Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.

 

Muslim and Arab Americans Reject Biden's Inept Outreach, It Could Cost him the Election

The Guardian, February 3, 2024

 

Arab and Muslim Americans demonstrate in Detroit, Michigan, in support of Palestine, November 1, 2023	Pro-Palestine demonstrators protesting President Biden's visit to Michigan and  his support for the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, February 1, 2024

 

‘It could cost him the election’:

Muslim and Arab Americans reject Biden’s ‘inept’ outreach

 

Discontent in the community, especially in swing states such as Michigan, Arizona and Georgia, will hamper the president’s re-election bid

By Melissa Hellmann

The Guardian, Saturday, 3 Feb 2024 07.00 EST

Last week, Muslim and Arab American leaders in Michigan refused an invitation to attend a listening session with Joe Biden’s campaign. It was too late, they said, for the president to win their support after ignoring their communities’ pleas for a ceasefire in Gaza for the past four months. Their dissatisfaction with the president could be detrimental to his success in crucial swing states, which he desperately needs to win in order to be reelected.

The session was the first time that a delegation was sent to Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit where more than half of the 109,976 residents are of Middle Eastern or North African descent. Still, the Dearborn mayor Abdullah Hammoud, along with some 15 other leaders, declined the meeting, citing the US-backed Israel-Gaza war in which more than 25,000 Palestinans – most of them women and children – have been killed.

“They’re approaching the community now to speak about the issues unfolding as if they’re electoral problems or political ones. And for us, that’s not what these are,” Hammoud told the Guardian. “This is an issue of humanity. Palestinians are not important because of polling numbers.”

In a similar move on Thursday, several Palestinian Americans rejected an invitation to attend a roundtable discussion at the state department with Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, which they called “insulting and performative”.

According to Hammoud, Dearborn’s first Arab American and Muslim mayor, the Biden-Harris campaign’s outreach strategy for Muslim voters is either nonexistent or insufficient. Other leaders within some Arab American and Muslim communities agreed, saying that they’re in the dark about campaign surrogates and that the administration only consults with people who aren’t outspoken about their disapproval of Biden’s handling of the war. Meanwhile, White House officials claim that they have increased their engagement with Muslim and Arab Americans since the conflict escalated in Gaza on 7 October, citing a nationwide initiative to counter Islamophobia that was launched in November.

“Moving forward, the President, Vice President, and our entire Administration will continue working to ensure every American has the freedom to live their lives in safety and without fear for how they pray, what they believe and who they are,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in a statement about the development of the interagency group. The Biden campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

This is an issue of humanity. Palestinians are not important because of polling numbers Abdullah Hammoud

But former campaign staffers, voters and leaders within these communities aren’t convinced and the impact of their discontent will likely be a defining moment in Biden’s bid for re-election. A survey from last fall found that 17% of Arab Americans planned to vote for the president, down from 59% who cast a ballot for him in 2020. According to an Axios review of 2020 election results, Biden won Michigan – where 278,000 Arab Americans live – by just 154,000 votes. And in Georgia, where at least 57,000 Arab Americans live, Biden won by 11,800 votes.

Sending the president a clear message

Hammoud sees the cancelled meeting as an opportunity to push back on an administration that has taken his constituents’ issues for granted. He and other leaders say that no amount of outreach is enough to gain their support and they are steadfast in their demands for an immediate ceasefire and an end to unconditional support of Israel. And though an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is their immediate concern, the community has long felt ignored by Biden.

Prior to the election, Hammoud said that he voiced concern to Blinken, then a campaign surrogate for Biden, about a leaked 2019 FBI terrorist watchlist. More than 98% of the names were Muslim, according to a report by the civil rights organization Council on American-Islamic Relations. The list is sent to airlines, local police and foreign governments.

Other leaders and organizers criticized the federal government’s decision last September to admit Israel into the Visa Waiver Program, which allows the country’s citizens to travel to the US without a tourist or business visa. They felt that the decision ignored outrage about the mistreatment that Arab and Muslim Americans have long faced at Israel’s borders.

Homes in Gaza have been reduced to a rubble after a barrage of Israeli bombings in the region. Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters

Additionally, leaders say they have pushed for the past few years for Biden to fulfill his 2020 campaign commitment to a Palestinian state.

“Palestine is central to the identity of Muslims,” said Salam Al-Marayati, president and co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. The non-profit created in 1988 advocates for policies that improve Muslim Americans’ lives. He added that the conflict in Gaza threatens the legitimacy of every Muslim-majority country.

“The Muslim world sees this as something that is unending,” Al-Marayati said. “They view this as their disintegration, not just the disintegration of Palestine.”

‘Inept’ and ‘awkward’ campaign strategy

Former Biden campaigners have mixed opinions about his administration’s effectiveness in engaging Muslim and Arab American voters in general. Charlene Wang, who worked as a national events manager and digital volunteer organizer for the 2020 campaign, said that she saw no effort to energize Muslim constituents back then. But Ghada Elnajjar, a Palestinian-American organizer, recalled regular Zoom meetings between campaign advisors, leaders and activists to discuss issues that affected their communities. She described the outreach to Muslim and Arab American voters in 2020 as robust compared to now.

“The current outreach strategy to Arab American and American Muslim voters has been inept and awkward,” said Elnajjar. “How do you begin to sell a president who has actively supported the genocide in Gaza?”

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Palestinian children wait in queue for food amid the continuing crisis in Gaza. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

For Elnajjar, the administration’s refusal to call for a ceasefire is personal. The daughter of refugees from Gaza, she said that more than 75 of her family members have died there since 7 October. Two of her first cousins, Tariq and Muhammed Mishaal, were killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit their home last month.

Elnajjar, who’s based in Georgia, campaigned for Biden in 2020 as part of the coalition Arab Americans for Biden. The group worked with the campaign to create a partnership agreement in 2020 that promised “Palestinians and Israelis enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity, and democracy”.

But Elnajjar says that the administration has not fulfilled its promises. As a result, Arab Americans for Biden has changed its name to Arab Americans Forward, which is now focused on calling for a ceasefire and the disbursement of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Elnajjar, along with other organizers, former campaign staff and community leaders, were unaware of any Muslim surrogates for Biden’s reelection. In fact, she said that the administration is selective of the Palestinian Americans that it consults with and has chosen not to meet with politicians such as Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state representative who has publicly called for a de-escalation of violence in Gaza.

The Muslim world ... views this as their disintegration, not just ... of Palestine Salam Al-Marayati

Romman said the White House has not reached out to her or the four other Palestinian American legislators. Conversations that she’s initiated with Democratic National Committee and White House staff also haven’t gone far. “With the DNC, I’ve tried to engage on why ‘not Trump’ isn’t effective messaging,” said Romman, whose family was exiled from Palestine in 1948 before settling as refugees in Jordan. “On [the] White House side I mostly get comments like my perspective is interesting, but that’s about it.”

Bleak political consequences

A movement of Arab Americans and their allies are calling on voters to leave the presidential line blank on the ballot and to only select candidates who support a ceasefire during the Democratic primaries, said Elnajjar. Meanwhile, a nascent #AbandonBiden campaign started by Muslim Americans in Minnesota has spread to other battleground states including Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Throughout the country, protestors demanding a ceasefire have staged demonstrations at campaign events, which has led staffers to screen attendees in ways that could be considered profiling. In a recent event, for instance, two women wearing hijabs accused the Biden-Harris campaign of Islamophobia for refusing them entry to a weekend event. A campaign staffer said that they were disinvited for disrupting previous functions.

How do you begin to sell a president who has actively supported the genocide in Gaza? Ghada Elnajjar

Biden has also lost support from some of his current and former staffers. Last November, more than 500 alumni of Biden’s 2020 presidential election campaign published a letter in which they also called for a ceasefire and an end to “unconditional military aid to Israel”.

And in January, 17 Biden for President staffers posted an open letter where they repeated the earlier demands. “Justice, empathy, and our belief in the dignity of human life is the backbone of not only the Democratic Party, but of the country,” they wrote. “However, your administration’s response to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing in Gaza has been fundamentally antithetical to those values — and we believe it could cost you the 2024 election.”

Omar Rahman, who signed the November letter, worked with the campaign in 2020 as a foreign policy advisor focused on the Middle East. Even then, he said, it was clear to him that Biden would not focus on reviving a peace process in Israel and Palestine during his presidency. “There was an expectation that he would fulfill his campaign promises on this issue, [and] that he would also be a more forceful hand in terms of pushing back against the most rabid policies from Israel,” Rahman said. “That didn’t happen at all.”

The growing disappointment that Muslim and Arab Americans feel about Biden’s handling of the conflict in Gaza may cost him the election. Rahman, for his part, sees no way forward for the president. “In light of his extremely low polling numbers,” he said, “the Democratic party should wake up and find a different candidate to run in the general election before it’s too late.”

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‘It could cost him the election’: Muslim and Arab Americans reject Biden’s ‘inept’ outreach | US elections 2024 | The Guardian 

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For Arab Americans around Detroit, a sense of betrayal after U.S. response to Israel-Hamas war

PBS News Hour,

By Aaron Foley, Nov 1, 2023 9:40 AM EST

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify Baydoun’s post on X.

DEARBORN, Mich. —

For more than 30 years, Suehaila Amen has been an advocate and ambassador for Arab Americans and Muslims in the Detroit area. 

In her line of work, she travels and speaks frequently. She wears a hijab – the traditional headscarf some Muslim women wear – and was once a national face of Dearborn, appearing with her family in the 2012 TLC reality series “All-American Muslim.” She has consulted with local and federal agencies on better protections for Arab Americans and Muslims, through recurring waves of Islamophobia.

Hamas’ attack on Israel and the retaliatory siege on Gaza has had reverberations across southeast Michigan, including in Dearborn, where Amen was born and raised, and Dearborn Heights, where she now lives with her family. They are just two of many Detroit suburbs that have been reshaped by the ever-growing Arab American diaspora. 

Amen and other residents here are concerned not only about a return to the heights of Islamophobia seen in the aftermath of 9/11, but also how responses from elected officials on the local and national level could shake decades of work that nurtured connections between the Detroit area’s Arab Americans, Muslim and Jewish communities.

“For a woman like myself who’s visibly Muslim and has feared for my safety in a post-9/11 society, at one point I thought I had gotten past all of the negative rhetoric,” Amen said. “It’s difficult being put in a position where you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.”

While President Joe Biden announced his administration will provide $100 million in humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, his visit to Tel Aviv and the subsequent request for a $105 billion defense package – a funding request that includes more than $14 billion in aid for  Israel – drew swift condemnation from Arab Americans across Metro Detroit. Coupled with consistent messaging and backing for the state of Israel during this war, some Arab American community members said they felt betrayed and sidelined, especially after the president promised “a seat at the table” for the community while campaigning for office. Even more concerning, some residents say, is silence or apathy from local leaders.

“So many in our Dearborn community carry the scars of war in our memories and our bodies,” Abdullah Hammoud, the first Arab American mayor of Dearborn, said in a statement following Biden’s announcement. “Still, nothing could have prepared us for the complete erasure of our voices and radio silence from those whom we elected to protect and represent us.”

Migration from urban centers, suburban development and general demographic shifts in recent years have made Detroit’s suburbs more diverse than ever.

Dearborn, often seen as a barometer for Arab American sentiment in the U.S., has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, with more than half of the 109,976 residents identifying as Middle Eastern North African Americans in the 2020 census. Arab Americans can also be found in significant numbers in Detroit and other suburbs, including Hamtramck, which elected the country’s first Muslim-majority city council, as well as Warren and Sterling Heights – Michigan’s third- and fourth-largest cities, respectively.

The metropolitan Detroit area is also home to more than 70,000 Jewish residents, according to a 2018 population study conducted by the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, many of them living north of the city in the Oakland County suburbs.

Residents stress there is no “us versus them” mentality here, thanks to the work done through several alliances built over the years. “From a community to community level, there is no animosity,” said Bilal Baydoun, an Arab American and a former communications officer for Hammoud.

But Baydoun, who now works as a public policy and research director, said that regardless of identity, he and other Arab Americans are primarily looking for allies to stand with them — and for accountability from those looking the other way or taking stances that can harm their community. 

“A lot of the local and domestic politics influence our community,” Baydoun said. “I do think there is an unprecedented energy [now] that you don’t see unless there’s an election looming. I see an unprecedented energy at all levels of government, particularly here in Michigan, to have a sense of empathy — and to not take us for granted.”

President Joe Biden addressed the nation Oct. 19 from the Oval Office to discuss the U.S. response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel and Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images).

A ‘stab in the back’ from elected officials

Amen can trace her family’s origins to the 1890s, when one of her grandparents was born in Indiana and traveled back and forth to the family’s home country in Lebanon. Another one of Amen’s great-grandparents emigrated from Lebanon to the U.S. in 1901, two years prior to Henry Ford incorporating his namesake car manufacturer in Dearborn.

She grew up in the 1980s and remembers when Dearborn was a “ghost town. Now to see the vibrant economy, new businesses coming in – our community has been the epicenter of growth and advancement,” she said.

Amen credits that to immigrant populations that have changed the landscape of Dearborn and some of Detroit’s other suburbs in the past decades. Like Dearborn, her new city of Dearborn Heights also recently elected its first Arab American mayor. “People were flabbergasted that metro Detroit suburbs were thriving,” she said. 

That growth, she said, was only possible with community building, conversations across faith and ethnicity, and understanding of immigrants’ connections between their home countries and the U.S.

“We take for granted that we live in Metro Detroit that is full of diversity. A lot of work has been done on the interfaith level, the intercultural level, the interracial level — we always took pride in the advancements that we made. [But] every time we take three steps forward, we take five back.”

Amen said her hopes would be for the Biden administration to call for a ceasefire on both sides of the war, but she fears the U.S. government’s outspoken support of Israel is already stoking levels of Islamophobia. Attacks like the murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a 6-year-old Palestinian American in suburban Chicago, could be just the beginning, she added.

“I find it absolutely appalling to see our president give condolences to a family of a child who was murdered — it clearly being a hate crime — only to extend his support and strong stance along with Israel and all the devastation that they’re doing to Palestinian people and the genocide they’re committing,” Amen said.

Now, Amen said, she is hearing of area residents who no longer want to vote for Biden, or are considering voting third-party in 2024.

“We have been loyal to our parties, worked hand in hand with leadership, and worked tirelessly to ensure Muslims and Arabs would have a voice and have a seat at the table,” Amen said. “[But] these elected officials will come to our community, pander to us, sit and tell us lies, and go around and stab you in the back.”

A poll released Tuesday by the Arab American Institute found that 17 percent of Arab American voters said they would support President Joe Biden if the election were held today. That number was 59 percent in 2020, according to the institute. The survey, conducted Oct. 23 to 27, also found Biden’s approval rating among Arab Americans dropped to 29 percent, from 74 percent in 2020.

“There’s a lot of anger, a lot of feeling of ‘Do we belong anywhere?’ Where do we belong on the American political spectrum?”

The negative drops are directly tied to Arab Americans’ views of Biden’s response to the Oct. 7 outbreak of violence between Hamas and Israel, the Institute says. 

Nada Al-Hanooti, who lives in Dearborn, said she’s heard of residents planning to abstain from voting, which could undo the work she and others have done to register thousands of Muslims to vote. Al-Hanooti is executive director of Emgage Michigan, an advocacy group that registers Muslim Americans to vote.

“We did a lot of work to elect Biden in Michigan,” Al-Hanooti said, adding that Emgage tracked 145,000 Muslim voters in Michigan during the 2020 presidential election year. Biden narrowly won Michigan against former President Donald Trump in 2020 by less than 155,000 votes. “That just proves Biden needs the Muslim vote to win.”

“Our community is taking good notes, because when it comes time to cast their ballot, they’ll be looking at who’s been supportive,” Al-Hanooti said.

Al-Hanooti is now having conversations with elected leaders at the local and state levels, as well as Michiganders in Washington, in an effort to emphasize the importance of her community’s vote and support.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) takes part in an Oct. 18 demonstration to advocate for a halt in hostilities in Gaza. It was organized with the attendance of multiple Jewish groups outside the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents parts of Detroit and Dearborn and is the only Palestinian American in Congress, drew ire from some of her colleagues when she released a statement saying that the path to Palestinian liberation is “lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance.”

Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar, who also represents parts of Detroit, criticized Tlaib’s statement in an interview with Jewish Insider. Thanedar called out Tlaib for referring to the violence in Israel as “resistance,” and saying that  “we don’t need such hate and bigotry and antisemitism in the halls of Congress.”

Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Jack Bergman, who represents Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, introduced a resolution to censure Tlaib, saying in a statement that Tlaib “chose to place the blame solely on Israel and the Jewish people.”

Al-Hanooti said Tlaib not only has a right to express her views under free speech, but that criticism of her freedom to do so can be harmful in the long run.

“Jack Bergman and Shri Thanedar don’t realize how much their actions are putting Rashida’s safety on the line, but also putting Arab Americans and Palestinian Americans’ safety on the line,” she said.

Speaking out, with trepidation

Baydoun read posts about Biden’s Israel visit on X, formerly known as Twitter, which prompted him to add his own thoughts about Dearborn residents’ “sense of betrayal.” Threats of harm, racist taunts and being called a “terrorist” in his inbox forced Baydoun to temporarily disable his account.

“It’s a very dangerous climate for speaking out,” he said. “A lot of my friends are worried about getting blacklisted. They’re worried about getting fired from their jobs.”

Baydoun, who is Lebanese, pointed to Israeli occupation of south Lebanon as one reason why many Dearborn residents, regardless of ethnicity, overwhelmingly identify with the plight of Palestinians.

“I think for Arab people and Arab Americans, the question of Palestinian liberation is a moral litmus test of every high-minded idea America espouses,” he said. “Regardless of where Arab Americans come from, we all understand those principles through the prism of Palestine.”

Baydoun said conversations around the positions of elected officials are important. But in the last few days, those discussions are starting to feel “secondary” to Arab Americans questioning their place in the U.S., he added.

“There’s a lot of anger, a lot of feeling of ‘Do we belong anywhere?’ Where do we belong on the American political spectrum?”

And then there is the t-word — “terrorist” — that keeps resurfacing.

“Rashida has been called a ‘terrorist’ by her colleagues by putting up the Palestinian flag, which is the flag of her ancestors,” Baydoun said. “In general in the U.S., we don’t have a framework for talking about racism against Palestinians in general. They often reach for the language of Islamophobia…when the reality is that racism directed at Palestinians is because the Palestinian identity is criminalized and treated as illegitimate based on the foreign policy status quo in the United States.”

The shared commonality of criminalized identity is why many Arab Americans in Metro Detroit have been able to build interfaith and intercultural unities with Jewish Americans in the region. Over the last month, many Arabs have repeated what has been said for decades: Condemning Israel’s action does not equate to anti-Semitism. 

“The interfaith solidarity in metro Detroit has been very strong. We have a lot of love for our Jewish Michiganders, who we share communities with,” Baydoun said.

A watershed moment

Amen and others cited two reasons why there is greater emotion and mobilization around this turning point in more than 70 years of conflict.

One big reason is technology.

“Now you have first- and second- and third-generation Arabs who are more aware, more educated and enlightened. They have access to information more than other immigrants [before],” she said.

As a child, she added, immigrant families’ views on their homelands were shaped by perspectives in Western media, which she said could often be narrow and biased, and were often the only source of information. Now, she marvels at how younger residents can access news from across the world “from their fingertips.”

“I don’t think I ever heard myself saying, ‘I never thought TikTok would give me the reality of what’s going on in the world,’” she said with a slight laugh.

The second is numbers. There are more Arab Americans living in Metro Detroit now than just those living in Dearborn.

“We’re seeing the outrage from multiple communities in the area who are speaking out. They are more cognizant and aware of policies that impact our communities,” she said. “You get to a point that one [group of] people can have their say and another cannot, yet we’re all under the banner of America and being American citizens.”

Left: People hold signs as they gather in Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit, Michigan to call for a ceasefire and voice their support for the Palestinians. Thousands of people, both Israelis and Palestinians, have died since Hamas militants based in the Gaza strip launched surprise attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, and Israel declared war. Photo by Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

Aaron Foley is the senior editor for the PBS NewsHour's Communities Initiative.

For Arab Americans around Detroit, a sense of betrayal after U.S. response to Israel-Hamas war | PBS NewsHour 

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