Trump or Harris? Gaza war drives many Arab and Muslim voters to Jill Stein

Dearborn, Michigan – On a sunny but frigid afternoon, dozens of protesters stood on a street corner in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn and chanted against Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as well as her Republican rival Donald Trump.

“Trump and Harris, you can’t hide, no votes for genocide,” a keffiyeh-clad young woman chanted on a bullhorn. The small but spirited crowd echoed her words.

If not Trump or Harris for the next United States president, then who?

The Abandon Harris campaign that organised the protest has endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, demonstrating the growing disconnect that many Arabs and Muslims feel with both major parties over their support for Israel.

Stein has been gaining popularity in Arab and Muslim communities amid Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and Lebanon, public opinion polls show.

While the Green Party candidate is extremely unlikely to win the presidency, her supporters view voting for her as a principled choice that can set a foundation for greater viability for third-party candidates in the future.

Hassan Abdel Salam, a co-founder of the Abandon Harris campaign, said more and more voters are adopting the group’s position of ditching the two major candidates and backing Stein.

“She best exemplifies our position against genocide,” Abdel Salam said of the Green Party candidate, who has been vocal in supporting Palestinian rights.

The strategy

Abandon Harris has been urging voters against supporting the vice president over her pledge to continue arming Israel amid the US ally’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon, which have killed more than 46,000 people.

Abdel Salam praised Stein as courageous and willing to take on both major parties despite recent attacks, especially by Democrats.

For the Abandon Harris campaign, backing Stein is not only about principles; it is part of a broader strategy.

“Our goal is to punish the vice president because of the genocide, to then take the blame for her defeat to send a signal to the political landscape that you should never have ignored us,” Abdel Salam told Al Jazeera.

In addition to the endorsement of the Abandon Harris campaign, Stein has won the backing of the American Arab and Muslim Political Action Committee (AMPAC), a Dearborn-based political group.

“After extensive dialogue with both the Harris and Trump campaigns, we found no commitment to addressing the urgent concerns of our community, particularly the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon,” the group said in a statement last month.

“The need for a ceasefire remains paramount for Muslim and Arab American voters, yet neither campaign has offered a viable solution.”

AMPAC added that it is backing Stein “based on her steadfast commitment to peace, justice, and a call for immediate ceasefires in conflict zones”.

With support for Stein on the rise in Michigan’s Arab and Muslim communities, where President Joe Biden won overwhelmingly in 2020, Democrats are noticing and pushing back.

Jill Stein supporter Wissam Charafeddine. Support for the Green Party candidate has increased in Dearborn, where Arab Americans are angry at US support for Israel [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]

Democrats sasaran Stein

The Harris campaign released an advertisement aimed at Arab Americans in southeast Michigan that took a dig at third-party candidates.

In the commercial, Deputy Wayne County Executive Assad Turfe says Harris would help end the war in the Middle East as the camera zooms in on a cedar tree – Lebanon’s national symbol – hanging from his necklace.

Turfe warns voters in the video that Trump would bring more chaos and suffering if elected. “We also know a vote for a third party is a vote for Trump,” he says.

Stein’s supporters, however, categorically reject that argument.

Palestinian comedian and activist Amer Zahr, who is running for a school board seat in Dearborn, argued that Democrats should be grateful that Stein is on the ballot and slammed the argument that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump as “paternalistic”.

“It assumes that if Stein wasn’t there, we’d be out there voting for you,” Zahr told Al Jazeera.

“If it really were two parties and there were no other parties, I think most of the Arab Americans who are voting for Stein would vote for neither. And in fact, if there were really only two choices, a lot of the people who are voting for Stein right now out of anger for the Democratic Party might go for Trump.”

Zahr, who was on a shortlist of candidates that Stein considered for her vice presidential pick, also dismissed the argument that a vote for the Green Party would be “wasted” because it is unlikely to win.

“I mean news flash: Voters vote for people who speak to their issues,” he told Al Jazeera, praising Stein for standing up to Israel and running as an “openly anti-genocide” candidate.

“Jill Stein, to me, is a noble vehicle to express our deep anger and the distrust and betrayal that we feel at the ballot box.”

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a separate commercial last month also proclaiming that “a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump”.

Stein has pushed back against that claim, slamming the Democrats’ attacks as a “fear campaign and smear campaign”.

She told Al Jazeera’s The Take podcast last week that the Democratic Party is coming after her instead of “addressing the issues like the genocide, which has lost Kamala Harris so many voters”.

‘I am sick of the two-party system’

While foreign policy may not be a top priority for the average US voter, numerous Arab and Muslim Americans interviewed by Al Jazeera over the past week said Israel’s assault on Lebanon and Gaza is their number one issue.

And so, with both major-party presidential candidates voicing uncompromising support for Israel, some voters are looking to Stein to break away from the two parties and forge a new path.

“I am sick of the two-party system and their power play politics, where on both sides, they are unanimously agreeing on this bipartisan issue that they support Israel,” said Haneen Mahbuba, an Iraqi American voter.

With a keffiyeh-patterned scarf that says “Gaza” in Arabic around her neck, the bespectacled 30-year-old mother raised her voice in anger as she described the violence Israel is committing in Gaza and Lebanon with US support.

Mahbuba told Al Jazeera that she feels “empowered” by voting for Stein because she is not giving in to the “fearmongering” about the need to vote for the “lesser of two evils”. She added that it is Harris’s voters who are wasting their votes.

“They’re giving away their vote when they vote for the Democratic Party that has continuously dismissed us, disregarded us, silenced us and seen us as less important,” Mahbuba said.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks during a rally in Dearborn, Michigan, on October 6 [File: Rebecca Cook/Reuters]

‘Indistinguishable’

Stein ran for president in 2012, 2016 and 2020, but she failed to make a major impression on the elections.

However, Stein’s Arab and Muslim supporters say this year, the Green Party can put a dent in the results to show the power of voters who prioritise Palestinian human rights.

Wissam Charafeddine, an activist in the Detroit area, said backing Stein is the right choice both morally and strategically.

“I’m the type of voter who believes that voting should be based on values and not politics. This is the core of democracy,” he said.

Charafeddine, who has voted for Stein in the past, added that Arab Americans are fortunate to be concentrated in a swing state where their votes are amplified.

“When we vote for Dr Jill Stein, we are not only voting [for] the right, moral platform that actually is most aligned with our values, interests, desires and priorities, but also it accounts for the Palestine vote and to the anti-genocide vote,” Charafeddine told Al Jazeera.

Bottomline, advocates say the growing support for Stein shows that many Arab and Muslim voters have reached a tipping point with both the major parties’ support for Israel.

“Harris and Trump simply are indistinguishable to us because they passed a certain threshold that we cannot ever buy into the logic of lesser of two evils,” Abdel Salam told Al Jazeera.

“These are two genocidal parties, and we cannot put our hand with either of them.”