Created Equal: War in Gaza places Arab Americans in a difficult position for November elections
Demonstrators pass the White House during a protest against the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, Thursday, July 25, 2024, in Washington.
It’s been 10 months since the war in Gaza started.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, over 39,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces after Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking 251 hostage.
With the ongoing violence, President Joe Biden faced backlash for his Middle East policy. Michigan voters started the “uncommitted” movement during the February primary to protest the U.S. government supplying arms to Israel.
Read: Dearborn Mayor Hammoud: ‘There must be a timeline of how we achieve a just Palestinian state’
Now that Biden stepped aside, Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination presents an opportunity for change in policies surrounding the war. Her views appear to be in line with Biden’s in regards to Israel’s “right to defend itself”. Yet, she has also urged Israeli forces to allow humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip through a temporary ceasefire.
Today on Created Equal, host Stephen Henderson talks to former Democratic Congressman Andy Levin and Abbas Alweih, an uncommitted delegate to the Democratic Party convention, about politics inside the Democratic Party, and how the war in Gaza — and the United States’ support for Israel — is affecting those politics.
Guests
Andy Levin is a Senior Fellow for the Center for American Progress and former U.S. Representative of Michigan’s 9th Congressional District. He’s concerned VP Harris won’t be able to win in Michigan in November’s election because of its large Arab American population.
“I don’t see how [Democrats] could win Michigan without changing policy on Gaza, because we’re the most densely Arab American state [and] we have many other Muslim Americans who are so upset about this,” Levin said. “Remember the AME bishops writing about this: thousands of Black pastors and many people in the African American community, progressives, Jewish progressives, students on our campuses [are upset]. Even though Biden beat Trump 14 times [more] in 2020 [than] Trump beat Hillary in 2016 in Michigan, he still only won by 154,000 votes.”
Abbas Alaweih is the spokesperson for the Listen to Michigan Campaign, and an uncommitted delegate. Though he feels he has a place in the Democratic party, its Middle East foreign policy is difficult to handle as someone with family members in Lebanon.
“[The] experience of going to work on Capitol Hill, even during Democratic leadership, oftentimes, was an experience of going to work in institutions that were actively funding the harming and killing [of] people like me,” Alaweih said. “For whatever reason, in our politics, there is just this sort of assumed idea that Palestinian lives, Arab lives, Muslim lives — matter just a little bit less.”
