By heeding the siren song of third-party candidates or staying home on Election Day, Arab and Muslim Americans would repeat a historic blunder.
In 2000 we were angry and alienated. Sanctions and bombings against Iraq, and their use “secret evidence” to deport Arab immigrants, marred Bill Clinton’s presidency. But just as now, the Palestinian suffering has mainly set us on fire.
At the Camp David summit in July 2000, Clinton failed to reach an agreement that would achieve the goal of a Palestinian state implicit in the 1993 Oslo Accords. Worse, on Election Day that year the second intifada against the Israeli occupation in full swing, causing an overwhelming and overwhelming impact disproportionate Palestinian civilian casualties.
Anger blinds many to the overwhelming dangers posed by former President Donald Trump.
Many Arab and Muslim Americans expressed dissatisfaction with the Clinton administration, which they had once strongly supported. by giving up the vice president, Al Gore, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000. Some, especially in the American Muslim community, voted for George W. Bush, who condemned secret evidence. Others stayed home. And many liberals like me voted for Ralph Nader, an Arab-American icon. Our defection from the Democrats was misguided: Al Gore lost one of the closest elections in US history, and the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq was a direct result.
Today there is opposition in my community to Vice President Kamala Harris stems mainly from the support of the Biden administration Israel’s brutal war of revenge in Gaza. Anger blinds many to the overwhelming dangers posed by former President Donald Trump, and to the fact that Harris would govern better — or at least not as damagingly — on every issue that interests us most.
Unable to stomach either candidate, many Arab Americans may stay home or vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein — choices that could potentially sway the outcome, especially in the state of Michigan. But anything short of a vote for Harris will in fact be a vote for Trump. There are more than 300,000 Arab Americans in Michigan. President Joe Biden won there in 2020 by about half of that, just over 150,000 to vote. Arab and Muslim Americans will also be a major factor in Pennsylvania, Georgia and elsewhere. With the election so close, every voter and non-voter will most likely contribute to the outcome.
Many in our community have the same concerns as they did a quarter century ago. We don’t want to be taken for granted. We want to “punish” Democrats’ excessive support for Israel and register dissent against American complicity in Palestinian suffering. We want a better Middle East policy. We want to cast a vote that we can live with.
I said all that in 2000 and embraced the folly of voting for Nader. I still sympathize with the impulse today. But a Trump victory is unlikely to teach Democrats a lesson about taking community for granted or about the dangers of excessive support for Israel. Instead, it will almost certainly deliver another devastating, self-inflicted blow to our own interests and priorities.
There is no issue of importance to us on which Harris’ views are not clearly preferable. Take immigration: One of Trump’s first moves after his inauguration in 2017 was his “Muslim ban,” which barred nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. While those horribly discriminatory policies were reversed by Biden and Trump promises to restore it to its former glory. Syrian, Yemeni, Sudanese and Afghan immigrants are are likely to lose their temporary protected status or “humanitarian parole” and facing Trump’s promise “bloody” mass deportations.
Trump’s entrenched and draconian attitude toward law enforcement and civil liberties also bodes extremely poorly for us.
A major Trump-inspired threat to Arab and Muslim American civil liberties is already underway. Republicans are pushing for legislation punish universities that do not do this sufficiently silencing pro-Palestinian protests by stripping them of federal support and ultimately even accreditation. Trump reportedly told donorsAccording to The Washington Post, he would deport pro-Palestinian protesters, who he said were part of a “radical revolution” that “must be stopped now.” He reportedly promised that if re-elected, he would “set that movement back 25 to 30 years.”
The Biden administration’s policy on Gaza has been indefensible. But Harris has been the most vocal senior official on the need for a ceasefire and the suffering of Palestinian civilians. And she has spoken out categorically on the need for the creation of a Palestinian state, which could pave the way for an end to the Israeli occupation.
Trump, on the other hand, has only expressed doubt about the practical feasibility of Palestinian statehood and has actively worked as president to prevent this. In January 2020, he released a ‘peace plan’ invited Israel would annex another 30% of the occupied West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, leaving any Palestinian entity completely surrounded by a greater Israel. Trump moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s sovereignty in that city and approved Israel’s annexation of the occupied Golan Heights from Syria.
For all their faults, it is impossible to imagine Harris or Biden doing such a thing. And any idea that Trump would have been more sympathetic to the Palestinians, or would have contained Israel, after the Hamas attacks on October 7 or the subsequent war in Gaza can only reflect a serious misunderstanding of his basic attitude. This is a man who has done that repeatedly uses the word ‘Palestinian’ as if it were a damning slur against his opponents.
Although the US Census historically and currently labels people with origins in the Middle East and North Africa, along with Europe, as “white,” Trump and his MAGA movement do not pretend to consider us “real Americans,” at least not those they claim to represent. For them we are the “enemy within.”
The idea that things can’t get any worse is remarkably naive. That certainly could be the case, especially for the Palestinians. And helping to re-elect – even by doing nothing – a president who is well known endorse Israeli annexation of much of the remaining West Bank would be an important step in that direction.
Anger, however justified, is not a political strategy. Arab and Muslim Americans must face the harsh reality that we, like everyone else, have a binary choice on November 5. There is an understandable desire to show our outrage by withholding support from Harris, but no matter how emotionally satisfying that would be. at the expense of our clearly shared interests, including securing Palestinian rights.
An experiment in American fascism, which is Trump’s undisguised agenda, cannot be a reasonable corrective to any grievance – not even the unspeakable carnage in Gaza. Arab and Muslim Americans must vote with our heads, not our hearts, and help elect the imperfect but demonstrably and clearly electable Kamala Harris.
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