President Biden is a hardcore Zionist and proudly brags about “standing with Israel.”
If Biden wants to “stand with Israel” in his pajamas, fine by me….but don’t tell your Arab-American constituents that you “stand with Israel” and expect to be re-elected, precisely because of the slight margins Joe Biden won some states in 2020.
Let’s take a look:
In the pivotal United States election of 2020, Arabs and Muslims were instrumental in getting out the vote for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
Now, in November 2023, a month into Israel’s deadly war on Gaza, this small but growing bloc of American voters might not be as reliable for the Democratic Party as they were three years ago, with a recent poll showing Arab American support of Biden has dropped to 17 percent.
After Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on 7 October, in which more than 1,400 Israelis were killed, it was largely expected that the Biden administration would respond with firm support for Israel.
However, as the days and weeks wore on and Israel’s relentless bombing and stifling siege on Gaza continued, many Americans, particularly Arabs and Muslims, believe Biden should be doing much more to pressure the Israeli government to curb its attacks.
“Though Arabs and Muslims constitute a relatively small bloc of voters… their votes do have the potential to impact elections”
A spike in outrage over Gaza, a decline in support for Biden
Though there have been many episodes of Israeli violence towards Palestinians over the years, this one seems to have stirred an international public outcry unlike others. More than 10,000 Palestinians, including over 4,400 children, have been killed so far.
“It was the heartache and the heartbreak, not just among Palestinians, but of people across the board. This is big. It hurts. This is something we’ve not seen before,” James Zogby, a veteran pollster and founder of the Arab American Institute (AAI), told The New Arab (TNA).
Noting other conflicts in the region, such as Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and its war with Lebanon in 2006, he said, “This one somehow seemed unique because of the way that people were reacting to it, the things people were saying, and the people making statements about what they were going to do in 2024.”
It was this widespread condemnation of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza pushed Zogby to conduct a poll to assess the sense of the community’s frustration in numbers. Though he expected to see some drop in support, what he didn’t expect was how much it had fallen.
Just 17 percent of Arab Americans polled said they would vote for Biden in 2024, down from 59 percent in 2020, a 42 percent drop.
Biden’s foreign policy failure in the Middle East
“I was very much surprised. I’d never seen a decline like that,” Zogby said.
Emgage, a Muslim voting advocacy group, found an even starker drop in support, with just over 5 percent of Muslims voters saying they would vote for Biden, down from 80 percent in the previous election.
“We needed to put numbers to those sentiments. The data captured that feeling of betrayal,” Mohamed Gula, national organising director for Emgage, told TNA.
He explained that this sense of betrayal comes after Muslims organised to get out the vote for Biden, making them feel like they were part of the political process. Unlike former President Donald Trump, who had enacted what was known as the Muslim ban, Biden gave the impression that he would address their concerns.
“It was like a friend or family member had betrayed you.”
Sabiha Khan, a longtime Democratic voter in southern California, told TNA that she, along with her friends and family, will not be voting for Biden again. “He took us for granted,” she said.
