As Israel launches the latest strikes against Gaza, Syria and the West Bank in the war against Hamas, protests expand in the US. The latest clash came in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood Saturday evening as thousands of pro-Palestinians blocked intersections and paralyzed traffic in the “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine” demonstration.
Protests have taken place in various cities across the US, such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, and San Francisco. They have been organized by numerous groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, and Black Lives Matter.
The protesters condemn Israel for its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as the Israeli airstrikes that killed hundreds of civilians.
Some of the protesters have also accused the US government of being complicit in the Israeli aggression, by providing military and diplomatic support to Israel. But as President Biden throws his “unwavering” support behind Israel, he may be throwing away his chances of winning a second term of the presidency in 2024. “People are feeling that the Democratic Party is unequivocally, with a few exceptions, supporting Israel and not humanizing Palestinians and looking at the humanity of Palestinians.”
Ahmad Ramadan, a former Biden adviser now leading coalition efforts for the Michigan Democratic Party, called the state party chair to raise the alarm about the anger that he was hearing about. Michigan is one of the states that have the largest Muslim population, and it has the largest mosque in the US.
Biden’s repeated assertions of the US’s unstinting and virtually unlimited support of Israel—he has said “for as long as it takes”—is not going down well with American pro-Palestinian sympathizers and Muslim voters.
Michigan was instrumental in giving him the edge in the critical swing state in 2020. But now, Ramadan and other Democratic leaders in the state are hearing nothing but anger and frustration with Biden — and threats to not vote for him again.
In a series of more than a dozen roundtable discussions with Muslim community leaders in the two weeks since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, Ramadan said the main takeaway is that “people are very disappointed.” They say they “will not forget what President Biden did and why he lied to them,” he added.
“President Biden won with historic numbers in 2020. And I was proud to represent that, but the last two weeks have really shifted things,” Ramadan said. “I’ve also been getting calls from people saying, ‘I have blood on my hands because I got people out to support him during that campaign.’”
The 2024 race between Donald Trump, the presumed GOP candidate, and Joe Biden, promises to be a tight one, even tighter than in 2020, and the alienation that is occurring in Michigan may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine for Biden’s turnout come November 2024.
Muslim leaders are warning that down-ticket Democrats risk losing their support, too, if Biden and the party do not do more to combat Islamophobia and address the suffering of Palestinians in the war in Gaza.
“Joe Biden has single-handedly alienated almost every Arab-American and Muslim American voter in Michigan,” said state Rep. Alabas Farhat, a Democrat whose district includes Dearborn, which is home to one of the largest Muslim and Arab American communities in the country.
“The Biden administration and Democrats as a whole are going to have to do a lot of work to rebuild some level of trust with my community,” he said. “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”
Farhat said, “I think there’s going to be a lot of people that remember when you won Michigan years ago by a razor-thin margin, when you won Georgia with a razor-thin margin, when you won Arizona by a razor-thin margin — do not be surprised if there are consequences for your actions.”
Biden’s campaign say they are aware of the concerns and working to address them, pointing to Biden’s comments in his Oval Office address on Thursday night pushing for aid to Palestinian civilians, urging Israel “not to be blinded by rage” and directly telling Muslim Americans: “I see you. You belong.”
Is this enough to balance the unlimited military and diplomatic support that he has promised Israel? Not for Osama Siblani, the publisher of The Arab American News, based in Dearborn, who said at a protest there this week supporting Palestinians: “Let it be known that come [next] November, we will remember, Mr. President.” Adding, “I will never vote Biden again, if he stands on his head”.
