/ world today news/ Joe Biden’s policy in Israel has provoked discontent among Arab Americans, jeopardizing his electoral prospects in the US presidential election in November, as a key community with influence in key swing states moves away from his support.
Over the weekend, the Democrat’s campaign manager traveled to Dearborn, Michigan — home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States — and was ignored by a group of a dozen officials, including the mayor of suburban Detroit.
Biden has asked Congress for billions of dollars in additional military aid to Israel and his administration has vetoed multiple UN Security Council calls for a ceasefire in the conflict, leaving many Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent feeling betrayed by the Democratic Party, their former political home.
“When elected officials view the atrocities in Gaza as nothing more than an election issue, they reduce our untold pain to political calculations,” Mayor Abdullah Hammoud wrote on X about why he chose not to meet with Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
His comments were welcomed by Dearborn residents, who expressed dismay at the daily horrors in Gaza since Israel began its brutal war following the October 7 Hamas invasion.
„Call for Ceasefire’
“This is a genocide that is happening against our families and our people and people reacted very strongly,” Amer Zar, a law professor and comedian, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“We don’t support Joe Biden under any circumstances — or any politician, frankly — who isn’t willing to just call for a ceasefire,” added the 46-year-old former Bernie Sanders surrogate.
On November 5, Biden faces a tough rematch against likely opponent Donald Trump. Swing states like Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia, with significant Muslim and Arab-American populations, could be crucial.
These socially and economically conservative groups were once considered natural Republican voters, but their allegiance shifted after 9/11 as a result of the surveillance policies and perceived Islamophobia of the George W. Bush administration.
Biden won decisively among Arabs and Muslims in 2020. However, according to an analysis by Youssef Chuhud, a quantitative social scientist at Christopher Newport University who looked at polling data from sources including the nonprofit Emgage and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, many could stay home or vote third party in 2024.
“In Michigan, for example, that could mean Biden would lose about 55,000 votes, or about a third of the 154,000-vote margin he won over Trump in 2020,” Chuhud wrote in The Conversation.
Protesters against Biden
Meanwhile, Biden’s speeches and campaign events have been increasingly marked by pro-Palestinian detractors, revealing differences in Democratic circles with younger, more progressive parts of the party highly critical of the president.
Even the prospect of a second term for Trump — who enacted an immigration policy widely branded a “Muslim ban” that he says he will bring back with a vengeance if elected — is not enough to dissuade voters like Zarr.
“We will not respond to the argument of the lesser of two evils, we will reject it,” he said, adding: “We will not be responsible for the alternative.”
Samra’a Luqman, a 41-year-old community organizer who co-chairs the Leave Biden movement in Michigan, went further, suggesting that some in the community might vote for Trump in protest.
“The goal at the end of the day is not just to dump Biden, but to make sure we unseat Biden,” she told AFP – adding that she was still proud of some Democrats, including Hammoud and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.
Translation: SM
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