Many Arab and Muslim Americans across the country are making a final push to get ballots cast for Kamala Harris for president – despite other members of their communities being strongly opposed to a Harris administration given the White House’s support for Israel.
Haitham Wahab, a resident of Dearborn, Michigan, and a Lebanese American who has been canvassing for the Harris-Walz campaign, said one of the best ways to effect change is “from the inside, through coalition-building”.
“As an Arab American, you should definitely vote,” Wahab said. “Voting for Harris is the best possible choice to preserve the maximum political power of the Arab American voter.”
That idea, that a vote for Harris is a strategic one if not necessarily a moral one, is being pushed by a number of advocates trying to turn fellow Arab and Muslim Americans out to the polls.
“We deeply share the pain you experienced this past year from the unimaginable destruction in Gaza, and most recently in Lebanon, which has left us heartbroken and at times deeply traumatized,” Arab Americans for Harris-Walz said in a statement last month. “We come to you as fellow Arabs, many of us once uncommitted voters, asking you to join us in committing to progress.”
A group of Arab American leaders endorsed Harris on Monday in Michigan – the swing state with the US’s largest Arab American population. The endorsement came on the heels of a survey, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit and YouGov, that showed Arab American voters favoring Donald Trump over Harris.
Wahab told the Guardian about the “hard conversations” he’s had over the past few months while knocking on doors of Arab and Muslim residents still on the fence about voting.
“The reason why they are hard is because … this community is experiencing real pain,” he said, referring to the area’s many Arab residents with family members overseas in harm’s way as Israel continues to strike Gaza and Lebanon.
Wahab added: “For the rest of America, what’s happening in the Middle East is foreign policy, but for these guys, it’s domestic policy.”
The Biden administration has offered “rock-solid, unwavering support” for Israel – a major point of contention among Arab and Muslim voters who have implored the White House to take a tougher stance on Israel, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the last year.
Harris, the vice-president to Joe Biden for the past four years, has been criticized for not breaking with Biden when it comes to her Middle East foreign policy. Harris’s campaign also rejected pleas from activists to allow a Palestinian to speak on stage at the Democratic national convention this summer.
Before Biden dropped out of the election and Harris became the Democratic nominee, activists managed to get nearly 700,000 people to vote “Uncommitted” or similar in the Democratic primaries, in protest against Biden and in an effort to move him on Israel.
Now, leaders of the movement are urging their base to vote against Trump, even though they have not explicitly endorsed Harris.
Among their arguments, they point to Project 2025. In a video, the Uncommitted co-founder Lexis Zeidan calls the blueprint – drafted by conservative strategists for a potential Trump presidency – an “objectively insane document”.
“The current administration’s handling of this genocide has been beyond enraging and demoralizing. But the reality is, it can get worse,” Zeidan says in the video. “No one wants a Trump presidency more than [Israeli prime minister] Netanyahu, because that is his ticket to wiping Palestine off the map.”
An ad targeting Uncommitted voters in Michigan features one of the movement’s leaders, Abbas Alawieh, imploring voters to consider Trump’s potential Palestine policy. “Project 2025 calls for the elimination of all humanitarian aid to the West Bank and Gaza, and here in the US, Trump plans to silence anyone who stands up for Palestinian rights,” he says.
🚨 Trump's in Dearborn today, spreading lies aimed at Michigan's Arab and Muslim communities. Help raise $50K to make sure Uncommitted Democratic primary voters in Michigan see this anti-Trump ad before Tuesday's election: https://t.co/FL81KcSw1P pic.twitter.com/KG6VbGb3fD
— Waleed Shahid 🪬 (@_waleedshahid) November 1, 2024
The former Trump administration also has a track record of actions taken against Palestinian statehood, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing the city as Israel’s capital, despite Palestinian claims to part of it as their own future capital. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser said in March that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable” and to “move the people out and clean it up”.
Advocates are also urging their communities to remember Trump’s “Muslim ban”, which he vowed to restore if he wins in November.
Emgage Action, the political arm of a prominent Muslim American group that mobilizes Muslim American voters, formally endorsed Harris last month.
“To prevent Trump from returning to the White House, Emgage Action is endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz,” the group’s statement said. “This endorsement is not an agreement with Vice-President Harris on all issues, but rather, an honest guidance to our voters regarding the difficult choice they confront at the ballot box.”
Alzayat, a first-generation Arab and Muslim American and former US diplomat who worked on Middle East policy, said if voters, including those from within his own community, don’t invest in Harris, who may cut her own path on Middle East policy, they run the risk of electing “somebody who’s going to be worse”.
“If somebody is so upset at this moment because of what’s happening to the Palestinians, you wouldn’t go and bring somebody who’s going to be worse because of that anger and hurt,” Alzayat said. “You invest in a candidate that at least is going to give you an opportunity. And we think Kamala Harris will give us a better chance to advance an anti-war agenda.”
