Muslims in key swing state warn Democrats 'going to have a problem' in 2024 over Israel support

26 October 2023

Democratic elected officials representing the sizable Muslim population in and around Detroit, Michigan are sounding the alarm over their party's chances in the Mitten State in the next presidential election.

Michigan state representative Alabas Farhat represents the city of Dearborn, where roughly half of the city's approximately 110,000 residents are of Arab descent. Farhat told the Associated Press on Thursday that national Democratic Party leaders are risking the alienation of their Muslim base in the must-win swing state, which narrowly went for Trump in 2016 and flipped to Biden in 2020 with the help of Muslim votes.

"In 2024, Democrats are going to have a problem with Arab Americans. For too long, they’ve isolated Arab American voices within the party. They’ve isolated the perspectives of Arab Americans. And on this specific issue, they’ve denied even recognizing the human rights of Palestinians," Rep. Farhat said.

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The AP reported that Michigan Democratic leaders like Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Senator Gary Peters (D-Michigan), two Democratic members of Congress, and several statewide Democratic elected officials attended a pro-Israel rally on October 9, where some of them were seen dancing in chanting in Hebrew. However, none of them attended a rally in Dearborn the next day organized to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza being killed and displaced by Israel's offensive against Hamas.

"There is going to be an effort to not support the people who have not supported us," 22 year-old Palestinian American Adam Abusalah said. "The people that we voted for for such a long time — people that we’ve helped, we’ve donated to and we’ve worked on their campaigns."

This sentiment was echoed by former Biden advisor Ahmad Ramadan, who voiced his concern to the Michigan Democratic Party chair in the days following President Biden's doubling down on support for Israel following Hamas' October 7 terror attack.

"President Biden won with historic numbers in 2020. And I was proud to represent that, but the last two weeks have really shifted things,” Ramadan told NBC News. "I’ve also been getting calls from people saying, I have blood on my hands because I got people out to support him during that campaign."

Biden in particular has been the target of criticism for his perceived lack of support for Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas. On Wednesday, Biden said during a press conference that he has "no notion if Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed." That statement was panned on X by Mohammed El-Kurd, the Palestine correspondent for left-aligned magazine The Nation.

"This isn’t just racist.," El-Kurd tweeted. "He’s preemptively minimizing the scale of death the Israeli regime has planned for Gaza."

According to Al Jazeera, more than 1,400 Israelis were killed and over 200 hostages were taken as a result of the October 7 attack. More than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

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