Arab and Muslim American voters face a “simple choice” between Biden’s inhumanity and Trump’s edgy politics
President Joe Biden’s abandonment of humanity and support for the massacre of thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip, providing weapons and political cover for Israel’s indiscriminate massacres, has provoked Arab and Muslim American voters to abandon him in the 2024 Presidential election. Arab and Muslim voters gave Biden an edge to defeat former President Donald Trump. But while Trump banned immigrants from six Muslim countries that embraced terrorism (Iran, Syria, Yemen, etc) the ban did not apply to the remaining 44 Muslim countries that had working border security systems
By Ray Hanania
The biased left-wing American news media, which favors the reelection of President Joe Biden next year, knows it has a big problem in the face of Arab and Muslim American anger over Israel’s violence in Gaza.
In what can be termed a “moral flight,” Arab and Muslim Americans, who helped Biden win several key swing states during his 2020 presidential election victory over Donald Trump, have vowed to abandon Biden over his failure to restrain Israel and stop it indiscriminately bombing Gazan civilians in response to the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
However, according to numerous news and opinion articles published in the past few weeks, this Arab and Muslim flight will not come to pass as they have no other realistic options and will likely be forced to return to Biden in November next year. But that is based on the assumption that all Arabs and Muslims see Trump as having done more to harm their communities than Biden.
While Trump certainly ostracized Arabs and Muslims during his pursuit of Israel’s agenda, including pushing for the Abraham Accords, the truth is that the former president’s policies were not as bad as Biden’s failure to act on Gaza, which has resulted in terrible suffering for the 2.3 million Palestinians living there. More than 17,000 civilians have been massacred by Israel’s assault in Gaza and of that nearly 6,000 are women and children.
How does anyone argue that murdering innocent women and children is better than political policies that tried to block the entrance of extremists and violent offenders into the United States from six of the world’s 50 Muslim nations because those six countries lacked security protocols?
The six banned Muslim nations embraced terrorism or lacked effective border security protocols including Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Trump expanded the ban to other non-Muslim nations that also had poor border security of embraced terrorism including Venezuela (limited to government officials), North Korea, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria and Tanzania.
The pro-Biden leftwing news media simply lied about Trump’s “Muslim ban” falsely asserting that it was against all 50 Muslim countries. In fact, Muslim travel to and from the United States remained robust during the so-called “Muslim Ban” because only certain nations were targeted, despite the lies from the news media.
An “Abandon Biden” campaign was launched last week to galvanize Arab and Muslim voters into opposing his reelection bid. They have a key say in some crucial swing states — including Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania — that Biden barely won in 2020 and that he must win again in order to remain in office.
Media logic implies Arab and Muslim voters will only harm themselves by abandoning Biden and that realization will ultimately force them to vote for him again. But the media does not understand the depths of Arab and Muslim anger over Biden’s failure to restrain Israel. The Biden administration has effectively given Israel the mandate to abandon international laws and human rights to carpet-bomb Gaza, killing thousands of civilians, including more than 5,000 children, and injuring tens of thousands more.
Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have not only failed to restrain Israel and force it to adhere to international norms, but the US is also financing Israel’s war machine, providing the weaponry that is being used to kill civilians. Worse is that Biden and Blinken have defended Israel’s conduct and rejected the claims made by Palestinians, the UN and many world leaders that it is engaging in war crimes.
Every nation has a right to respond to terrorism and violence against its civilians. But it must do so within the parameters of international law. Israel, however, is acting outside of those internationally defined parameters.
You do not kill everyone in a city as a means to take out alleged criminals. What Israel has done in Gaza is all about revenge and expanding its anti-Arab policies, with the aim of preventing Palestinians from ever achieving statehood.
Arabs and Muslims cannot forgive Biden for allowing this to go as far as it has, creating what many activists are now calling the “Gaza Holocaust.” Palestinian civilians are being killed by Israel at a pace described as almost unprecedented in the annals of world conflict.
What some Arabs and Muslims in America see — and that the news media and Biden supporters seem to ignore — is that Trump is a far better alternative if the choice is between his “bad policies” and the massacres committed by Israel on Biden’s watch.
Large sections of the mainstream American news media seem to hate Trump more than they hate the killing of innocent civilians. They care more about protecting Biden than protecting women and children in Gaza.
Despite the argument that their anger will eventually be calmed due to a lack of options, the Arab and Muslim American communities do actually have alternatives. They have many choices. They could vote for Trump, who is leading the Republican presidential field going into next year’s primaries. They could refuse to vote for either Trump or Biden and reject America’s flawed two-party system by supporting one of the several third-party candidates, despite knowing they cannot win. Or they could simply not vote in the presidential election at all.
One persuasive argument Arabs and Muslims in America have come to recognize is that both the national Republican leadership and the national Democratic leadership embrace policies that undermine the interests of their communities.
So, where will the anti-Biden damage really be felt?
The media does not understand the depths of Arab and Muslim anger over Biden’s failure to restrain Israel. — Ray Hanania
Biden will likely lose the election if Arabs and Muslims continue their opposition and refuse his expected preelection promises. But their impact will also be felt if they target pro-Biden Democrats and shift their support to other candidates.
In Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, for example, Rep. Sean Casten, a Biden-supporting Democrat, has abandoned the Arab and Muslim communities. During next year’s elections, Casten is vulnerable to both a Democratic challenger and, should he win his party’s primary, a moderate Republican. Casten is being challenged by progressive Democrat Mahnoor Ahmad in the March 19, 2024 Democraic Primary election.
So, while Biden will suffer, the real victims of this moral flight of Arab and Muslim Americans will be Democratic legislators at the state level.
The truth is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have ever really supported Arab and Muslim Americans’ political rights or their communities’ needs. History is replete with policies of both parties rejecting their inclusion in the US Census and failing to provide them with the same level of funding that all other ethnic and religious groups receive.
If Biden wins, his party will certainly be weaker at the state level. If Trump wins, the former president, who faces 91 criminal indictments, will only help to lead the Republican Party to monumental collapse. However, as long as civilians continue to die in Gaza, the fates of the Republican and Democrat parties in America are of little relative concern.
- Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at www.Hanania.com. X: @RayHanania A version of this column appeared in Arab News Newspaper Dec. 6, 2023.
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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