WASHINGTON
\nArab-American and Muslim voters angry at US support for Israel\u2019s offensive in Gaza are shunning Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race to back third-party candidate Jill Stein in numbers that could deny Harris victories in battleground states that will decide the Nov. 5 election.
\nA Council on American-Islamic Relations poll released this month showed that in Michigan, home to a large Arab American community, 40 percent of Muslim voters backed the Green Party\u2019s Stein. Republican candidate Donald Trump got 18 percent with Harris, who is President Joe Biden\u2019s vice president, trailing at 12 percent.
\nStein also leads Harris among Muslims in Arizona and Wisconsin, battleground states with sizable Muslim populations where Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by slim margins.
\nHarris was the leading pick of Muslim voters in Georgia and Pennsylvania, while Trump prevailed in Nevada with 27 percent, just ahead of Harris\u2019 26 percent, according to the CAIR poll of 1,155 Muslim voters nationwide. All are battleground states that have swung on narrow margins in recent elections.
\nBiden won the 2020 Muslim vote, credited in some exit polls with more than 80 percent of their support, but Muslim backing of Democrats has fallen sharply since Israel\u2019s nearly year-long action in Gaza.
\nAbout 3.5 million Americans reported being of Middle Eastern descent in the 2020 US Census, the first year such data was recorded. Although they make up about 1 percent of the total US population of 335 million, their voters may prove crucial in a race that opinion polls show to be close.
\nOn Tuesday, Harris called for an end to the Israel-Gaza war and the return of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. She also said Israel must not reoccupy the Palestinian enclave and backed a two-state solution.
\nBut at closed-door meetings in Michigan and elsewhere, Harris campaign officials have rebuffed appeals to halt or limit US arms shipments to Israel, community leaders say.
\n\u201cDecades of community organizing and civic engagement and mobilizing have not manifested into any benefit,\u201d said Faye Nemer, founder of the Michigan-based MENA American Chamber of Commerce to promote US trade with the Middle East.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re part of the fabric of this country, but our concerns are not taken into consideration,\u201d she said.
\nStein is aggressively campaigning on Gaza, while Trump representatives are meeting with Muslim groups and promising a swifter peace than Harris can deliver.
\nThe Harris campaign declined to comment on the shifting dynamics; officials tasked with Muslim outreach were not available for interviews.
\nStein\u2019s 2016 run ended with just over 1 percent of the popular vote, but some Democrats blamed her and the Green Party for taking votes away from Democrat Hillary Clinton. Pollsters give Stein no chance of winning in 2024.
\nBut her support for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, for an immediate US arms embargo on Israel and for student movements to force universities to divest from weapons investments have made her a star in pro-Palestinian circles.
\nHer running mate Butch Ware, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is Muslim.
\nThis month Stein spoke at ArabCon in Dearborn, Michigan, an annual gathering of Arab Americans and was featured on the cover of The Arab American News under the headline \u201cThe Choice 2024.\u201d Last week in an interview with The Breakfast Club, a New York radio program, she said, \u201cEvery vote cast for our campaign is a vote against genocide,\u201d a charge that Israel denies.
\nTrump team campaigns for Arab American votes
\nAt the same time, the Trump team has hosted dozens of in-person and virtual events with Arab Americans and Muslims in Michigan and Arizona, said Richard Grenell, Trump\u2019s former acting Director of National Intelligence.
\n\u201cArab American leaders in Detroit know this is their moment to send a powerful message to the Democrat party that they shouldn\u2019t be taken for granted,\u201d Grenell said. Trump has said he would secure more Arab-Israeli peace deals.
\nThe Trump outreach and Stein\u2019s appeal could translate into numbers that might threaten Harris. The Green Party is on most state ballots, including all battleground states that could decide the election, except for Georgia and Nevada, where the party is suing to be included.
\nBiden defeated Trump in 2020 by just thousands of votes in some states, thanks in part to the support of Arab and Muslim voters in states where they are concentrated, including Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
\nBiden won Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, but Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton there by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016. The state is home to overlapping groups of more than 200,000 registered voters who are Muslim and 300,000 who report ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa.
\nIn Philadelphia, which has a large Black Muslim population, activists have joined a national \u201cAbandon Harris\u201d campaign. They helped organize protests during her debate with Trump last week.
\nPhiladelphia CAIR co-chair Rabiul Chowdhury said, \u201cWe have options. If Trump pledges to end the war and bring home all hostages, it\u2019s game over for Harris.\u201d Trump has said the war would never have erupted if he were president. It\u2019s unclear how he would end it. Trump is a firm supporter of Israel.
\nIn Georgia, where Biden won in 2020 by 11,779 votes, activists are rallying 12,000 voters to commit to withhold votes from Harris unless the Biden administration acts by Oct. 10 to halt all arms shipments to Israel, demands a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank, and pledges to uphold a US law that imposes an arms embargo on nations engaged in war crimes.
\nThousands have already signed similar pledges in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
\nUS Representative Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat, said he worries about the impact the Gaza war will have in November. He said not only Arab Americans and Muslims, but a much broader group of younger voters and others are also upset.
\n\u201cYou can\u2019t unring a bell,\u201d he said, adding Harris still had \u201cthe space and grace\u201d to shift gears, but time was running out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON Arab-American and Muslim voters angry at US support for Israel\u2019s offensive in Gaza are shunning Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race to back third-party candidate Jill Stein in numbers that could deny Harris victories in battleground states that will decide the Nov. 5 election. A Council on American-Islamic Relations poll released this month […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-432243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n