‘We warned you,’ Arab Americans in Michigan tell Kamala Harris

Dearborn, Michigan – When Fox News called Pennsylvania for Donald Trump in the early hours of Wednesday, all but confirming that he will be the next president of the United States, there were a handful of Arab activists left at a watch party in Dearborn, Michigan.

“Genocide is bad politics,” said one attendee at the event, which had Palestinian and Lebanese flags hanging outside its doors.

And as the reality of another Trump presidency set off anger and sorrow from many Democratic commentators, at the Arab American gathering there was a sense of indifference, if not vindication.

Democratic candidate Kamala Harris had ignored the community’s calls for reconsidering the unconditional US support for Israel. The vice president also continued to assert what she calls “Israel’s right to defend itself” despite the brutal atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.

Activist Adam Abusalah said part of the reason why Harris lost was her decision to side with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the expense of alienating the Democratic base — Arab and Muslim Americans as well as young people and progressives.

“It’s not our fault. They cannot vilify our community,” Abusalah said.

“We’ve been warning the Democrats for over a year now, and the Democrats continue to downplay what’s going on.”

He added that Harris’s main message to the Arab community was to warn of the dangers of a Trump presidency — a tactic that did not work as voters in the area were laser-focused on the ongoing war in the Middle East that affected many of them personally.

Dearborn shift

In the Arab-majority suburb of Dearborn, anger over Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza and Lebanon was tangible at the ballot box.

Harris lost the city to Trump by more than 2,600 votes. President Joe Biden beat Trump by more than 17,400 votes — that is more than a 20,000-vote swing that helped the Republican former president reclaim Michigan.

Candidate Jill Stein, who centred opposition to the war in her platform, also performed relatively well in the city, growing the Green Party’s support from 207 votes in 2020 to more than 7,600 this year.

Hussein Dabajeh, a Lebanese American political consultant in the Detroit area, noted that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat, significantly outperformed Harris in Dearborn, receiving more than 9,600 votes than the vice president.

“The Arab community said we’re anti-genocide. We supported the candidates that supported the community and we stood against the candidates that stood against the community,” Dabajeh told Al Jazeera.

It is unclear what a Trump presidency would mean for Arab and Muslim Americans and the country at large.

“I hope it’s something good. I hope the country comes together. I hope the Democrats are brought to their senses,” Dabajeh said.

While the former president has a long history of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant statements and policies, he has promised to bring “peace” to the region.

Trump also softened his antagonistic tone towards Arabs and Muslims as he courted their communities in Michigan.

He brought Arab and Muslim officials and imams to the stage during his rallies and called them “great people”.

Trump also visited Dearborn and listened first-hand to demands to end the war — something that Harris failed to do.

‘It doesn’t stop here’

Ali Alfarjalla, a 32-year-old Iraqi American real estate agent in Dearborn, said that for all his flaws, Trump represents a change from the Biden-Harris administration that has been unflinchingly supporting the Israeli assault on Gaza and Lebanon.

He stressed that the election is not the end of political engagement, saying that the community will press Trump to deliver on his promise of bringing peace to the region.

“It doesn’t stop here,” Alfarjalla told Al Jazeera.

“We have to work more to make sure our issues are heard — to stop the genocide in Gaza, stop the invasion of South Lebanon, and let Palestine have its own state. We’re hopeful about that. That’s our number one priority for this community.”

He also said that Harris supporters’ “lesser of two evils” pitch to the community backfired because many voters could not see a worse evil than the administration providing the bombs killing their families and destroying their hometowns.

While both major candidates back Israel, the Harris campaign committed a series of unforced errors that further alienated the community in Michigan and beyond, Arab American advocates have told Al Jazeera.

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, the Harris campaign rejected demands to allow a speech by a Palestinian speaker.

The Democratic candidate also turned down a request for a meeting by the Uncommitted Movement that was founded during the Democratic Primary process to pressure Biden over his unconditional support for Israel.

Unlike Trump, Harris has not visited Dearborn, the de-facto seat of Arab American political and financial power, during this campaign.

Instead, Harris met with handpicked Arab and Muslim “leaders” in Flint, about an hour north of Detroit, last month.

Moreover, Harris has campaigned with Liz Cheney in Michigan and welcomed the endorsement of her father, former President Dick Cheney — an architect of the so-called “War on Terror” that devastated the Middle East.

Numerous Arab American activists invoked Harris’s embrace of the Cheneys when underscoring her apparent disregard to their communities.

“We had Harris endorsed by neoconservatives like Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, and she’s openly campaigning with them and talking about how great they are,” Dearborn councilman Mustapha Hammoud told al Jazeera on Tuesday night as the results trickled in.

“You know what? I don’t think people are willing to vote for George W Bush, so you weren’t going to see people vote for Harris, either.”

Voters line up to cast their ballots in Hamtramck, Michigan, November 5 [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]

‘I smile and laugh at it’

Speaking under the Harris campaign sign last week, former President Bill Clinton claimed that Hamas “forces” Israel to kill Palestinian civilians and suggested that Zionism pre-dates Islam.

The campaign’s behaviour led some advocates to question whether the Democratic candidate has given up on the Arab community.

“Vice President Harris has shown over and over again that she actually doesn’t want our vote,” Uncommitted Movement leader Layla Elabed told Al Jazeera last week.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud also noted that the Harris campaign was hesitant to engage Arab Americans directly.

“They don’t want the heckling to occur. They don’t want to knock on the doors where they think the conversations are going to drag, and the votes might not be there,” the mayor told Al Jazeera before the elections.

On the policy front, Harris has not made any concrete promises to the community — even within the acceptable realm of mainstream politics — like reopening the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington, DC, or resuming funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

In contrast, Biden released platforms for Arab and Muslim Americans in 2020, promising domestic and foreign policy moves sought by the community — many of which went unfulfilled.

Bottom line, many Arab Americans say they already survived four years of Trump while many of their relatives in Palestine and Lebanon did not survive the Biden-Harris presidency.

They say they will continue to push for change, no matter who is in power.

Asked about some liberal social media users attacking Arab Americans and blaming them for Harris’s defeat, Alfarjalla said many people in the community have survived war and adversity, so they are not concerned with what others say.

“I smile and laugh at it,” he said.