I’m not feeling sorry for anyone in the Democratic Party regarding this simmering 2024 election issue. Still, it should cause some people to realize how insane their base has become. It goes beyond the woke lexicon that’s often dismissed, and rightfully so, by most. These people are pro-terrorist—and there’s a discussion on how to cater to these people, including possibly placing conditions on new military aid to Israel, which is currently eradicating Hamas’ influence in the Gaza Strip.
The problem is that Democrats cannot ignore these people. Too many dot key counties along the Rust Belt in states that Joe Biden must win next year, specifically in Michigan and Minnesota. Biden’s support for Israel is creating a Muslim problem for Democrats, whose anti-Israel and antisemitic advocacy is enhanced by the legions of white progressives who only see this as another exercise in intersectionality proselytizing. These Muslims are not voting for Donald Trump, but many are threatening to sit out next year.
Politico has a lengthy piece in Dearborn, Michigan, the mecca for Arab Americans, where support for Palestinian rights unites the older and younger generations here. It’s also a piece that mentions erroneously how this community thinks there’s a genocide being committed against their people. There is a difference between collateral damage and intentional killing. Israel has gone beyond to ensure civilian deaths are kept to a minimum, whereas Hamas is trying to maximize it by refusing to let civilians leave Gaza City. The number of differences between the two sides is many and defined, but the media continues to hound Israel for their justified war to eradicate the terror group. It’s Hamas that is committing war crimes in Gaza, not Israel, but don’t mention that to this community, which is a voter bloc that could take out Biden in 2024 (via Politico):
I’ve had the same conversations with all my Muslims friends and family members over Thanksgiving. Not a single one says they will vote for Biden again, having voted for him in 2020. Every single one says it’s because of Gaza. Dems need to understand that the anger is very real. https://t.co/xuiPSo60p7
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 25, 2023
These residents here in Dearborn, which borders Detroit-proper, and Farmington Hills, which is a half-hour drive northwest of Detroit, are a diverse lot — young and old, Christian and Muslim, representing a mix of families whose ancestors arrived here almost a century ago from Lebanon and historic Palestine and those who landed here just a decade or two ago fleeing conflicts in Iraq, Yemen and Syria, among other countries.
What unites the Arab American residents in metro Detroit at this moment is a sense of abandonment by their representatives in government. As the official Palestinian death toll surpasses 10,000, residents feel blindsided by what they see as the White House’s apathy towards Palestinian lives and its unconditional material support for Israel’s military operations. According to a new poll from the Arab American Institute, support for Biden’s reelection in 2024 has plummeted by 42 percent among Arab Americans, who typically vote blue. Nationwide, 68 percent of Arab Americans support a ceasefire in Gaza and think the U.S. should stop sending military supplies to Israel.
Many Arab Americans in this swing state of Michigan, who overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020, say they are considering sitting out the next presidential election.
“We’ve never experienced something like this before,” says Takween Dwaik, a 53-year-old mental health counselor, who grew up in the Al-Shati refugee camp in Northern Gaza, which was recently bombed. Some of her siblings and their families have been injured by airstrikes while evacuating. Dwaik has also lost a nephew and her husband lost an infant grand-niece to the shelling. “The thing that hurts so bad is that the weapons get paid for with our tax money.
“They’re using our tax money to kill our loved ones.”
Hamas is terrorist trash, who garner an astonishing amount of support from the Palestinian population. The new polling delivers a kill shot to any narrative about a two-state solution. You cannot live peacefully when one side thinks daily about how to kill you.
The Washington Post has more on the internal debates occurring among Congressional Democrats:
Senate Democrats are internally debating aid for Israel as they face growing pressure from the party’s base to abandon its traditionally unconditional support for the country, whose handling of the war in Gaza has been fiercely criticized.
[…]
Now, there’s concern that the aid is riddled with moral and political challenges for Democrats, who are raising red flags about Israel’s war tactics, which have killed more than 13,300 people in Gaza in the campaign to eradicate Hamas.
So some Democrats have called for placing conditions on military aid to Israel as a way to hold it accountable without dropping their support for the Israeli government.
[…]
Democratic lawmakers have long been staunch supporters of Israel, but policies embraced by its right-wing government — including settler expansion in the West Bank, checkpoints that limit Palestinian movements and the effective abandonment of a two-state solution — have led some to question the continuation of unconditional support.
Democrats who support guardrails around the Israel aid argue that they would provide credibility to Biden when privately pressuring the Israeli government on its policies. Democrats who oppose conditions say the limits would undermine the president if the party isn’t united.
Biden would probably have to certify that Israel is meeting those conditions, said one Democratic strategist: “That puts him in a bad place domestically, it puts him in a bad place with the Arab world, and it puts him in a bad place with the Israelis. It hurts Joe Biden.”
And Joe Biden doesn’t have the mental acuity or the political acumen to pull that off. The man couldn’t secure the release of all the American hostages held by Hamas when he supposedly spearheaded this current and fragile ceasefire. It’s not a hard choice: Israel is good, and Hamas is evil. One is an ally, the other an enemy of Israel and the United States. One’s continued existence ensures stability in the region; the other would turn it into a jihadi super factory. This Muslim problem is solely a Democratic one, and like with how they handled their white working-class voter issue, watch them botch it and the next election.