Dearborn
\nIt\u2019s common to hear residents chatting in Arabic just as often as English in this Detroit suburb\u2019s stores or mosques, those buildings themselves often sporting bilingual signage out front.
\nBut no matter the language, residents in this Arab American and Muslim stronghold in the Midwestern state of Michigan are convinced President Joe Biden, as he steadfastly stands by Israel in its war in Gaza, is not listening to them.
\n\u201cVote for Palestine. No Biden,\u201d political organizer Samra\u2019a Luqman says in English, passing out fliers outside a mosque after prayers.
\n\u201cDon\u2019t vote for Biden,\u201d the activist with Yemeni origins adds in Arabic.
\n\u201cOf course,\u201d respond many passersby.
\nAs the Gaza Strip death toll climbs, residents here \u2014 once firmly in the Democratic fold \u2014 are turning against the president in a crucial swing state he won by just 150,000 votes in 2020.
\nSome are hoping to pressure Biden to back off from his Israel support and call for a ceasefire. Others, like Luqman, say they would never vote for him.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s committing the genocide. He\u2019s funding it,\u201d Luqman, a campaign leader with a group called Abandon Biden, tells AFP.
\nA campaign is underway by Luqman and others urging voters to vote \u201cuncommitted,\u201d or write in \u201cFree Palestine\u201d on their ballots in the state\u2019s primary next week \u2014 a symbolic gesture, since Biden faces no serious challengers for the Democratic nomination.
\n\u201cThis is a campaign about pressuring our current president who can do something about the mass killing of children,\u201d says Abbas Alawieh, a former Democratic chief of staff on Capitol Hill and member of the Listen to Michigan campaign group.
\n\u201cIn this community there are a lot of people who are directly harmed by war,\u201d the Lebanese-born Alawieh tells AFP.
\nBiden, he says, \u201cis threatening to lose this community. Not just in November, but perhaps for a generation to come.\u201d
\nThe war started when Hamas launched its attack on October 7, resulting in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
\nBut concern has mounted amid the high civilian toll in Israel\u2019s retaliatory campaign, now at 29,313 people dead, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
\nListen to Michigan began as a pressure campaign, but some voters say their frustration with the president is permanent.
\nVoting for Biden was the \u201cworst mistake of my life,\u201d says Mohamed Alemara, a 23-year-old medical student of Iraqi descent.
\n\u201cYou don\u2019t kill 30,000 of our people and expect us to vote for you.\u201d
\nArab Americans\u2019 vows to ditch Biden often baffle liberal political pundits.
\nWhat will Muslims and Arabs do, the thinking goes \u2014 vote for Donald Trump, the Republican behind the \u201cMuslim ban\u201d immigration policy, whose supporters flirt with ideas like \u201cChristian nationalism\u201c?
\n\u201cWe\u2019re not a stupid community,\u201d says Luqman. \u201cI\u2019ve survived a Muslim ban, but those kids in Gaza have not survived Joe Biden.\u201d
\n\u201cMy intention is not to vote in an Islamophobe, another genocidal maniac,\u201d she adds. Yet she tells AFP, \u201cthe only way I would vote for Biden is if he resurrected\u201d the Gaza dead.
\nIn America\u2019s two-party system, where voters often hold their nose to pick candidates they don\u2019t back 100 percent, 27-year-old nurse Fatima Elzaghir says that \u201cat this point, the lesser evil is Trump.\u201d
\nOthers, like Alawieh, reject the premise of the question.
\n\u201cHow dare you come to me and say, \u2018Oh, but later, Trump will be your fault,\u2019\u201d he says.
\n\u201cCall your representative. Tell them you want a ceasefire…. Once we stop the bloodshed, then we can talk about the political consequences.\u201d
\nBiden will also have to deal with Michigan\u2019s unions \u2014 where some are defecting from the labor-friendly president\u2019s camp.
\nMany union and workingclass voters already support Republicans, drawn in by their conservative social policies.
\nBut for Merwan Beydoun, a steel mill worker and member of the United Autoworkers Union, Gaza was the breaking point.
\n\u201cFurious\u201d at Biden, whom the UAW endorsed, Beydoun stopped his contributions to the union\u2019s political arm.
\nBeydoun says he still believes \u201cin a lot of Democratic policies\u201d and would rather not say how he\u2019ll vote in November. But to earn Beydoun\u2019s vote, the president \u201cneeds to wake up\u201d and \u201cchange his ways.\u201d
\nThe Biden administration has tried to assuage Arab and Muslim voters\u2019 concerns in part by portraying the president as frustrated with Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government.
\nBut US weapons have flowed to Israel since October 7, while Washington\u2019s efforts to broker a second pause in fighting have failed, and on Tuesday the US blocked a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire.
\n\u201cMy intention is to punish Biden for what he\u2019s doing now,\u201d says Luqman. \u201cFor the betrayal that he\u2019s done to me and all the community members that have voted for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dearborn It\u2019s common to hear residents chatting in Arabic just as often as English in this Detroit suburb\u2019s stores or mosques, those buildings themselves often sporting bilingual signage out front. But no matter the language, residents in this Arab American and Muslim stronghold in the Midwestern state of Michigan are convinced President Joe Biden, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n