My Arab American family’s debate over voting for Kamala Harris

Expanding access to absentee voting in Michigan has brought a new tradition for my family – before each election, we gather after Sunday dinner, get various endorsements and voter guides, debate the races, and each vote.

With knots of anxiety in my stomach, my family members from three different households sat down with their ballots last weekend to deliberate on the best choices, saving the presidential race for last.

Even with similar political leanings and bellies full of salmon and tabouli, we knew this would be a contentious debate.

Why so indecisive

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be that difficult to choose a candidate for president.

These are far from normal circumstances.

For many Arab Americans, the presidential race is an agonizing decision, made increasingly impossible by an expanding, US-funded war in Gaza and Lebanon that continues to get bloodier, continues to expand into scale and carnage, and it continues to stream live on social media in traumatic detail — and it continues to move closer and closer to the Syrian villages from which my family emigrated in the 1970s.

Our options:

A Republican campaign that continues to grow bolder in its rhetoric of blatant and open bigotry and xenophobia.
A Democratic campaign that continues to thumb its nose at Arab and Muslim voters begging for a sign of anti-war intentions.
A pair of third-party candidates who have fully embraced Arab American voters, often literally, showing them up at community functions and telling them everything they want to hear — except that they can actually win.

There is a bitterness, a resentment that has been burning and building steadily for more than a year in Arab American communities. With every glance at the screens in their palms come vivid memories of the horrors of an absurdly unbalanced war funded by their own tax dollars.

HOSPITALS, UNIVERSITY and residential buildings reduced to dust, frantic search the rubble for survivorsBOYS rummaging through garbage dumps for food, refugees burned alive, decapitated infantsentire villages and ancient landmarks of historical and religious significance wiped off the map.

Cold and contradictory backlash from the Biden administration persisted throughout the year as the number of civilian deaths skyrocketedand finally reached a plateau only because counting the dead has become impossible.

There were many moments of hope—thousands of Americans students taking over their campuses in protest. High-ranking federal officials resign for US support for the war. The president himself stepped aside for a younger, more compassionate candidate — with two immigrant parents.

But students would finally be silenced. Dissenting voices from powerful places would be quietly replaced. And replacing the president on the ballot has so far failed to draw a path forward that looks different from the devastating status quo.

The resulting exhaustion, depression, and anger leave many Arab Americans, as well as their friends and neighbors, unable to confidently fill in a circle on the presidential ballot.

Trump’s case

No one at Sunday’s table made a case for former President Donald Trump.

But some prominent Arab Americans have made this extraordinary leap, most notably the mayors of Hamtramck and Dearborn Heights.

Both said Trump would bring peace.

He must have forgotten that nine days into his presidency, Trump authorized a botched counterterrorism raid in Yemen. which killed 25 civilians. At least 86 Yemeni civilians are said to have been killed in airstrikes and raids during Trump’s presidency, according to independent monitoring groups.

It’s hard to imagine that the mayors forgot that in 2017 Trump banned immigrants from Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Iraq and Iran.

Or that he used “Palestinian” as an insult on the debate stage. Or that he called Biden let Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “finish the job” in Gaza. Or that he promised somehow deport those student protesters demanding a free Palestine.

They certainly haven’t forgotten Trump’s politics the separation of children from their parents at the southern borderor ultimate disgrace – his debate stage supports that immigrants were eating their Ohio neighbors’ pets.

When Mayor Dearborn Heights joined Trump on stage in Novi last monthan image that the campaign had circulated appeared on large screens, showing a group of Pakistani men dressed in traditional clothing burning an American flag with text that read: “Meet your new neighbors if Kamala wins.“

I know many Arab-Americans will vote for Trump, but not without drawing the ire of friends and relatives who value logic and self-respect.

Still, Trump seems to view those supporters as assets rather than liabilities, as he sometimes feels. for Arab American Democrats who want to get behind Harris.

The case of Harris

“So many innocent lives lost, desperate, hungry people fleeing again and again for safety. The extent of the suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war so that Israel is safe, the hostages are freed, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”

This is Harris on Gaza at the Democratic National Convention this summer.

The specific recognition of Palestinian suffering and the promise of self-determination could have been a breakthrough moment, a sign of recognition that the Arabs under attack in the Middle East, the relatives, friends and others in whom we see ourselves, are worthy of human rights. and equal treatment.

Then word spread that party leaders had turned down a Palestinian American speaker at the convention, despite tireless efforts by Michigan delegates will promise a non-controversial speech.

And for many Arab Americans, that seemed to be the end of any meaningful efforts to bridge the gap between the campaign and Palestine supporters.

The campaign seemed to shift to other potential voting blocs, esp longtime conservatives who oppose Trump and may be swayed by Dick and Liz Cheney.

Meanwhile, the war in Gaza has spread to Lebanonwhere thousands of Michigan residents have close family ties, vacation homes, and business interests.

More Michigan residents were losing family members. Several turned to Trump out of sheer anger and a desire to punish the Democratic Party, rationally or not.

Yet, as my sister argued at that table, Harris, in stark contrast to Trump, never was accused of rape; he never fought revoke the right to abortion; never had called in other countries “shitholes”.;” he never asked the arrest of journalists or the deportation of the protesters; she is not known for common deception and she came to the defense of Detroit after Trump clearly insulted the city during a visit last month.

The case for the protest vote

Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent Cornel West each did warm, REPEATED and well informed overtures Arab Americans in Michigan.

They worked to win Arab-American votes, in person and in great detail, instead of insisting on their support as a matter of national security.

However, they simply cannot win and are unlikely to win the true goal of the independent candidate – winning 5% of the vote, nationally, which would make funds available to that party for federal elections in the next election cycle.

Even Ralph Nader, an Arab-American icon, never pulled more than 3% in Michigan as a third-party presidential candidate in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008.

It comes around

For most of this year, my parents had no intention of voting in this election. They were too angry. Too tired and exhausted from the pain and fear of a year of unchecked violence in the Middle East and the relentless onslaught of presidential campaign news, ads and robocalls.

They only asked for ballots at my insistence.

Arab American organizers have worked too hard too long to build voter turnout in Michigan for our family not to stop.

That’s what I expected him to do: to stay out of the presidential race as a quiet protest.

Instead, with his 11-year-old niece playing in the background, my father reversed course, persuaded by my sister’s impassioned pleas to vote to protect democracy and women’s bodily autonomy.

None of the major candidates, he said, seems willing to wield the power of the White House to bring peace to the Middle East. But for Americans, he surmised, one candidate is clearly the responsible choice over the other. And he filled in the circle next to the name Kamala Harris.

My mother, who usually doesn’t fall in line behind anyone, followed suit, resolutely if not enthusiastically.

I was stunned.

For months, I’ve been telling people that my family is being forced to make an impossible choice between self-respect with a third-party vote or wisdom with a Harris vote.

My parents found a way to make this choice with honor and conviction, and I felt extremely proud.

I have not yet completed the presidential portion of the ballot.

I am not quite as pragmatic and clear as my parents. But I’m working on it.

Khalil AlHajal is deputy editorial page editor at the Detroit Free Press. Contact: [email protected]. Send a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters and we can publish it online and in print.