers in recent history," Kirby said. "This incident is emblematic of a larger problem and evidence of why distribution of aid in Gaza has been so challenging."
Pressed by reporters, Kirby was questioned on how the U.S. could continue to send weapons to Israel without conditions following Kirby's own comments on the problems ensuring safety for workers and civilians. He said the White House has urged Israel to protect civilian life but that it is "still under viable threat from Hamas."
"I know you want us to hang some sort of condition over their neck," Kirby said. "And what I'm telling you is, we continue to work with the Israelis to make sure that they are as precise as they can be and that more aid is coming in, and we're going to continue to take that approach."
NBC News filmed at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, where the bodies of seven World Central Kitchen workers were taken after an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah.
U.N. chief condemns attack on Iranian consulate building in Syria
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned yesterday's attack on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, according to a statement from his spokesperson's office.
The statement from Guterres' office noted that "diplomatic and consular premises" should remain protected in accordance with international law.
"He also reminds all parties to respect all their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, as applicable," the statement said. "He also repeats his calls on all concerned to avoid attacks that could harm civilians and damage civilian infrastructure."
Iranian officials blamed Israel for a strike on an ambassador residence and consular building near Iran's embassy in Syria yesterday. Two commanders and five members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. were killed in the strike.
Israeli officials have not confirmed whether they were responsible.
'Selfless people': UNICEF spokesperson visited WCK before aid workers killed
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told MSNBC's José Díaz-Balart that he had visited the World Central Kitchen in Gaza over the weekend, describing the deaths of seven aid workers as "so senseless."
"These are just selfless people who literally just travel around the world to do everything they possibly can in a situation that's so spiraling, absolutely out of control," he said. "It's just yet another devastating loss."
Elder shared a photo of a World Central Kitchen building on X, and said the workers' deaths were a "senseless tragedy" and a "grim reminder of daily threats to civilians & aid workers."
‘I kept on saying goodbye’: Gaza hospital reports rise in stillbirths and neonatal deaths
TEL AVIV — When Mai Kamal Zaqout learned she was pregnant in December, she and her husband, Ahmad, felt something they hadn’t experienced in many weeks in Gaza: happiness — a glimmer of optimism amid the war’s devastation and despair.
Zaqout, 22, said Ahmad placed his hand on her belly and told her: “This is it. She is our last hope.”
But within months, that hope was shattered. Ahmad, 29, was killed in an airstrike.
Then Zaqout fled south to Rafah, where more than a million people have sought refuge, in hopes of giving birth to her daughter in safety.
But Zaqout fell ill, weak from a lack of food and clean drinking water. Already grieving, she received another devastating blow seven months into her pregnancy: Her baby no longer had a heartbeat.
“I didn’t understand. I started crying and screaming,” she told an NBC News crew on the ground late last month.
Doctors in Gaza and humanitarian groups told NBC News that Zaqout is one of a growing number of women who have lost their pregnancies or had complications, another dire consequence of the war.
Her baby was stillborn in March.
White House downsizing iftar event to private Biden meeting with Muslim leaders, sources say
President Joe Biden plans to hold a quiet, dramatically downsized iftar gathering tonight after invitations were declined by several Muslim American community leaders, according to two sources familiar with the planning.
Rather than host hundreds of people for a public reception, as the president has in years past to mark Ramadan and Eid, two smaller White House events are not on his public schedule and he won’t deliver remarks on camera. Instead, Biden will host a small meeting with Muslim community members tonight to “discuss issues of importance to the community,” according to a White House official.
The discussion, which will take place behind closed doors, will be joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as senior administration officials and senior members of the president’s national security team, the official said.
Afterward, Biden and Harris will host a small iftar dinner with a number of senior Muslim administration officials, a scaled-back version of an event related to Ramadan, compared to past years.
The tensions come amid deepening tensions with the Muslim American and Arab American communities over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Some people who were invited to attend the White House events flatly declined, according to the sources familiar with the planning, who said the invitees did not feel comfortable taking part in any kind of celebration with the president while many Palestinians are currently facing starvation and malnutrition.
World Central Kitchen staff wait at Rafah morgue
World Central Kitchen employees wait at a hospital morgue in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip today, a day after an Israeli airstrike hit the NGO's convoy, killing seven people.
Israel must do a better job communicating, U.S official says
WASHINGTON — The White House overall is “quite concerned” about the convoy attack that killed seven members of the World Central Kitchen team in Gaza, a U.S. official told NBC News today.
"We’re troubled by it,” the official said.
“The Israeli government must do a better job” of protecting humanitarian aid workers, the official said, “especially when those workers had deconflicted with the Israelis in advance.”
The White House is glad the Israelis are doing a thorough investigation and re-emphasized its position that humanitarian aid workers must be protected, especially when they have deconflicted with the Israeli government.
This official said different parts of the Israeli government must do a better job of communicating among themselves.
“Either the Israeli government did not communicate it to the right people in the military or it was not respected — either way, that’s concerning,” the official said.
Israeli ambassador summoned by British foreign office
Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom was summoned to discuss the deaths of seven aid workers in Gaza including three British citizens, the U.K.'s foreign office said today.
Minister Andrew Mitchell said he laid out the U.K.’s unequivocal condemnation on the strike to Tzipi Hotovely and demanded that Israel conduct a “transparent investigation” that is shared with “full accountability.”
"I reiterated the need for Israel to put in place an effective deconfliction mechanism immediately and urgently to scale up humanitarian access," he said in a statement. "We need to see an immediate humanitarian pause, to get aid in and the hostages out, then progress towards a sustainable ceasefire."