In the ‘capital of Arab America’, voters plan to punish Harris for Gaza, Lebanon wars

Shortly after 1pm on Friday, a burly, bearded young man joined the handful of people gathered outside The Great Commoner restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan.

His message, from head-to-toe, was consistent. Wearing a “Trump 2024” cap and T-shirt, he posed for photographs with a banner reiterating his support for Republican candidate Donald Trump.

“My name is Hassan. I’m from Bint Jbeil,” he said, referring to a town in southern Lebanon nearly 6,000 miles away from Dearborn.

The message was loud, clear – and menacingly terse. “Trump 2024! I don’t have no more comment, that’s all I’m going to say. Trump 2024! And I’m Muslim so no one can tell me nothing,” he proclaimed.

When asked why Trump had snagged his vote, the Dearborn resident from Bint Jbeil circled back to the loop. “Because I support Trump. That’s all I’m going to say,” he repeated. “I don’t talk politics. I just support Trump.”

The buzz outside The Great Commoner was generated by the sudden announcement that Trump had made a last-minute campaign schedule change. The Republican presidential hopeful was making a pit stop in Dearborn, the nation’s largest Arab-majority city, as the statistical dead heat between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris has turned the swing state of Michigan into an electoral battleground.

With 54% of Dearborn’s 110,000 population identifying as having Middle Eastern or North African ancestry in the 2020 census, the Arab American vote is a critical demographic in must-win Michigan. In the 2016 race, Hillary Clinton lost Michigan to Trump by only 10,000 votes. Four years later, President Joe Biden won it back by 150,000 votes.

While the state’s rural areas and affluent white-majority suburbs tend to vote Republican, Dearborn was once considered a reliably Democratic city. But the brutal conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon have shattered Dearborn’s “blue wall” of Democratic support, with many enraged over the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Middle East crisis.

Ahead of the final weekend before Election Day, November 5, Trump made a brief appearance at The Grand Commoner, an iconic eatery owned by a Lebanese American family, where he met a small gathering of Arab American invitees.

“You’re going to have peace in the Middle East, but not with the clowns that you have running the US right now,” Trump told the gathering at the restaurant.

Trump has a fraught relationship with Arab and Muslim voters. Shortly after his January 2017 inauguration, he signed an executive order, dubbed the “Muslim ban”, that barred US entry to citizens of several Muslim-majority countries. Trump has voiced support for a similar travel ban if he is reelected this year.

But in his new avatar as Mideast peacemaker, Trump appears to have gained traction in some corners of this lively US Midwestern city crammed with Middle Eastern restaurants, bakeries and takeaway joints offering everything from shorbas and hummus-laced steaks to juicy baklavas and Egyptian funnel cakes.

A few blocks down the road from The Great Commoner on Michigan Avenue, a local Yemeni restaurant has its windows plastered with posters proclaiming, “For Peace Vote Trump” in English and Arabic.

‘Rapid response’ moments every single day

At a popular kebab eatery further along Michigan Avenue, Layla Elabed is dismayed by the Trump lovefest in a city popularly known as the “capital of Arab America”.

“Do people forget how bad it was under the Trump presidency,” wondered the 35-year-old community organiser. “We were coordinating emergency responses to all the policies coming out of Donald Trump's presidency. I was going from meetings at the airport to rallies against the Muslim ban, to joining Black Lives Matter protests, to helping families that were under the threat of deportation. It was a rapid response moment every single day.”

Elabed may be dismayed, but she’s not surprised. And she’s pretty sure of who to blame.

“It’s the fault of the Democrats that they left this window open for Trump to come into a community that is grieving, that is frustrated, that is feeling betrayed. I really fault Vice President Harris's campaign and Democrats who allowed this to happen,” she said mournfully.

Party leaders ‘not aligned with their base’

Elabed knows a thing or two about Democratic betrayal. As a co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, she helped rally Michigan Democrats to vote 'uncommitted' in the February primaries. The campaign was a bid to force the Biden administration to impose an arms embargo on Israel until a Gaza ceasefire deal was reached.

The movement set out to get 10,000 votes, the number of votes that won Trump the state of Michigan in 2016. The result far exceeded the goal, with 100,000 Michigan residents voting uncommitted. The success sparked similar campaigns in other states, netting more than 700,000 votes and 37 delegates at the August Democratic National Convention.

But failure came just as quickly, when the Harris campaign refused to allow a Palestinian American to address the convention as the war raged in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of trapped civilians and displacing over a million.

For Elabed, a Palestinian American whose parents grew up in the West Bank, it was a bitter pill to swallow. “As a lifelong Democrat, I feel really betrayed by my own party. I think what we're seeing right now is the leaders of this party are actually not aligned with their base,” she said.

From funerals to the dilemmas of strategic voting

The difference in enthusiasm levels between Dearborn’s Republican and Democratic supporters is stark in the 2024 presidential race.

Elabed says she will skip the presidential section on her ballot paper, but she plans to vote Democrat in the other races, including the US Senate, House, state legislative and state supreme court races. This includes a vote for her elder sister, Rashida Tlaib, who is running for re-election to the US House to represent Michigan’s 12th Congressional district, which includes Dearborn.

As a Trump opponent, Elabed does not want to vote for a third party, such as the Green’s Jill Stein, fearing it could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency under the country's controversial electoral college system.

It was a difficult decision, she admitted. “We're literally being pulled away from funerals and taken to the ballot box and being told, now vote strategically,” she sighed.

Lebanon war hits home

Abed Hammoud’s ballot paper sat on his dining table for weeks before he finally got down to ticking his absentee ballot and sticking it in the envelope.

“It took me a while to vote,” he confessed. “I've had the ballot for about a month now. It's not an easy decision.”

An attorney and former prosecutor, Hammoud, 58, has been active in Michigan politics for decades and is the founder of the Arab American Political Action Committee (AAPAC), a group which seeks to address critical issues affecting the Arab American community.

Under normal circumstances, a vote for Harris should have been a no-brainer for Hammoud. “I personally would have liked to support her if I could. She's a former prosecutor like me. We have a lot of things in common. My Democratic background, my natural tendency would be to support her,” he said.

But the conflict in the Middle East has made that impossible. Born and raised in southern Lebanon, Hammoud is painfully familiar with the horrors of an Israeli invasion. “I lived through several wars and invasions. I lived under the occupation,” he said, referring to the 18-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.  

Hammoud and his wife have family in southern Lebanon, including elderly parents, who are now scattered across the country and region after fleeing the Israeli bombardments. “It’s hitting home, literally home, because this morning, they just bombed my village again,” he revealed.

Trump ‘works’ for Arab American votes

Last month, AAPAC released a statement declaring that the lobby group was not endorsing Trump or Harris. “We simply cannot give our votes to either Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump, who blindly support the criminal Israeli government led by far-right extremists,” said the statement.

Hammoud’s position is allied with that of the group he founded. “I want to do everything I can to punish this administration in this election, knowing that I'll be kind of punishing myself if Trump becomes president,” he said with a rueful smile.

He’s keenly aware of the consequences of his vote in a state that could determine the next president of the world’s superpower. But the responsibility this time, he maintains, lies with the Democratic candidate.

“I have no respect for Donald Trump, but you should see how much he's courting this community,” he said. "He knows we have votes. He wants them. I don't trust a word he says. I'm not saying he's going to be good for us. I'm not voting for him. I'm not calling for people to vote for him. But I'm watching both campaigns. He's saying, 'I want these votes and I’m working for them'.”

As Trump headed for a meeting with Dearborn community members at The Great Commoner restaurant, Elabed echoed the opinion. “I do not have the burden of responsibility to convince my community members who to vote for. It’s the responsibility of the candidate,” she explained. “And we've been trying to tell leaders of the Democratic Party that in order to win over key votes here in Michigan, you need to change your policy that unconditionally supports Israel. But they have not listened.”