President Biden’s guests did not try to hide their anguish.

Just weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Mr. Biden had invited a small group of prominent Muslim Americans to the White House to discuss Islamophobia in America. The participants were blunt with him, according to four people who were in attendance.

They told him that his embrace of Israel after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks was seen by many as permission for Israel’s bombing in Gaza. They said the president’s statement casting doubt on the death toll among Palestinians was insulting. And they said the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Muslim boy outside Chicago was just one devastating result of the dehumanization of their community.

The private meeting, which had been scheduled for 30 minutes, stretched to more than an hour, attendees said. Mr. Biden waved off aides who tried to pull him out of the room as he listened to the criticism and shared his own experience with loss and grief.

“He recognized there may have been missteps on the rhetoric,” said Wa’el Alzayat, the chief executive of Emgage, a group that mobilizes Muslim voters, who attended the meeting in the Roosevelt Room on Oct 26. “He listened, he did show empathy and he promised to do better, particularly on humanizing Palestinians.”