By Robert Inlakesh
EDITOR’S NOTE: A senior campaign advisor to US President Joe Biden said that their campaign has been harmed by the president’s support for Israel, Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday.
“Nine months before the election, the problem is worsening as Biden’s opposition to calling for a permanent cease-fire continues to stir anger in a coalition of voters that propelled his 2020 victory, from Black Americans to Muslim activists in must-win Michigan to young voters, according to the interviews,” Reuters reported.
In the following report by Robert Inlakesh, we examine the subject of how the Arab/Muslim American vote could impact Biden’s re-election bid over his administration’s stance on the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
With the US Presidential election less than a year away, Joe Biden’s reelection bid is being challenged by Muslim and Arab American voters who feel that their current President has betrayed them.
In early December, Muslim-American leaders from across the United States launched the #AbandonBiden campaign, in a bid to hold the current US President accountable for his refusal to end the bloodshed in Gaza. As the campaign grew, prominent Muslim and Arab figures within the country began to publicly speak out in opposition to casting their vote for the Democratic Party candidate, unfazed by the accusation that they would be permitting a victory to former Republican Party President Donald Trump.
As influential Egyptian-American comedian, Bassem Yousef, put it “all we asked (Joe Biden) for was a ceasefire. Stop the killing. Stop the killing. Now you want to blackmail us with reproductive rights and minority rights?”.
He concluded his point by stating that “I’m not going to be blackmailed by saying I’m enabling Trump to win, the Democrats did that to themselves, and they cannot continue pretending that they are on our side”.
Although US media had tried to downplay the workability of the ‘Abandon Biden’ campaign, the consequences for the Democratic Party are now inescapable. In Dearborn, Michigan, the Mayor elected in the largest contingent of Arab voters of the consequential swing state, Abdullah Hammoud, along with several other Arab American leaders, refused to meet with Joe Biden altogether in January.
US State-funded Voice of America has even begun covering the departure of Arab-Americans from the Democratic Party, publishing an article entitled ‘Biden won’t push for Gaza ceasefire, Trump may win because of it’, in which they report that Arab-Americans who formerly voted Democrat feel “pain and betrayal, white-hot rage and a powerful aversion to casting a ballot for Biden”.
In a nation of some 3.7 million Arab citizens, according to data collected by the Arab American Institute, this seemingly small minority group could make a huge difference to the Biden campaign come election time.
In addition to Arab Americans, who are a majority Christian population, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has released data indicating that there are some 2 million registered Muslim voters in the United States. Of both populations, which are often mistakenly confused as having a majority overlap, their discontent with the Biden administration’s handling of the war on Gaza has been widely expressed.
As has been previously noted, Joe Biden managed to win the State of Michigan during the 2020 Presidential election by a slim margin of 150,000 votes. This time around there is said to be over 206,000 Muslim-American registered voters in Michigan and many of them voted Democrat in 2020.
Also to be factored into the equation is that Arab American leaders have and are playing a role at speaking to their fellow Americans from all walks of life, convincing them to adopt the same stance against Joe Biden; in order to hold him accountable for what he has permitted Israel to do in Gaza.
Some 80% of Americans more generally have expressed their desire for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. It is now Israel and the US Biden administration standing alone, with the exception of a few small island countries, at the UN on the question of a ceasefire. This as the US again used its veto power at the UN Security Council to slap down an Algerian proposal calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.