Top Arab American and Muslim leaders admonished the Biden administration for being insensitive and even reckless in their rhetoric following Hamas’ bloody attack on Israel in a private call with State Department officials on Monday.

The discussion was a blunt airing of concerns about the conduct of a president and his team. And it came at a particularly sensitive time: in the wake of the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in the Chicago area, which authorities have described as a hate crime.

On the Monday call, which is being first reported by POLITICO, Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer, addressed what she thought was the Biden administration’s problematic language: At a press briefing last week, a State Department spokesperson declined to say directly that Israel should stop cutting off medicine, water and humanitarian aid to Palestinians, though he said he expects Israel to follow international law.

“It gave the impression that it’s okay to do that to Palestinians because they’re Palestinians,” she said on the call. “That’s dehumanizing, and it opens the door for people to think that, well, you know, certain things are okay because they must be bad people. They must be terrorists.”

Also on the call, Warren David, president of Arab America, told Andrew Miller, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, that his members were “outraged — outraged — to say the least at the rhetoric that’s been coming out the last few days” from the Biden administration.

David warned of “the demonization of Palestinians in Gaza and of Arabs in general” that “has really escalated hatred” against them. And he asked Miller what the State Department and President Joe Biden planned to do to “walk back their negative discourse” in light of the slaying of Wadea Al-Fayoume.

“We feel great damage has been done regarding the image of Arabs in the United States,” David said on the call. “In some ways, it’s worse than what happened in 9/11.”

In response, Miller stressed that the Biden administration’s “intent has certainly not been to stoke anti-Arab sentiment” and welcomed further discussion to “make sure that we’re not unintentionally contributing to a problem.” He also said that “the Palestinian people are not to blame for Hamas’ actions” and that the administration takes the safety of minority groups “very, very seriously.”

Nevertheless, the discussion put in stark relief the degree to which Arab Americans and Muslims throughout the country are fearful of becoming victims of a 9/11-style backlash after Hamas’ rampage. It also underscored the growing frustrations they’ve felt with the administration’s posture, even as the president’s tone has evolved.

Those frustrations as well as the unease voiced on the call may only grow in significance as the conflict in Israel escalates. As Biden prepared to travel to Israel this week, a blast at a hospital in Gaza claimed hundreds of lives and intensified international alarm about civilian casualties. Israel and Hamas leveled conflicting accusations of responsibility for the explosion.

In the immediate aftermath of the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ killing of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians and soldiers in a surprise raid this month, Biden offered unequivocal support for Israel. He said Hamas’ attack was “pure, unadulterated evil” and vowed that the United States “has Israel’s back.” In recent days, Biden has expressed concern for Palestinian civilians and Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced that the U.S. and Israel agreed to put together a plan to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.

On Sunday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said it is “critical” that Palestinian civilians have places where they can go “that will not be subject to military bombardment” and “have access to the the essentials: to food, water, medicine, shelter.”

Roughly 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began, according to Palestinian officials. The death toll in Israel has risen to 1,400, according to Israeli authorities.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas and Hamas’s appalling attacks, and they’re suffering as a result as well,” Biden declared at an infrastructure announcement in Philadelphia last week.

He made similar remarks at a Human Rights Campaign dinner this weekend, decrying “a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” And after Al-Fayoume’s killing, Biden said he was “shocked and sickened” by the news. “This horrific act of hate has no place in America,” he added.

But some Arab American and Muslim leaders, as well as their allies, dismissed Biden’s recent statements as too little, too late. They said in interviews that they have been horrified by the recent remarks of foreign policy hawks such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who described the Israel-Hamas war as a “religious war.” But they said they have also been distressed by remarks made by Biden officials and other Democrats with whom they are more often aligned.

Oday Al-Fayoume hugs the mother of one of his slain son’s friends during a vigil for Wadea.