The Mayor of Dearborn, the Michigan city with the highest number of Arab and Muslim-Americans in the country, is refusing to endorse either Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, 33, is urging the voters in his city, which the Wall Street Journal once labelled ‘America’s jihad capital’, to ‘vote their moral conscience.’
‘When you get to the top of the ticket, what I am advocating for is that you vote your moral conscience, and for each individual that’s going to mean something different. But I am leaving it up to them,’ Hammoud told The Hill.
‘I am not endorsing any single candidate for president as I have not found any candidate willing to depart from the course President Biden has taken us down on the genocide of Gaza and the broader conflict that has now touched Lebanon.’
The Mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, Abdullah Hammoud, 33, who is a Democrat, is urging the voters in his city to ‘vote their moral conscience’
During February’s primary, Hammoud called out Biden shortly before casting his vote for ‘uncommitted’ rather than the leader of his party at a Dearborn polling place.
Democrat Harris does indeed appear to be walking something of a political tightrope when it comes to the Israel-Hamas war with her stating how she’s committed to Israel’s defense while also ending Palestinian suffering.
Trump, meanwhile, has offered his full-throated backing to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘Do what you have to do’, in a phone call earlier this month.
‘My wife’s cousin was killed just a few days ago in Lebanon. He was working as a paramedic. Our County Commissioner said the house she grew up in was targeted and blown up. This is civilian infrastructure,’ Hammoud continued.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest in support of the Palestinians who have died in Gaza outside of the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan
Donald Trump, meanwhile, has offered his full-throated backing to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘Do what you have to do’, in a phone call earlier this month
Democrat Harris does indeed appear to be walking something of a political tightrope when it comes to the Israel-Hamas war with her stating how she’s committed to Israel ‘s defense while also ending Palestinian suffering
‘When you see the scenes of the genocide being livestreamed, to many these are the faces of strangers from villages with names that they’ve never heard of.
‘To all of us here in the City of Dearborn – the images of the individuals you see being slaughtered, these are our friends and our family. The villages you see being bombarded and decimated, these are our ancestral homes. So that is why I have taken the position I have taken,’ Mayor Hammoud said.
The mayor’s position is shared by many others in his city with residents fiercely divided over the war in Gaza- as residents refuse to vote for either of the candidates.
Indeed, many Muslims are contemplating denying the Harris her vote to punish her administration for its support of Israel.
El-sayed, 37, a native of Michigan with Lebanese roots, left her deli in Dearborn Heights to raise donations for the situation in Lebanon.
Iman Beydoun El-sayed, 37 suggested she would probably vote for Green party candidate Jill Stein
During February’s primary, Hammoud, 33, called out Biden shortly before casting his vote for ‘uncommitted’ rather than the leader of his party at a Dearborn polling place
Since mid-October, Israel’s intensifying campaign against Hezbollah militants has claimed 1,500 lives, including civilians, and displaced more than 800,000 people, the United Nations says.
‘We all have relatives, friends, family victims, back home,’ said El-sayed, who wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with Lebanon’s cedar tree emblem.
‘The fact that no candidate is speaking of a ceasefire or an arms embargo is pretty disheartening,’ she added, suggesting she would probably vote for Green party candidate Jill Stein.
In 2020, Wayne County, which includes Detroit and its suburbs, voted 68 percent for Joe Biden helping him win the battleground state in 2020 – but the margin was slim with a majority of just 154,000 votes over Donald Trump.
But this time around, the demise in political spirit could be harmful to the Democrats ability hold onto the swing state next month.
Election turnout in Dearborn was 10 percent higher in 2020 than the previous election in 2016 – Biden also won 10 percent more votes than Hillary did.
The stats suggest that voters were energized in 2020, but the word on the streets of Dearborn is that this year’s attitudes could not be more different.
During the Democratic primaries in February, 6,400 Dearborn voters chose ‘uncommitted’ in protest of Biden’s support of Israel’s war.
With less than two weeks to go before the November 5 vote, there is palpable anger with the Biden administration, accused of blindly backing Israel with financial and military aid, as well as with vetoes at the United Nations against calls for a ceasefire in Gaza
Ronald Stockton, a retired professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and an expert on the Middle East, said Americans with roots in Arab countries number around 300,000 in Michigan and were instrumental in Biden’s win.
Former president Donald Trump ‘had angered Arab Americans with his anti-Muslim and pro-Israeli policies. And so they voted very strongly for Biden in 2020,’ Stockton said.
With less than two weeks to go before the November 5 vote, there is palpable anger with the Biden administration, accused of blindly backing Israel with financial and military aid, as well as with vetoes at the United Nations against calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.
For Marwan Faraj, a 51-year-old entrepreneur who arrived from Lebanon 35 years ago, Democrats have ignored the February primary, when more than 100,000 voters cast blank ballots to protest Washington’s Middle East policy.
‘It’s a slap in the face, and we should return that,’ he said as he sat in Qahwah House, a Yemeni chain cafe.
Dearborn Heights-based imam, Mohammad Ali Elahi, said voters are ‘so frustrated and so heartbroken’
‘They have been supporting this ethnic cleansing and genocide since day one, with our tax dollars, and that’s wrong,’ Faraj added.
Unlike in 2020, when it supported Joe Biden, the Arab American Political Action Committee, an influential local political organization, called for a vote ‘for neither Harris nor Trump.’
The organization said that both Harris and Trump ‘blindly support the criminal Israeli government led by far-right extremists, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.’
Stockton said anger with the war goes far beyond the Arab-American community, touching many young people and making the conflict a ‘dangerous’ issue for the Democrats.
Some in the community nonetheless have sounded the alarm on the dangers of Trump, who instated a ‘Muslim ban’ on travelers from several Muslim-majority countries and moved Washington’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
‘We have no choice but to vote for Kamala Harris,’ Ismael Ahmed, a veteran of the Democratic Party and a vocal advocate on Arab-American issues, wrote in the Detroit Free Press.
‘Kamala Harris is calling for a cease fire and a two-state solution’ while Donald Trump ‘refuses to acknowledge the occupation of Palestinian lands, opposes an independent Palestinian state and steadfastly supports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,’ he said.
Micho Assi welcomed her parents at Detroit airport after they fled Lebanon
For one Dearborn Heights-based imam, Mohammad Ali Elahi, voters are ‘so frustrated and so heartbroken that they are not thinking about that calculation, they think ‘what would be worse (than what) you already see.”
Voters question how the situation in Gaza and Lebanon could be worse, said the cleric, who is originally from Iran.
Lebanon-born activist Micho Assi, a Democratic community activist, said local people have become disillusioned.
‘Normally, I would be mobilizing and knocking doors and trying to get out the vote. Right now, I cannot do the same,’ she said.
‘People right now, they’re focused on who’s going to stop that genocide. If I tell them, ‘get out and vote,’ they tell me, ‘I don’t care, (their votes are) not going to matter when it comes to genocide.”’
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