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October 28, 2024 - 1:00pm
Selling out Madison Square Garden may not have been Donald Trump’s most encouraging moment of the weekend. At a rally in Michigan, several Muslim and Arab Americans were invited on stage to endorse the Republican nominee. Community leader Imam Belal Alzuhair said: “Muslims stand with president Trump because he promises peace.”
This explicit endorsement is backed up by a recent poll which suggests that the ongoing war in Gaza is accelerating the decade-long trend of Arab Americans shifting toward the Republican Party. This week, Arab News and YouGov found Trump winning 45% to 43% among Arab Americans, marking a ten-point rise in support for the Republican nominee compared to the previous presidential election and a 23-point increase for the GOP since 2008.
This voting bloc leaned Republican prior to the 9/11 attacks, when George W. Bush won about 45% of the vote in 2000, but that dynamic drastically changed in the years that followed, with Democrat John Kerry winning the support of 76% of Arab Americans in 2004.
But more recently, Arab Americans have gradually drifted back to the Right, rising from 22% support for Republican John McCain in 2008 to 35% for Trump in 2020. Donald Trump’s ban on travel from some Muslim-majority countries may have slowed the movement of this demographic toward the GOP, but nonetheless his support with this group recovered from 26% in 2016 to its current high of 45%.
The GOP’s realignment on foreign policy and Trump’s criticism of the war in Iraq likely played a role, as did the Democrats’ embrace of progressive stances on issues of gender and sexuality. For instance, Arab and Muslim parents played a significant role in protests against LGBT-focused school curriculum in 2022.
However, the 10-point jump over the past election cycle is an outlier, indicating that recent events in the Middle East — and Democrats’ support for Israel — intensified Arab Americans’ Rightward drift. While both Kamala Harris and Trump support Israel, Democrats have occupied the White House over the past year while the US has funded Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, landing both Harris and President Joe Biden directly in the crosshairs of pro-Palestine activists.
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SubscribePeace is part of it. That and Arabs are not as enamored with the gender woo as the typical Dem leftist.
Peace has no part of it, actually. Nor do the Arab-Americans have any part of it. They’re just playing the pols for their own cultural self-interests. Which is OK, of course, as it’s what citizens of this once-great country are *supposed to do* when deciding on whom to vote.
No, just Trump. He doesn’t have an AIPAC handler assigned to him like all of congress does. He’s promised no new wars.
You mean we’ll all just sit back and take it when China launches the promised WWIII in 2027?
Most people in the Middle East just want peace, with the notable exception of a large Palestinian faction.
Biden’s State Department seems to believe in half measures, and Iranian appeasement. Neither are creating peace, and the Ayatollahs’ theocracy is hardly popular.
Finish off Hamas, Hezbollah, and IJ, and more than a few Muslims will be grateful. Allow them to fester and stew, and they’ll be a chronic infection for everyone.
You mean, besides all of those who are committed to the eradication of Israel?
Since the Iranians as a regime are hostile to mainstream Arab states, and the expat community of Persians hates the regime (as indeed it would appear do those unfortunate to remain in Iran), staunch opposition to Iran is probably a vote winner among Persian and Arab constituencies in the US.
The arabs are delusional if they believe the Republicans won’t support Israel even more than the democrats have been. Trump has a close relationship with Netanyahu, and the unconditional support of Israel fits right in there with the Republican base of Christians and the right.
I detect a possible mis-interpretation. Maybe Arab-Americans are most interested in peace and quiet so they can do business and raise their families. The Palestinian cause has kept alive a radical version of Islam, violent and cruel, that everyone is sick of. The American dream is a much more attractive idea. They wouldn’t be the first group to leave the troubles of the Old World behind when they started to feel part of the USA.
If Arab Americans understood how subtle Trump’s policy on the Middle East actually is, they would support him in very large numbers. Trump fully understands that Israel controls the US and that the only way to get justice for the Palestinians is to let Israel “win”, i.e., create a single state encompassing Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The Israelis can’t kill all the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and will ultimately have to grant full civil and human rights to those who survive. In other words, a post apartheid single state solution that will be known as Israel/Palestine.