Gaza war widens gap between Biden and his electorate

“Mr. President, Michigan is an important state for you,” warned Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat congresswoman in mid-October.

“And guess what, Mr. President? We will remember and we may not want to vote for people who want to banish us or who want to remain silent while genocide is taking place,” She added. Tlaib is a representative for Michigan, a state with one of the largest Arab-Muslim communities in the country.

Despite appearing inaudible at first, the message spread across the United States. While President Joe Biden displayed his unwavering support for Israel’s military campaign on Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks and refused to talk about a ceasefire, the Biden administration’s minimal warnings about the risk of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip have given rise to a wave of protest among Democrat voters.

With the presidential election due to take place next year, Biden’s popularity rating among his party has fallen to 75 percent, a record drop of 11 percent in the space of a month, according to a Gallup poll conducted between Oct. 2-23. It is a warning sign for the White House.

Although relatively small on a national scale, the Arab-Muslim American community, which is made up of about 3.45 million people, almost 1 percent of the total population, plays a decisive role in the vote count. Traditionally pro-Democrat, this electorate mainly resides in pivotal states like Michigan, Georgia and Arizona and weighed heavily in Biden’s success in 2020, after he promised to base his foreign policy on human rights principles.

With this in mind, Ahmad Ramadan, a former adviser to Biden, called on the state party chairman to sound the alarm.

“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’,” he told NBC News in an article published on Oct. 21.

The White House seems to have heard the message. “I see you. You have your place,” Biden stated, addressing the US Muslim and Arab community in a speech on Oct. 19.

“I lived through the post 9/11 anti-Arab/Muslim climate, & today’s anti-Palestinian fervor feels worse,” posted Palestinian-American political analyst Omar Baddar on X (formerly Twitter). Baddar explained that he will not speak at the Connect Arab America summit because of the prevailing hostility towards the Palestinian cause’s supporters.

Meanwhile, Biden’s communications team insists otherwise: “The president and this administration have been unequivocal: There is no place for Islamophobia, xenophobia or any of the vile racism we have seen in recent weeks.”

Unease among the democrats

Eighty year old Biden said he called the family of Wadea al-Fayoume, a young American boy of Palestinian origin who was murdered in Illinois on Dec. 15 in what appears to be an anti-Muslim hate crime.

Dilawar Syed, the highest-ranking Muslim official in Biden’s administration, attended the funeral of the 6-year-old and was booed by members of the Muslim community, before finally being applauded for declaring that Joe Biden’s work against Islamophobia and anti-Semitism “will not end until everyone can live without fear.”

A post on Biden’s X account read “as hard as it is, we cannot give up on peace. We cannot give up on a two-state solution.”

But the sense of frustration at the White House’s pro-Israeli stance has went beyond the Arab-Muslim community and reached the US’Jewish anti-occupation community, which took to the streets even before the Israeli army began its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Last weekend, large-scale demonstrations calling for a ceasefire were held in New York under the banner “not in my name.” Discontent over the US’ handling of the war is shared by young democrat voters. According to a survey published by Quinnipiac University, while a large majority of the party’s members approve of President Biden’s stance on the conflict, only 21 percent of voters aged between 18 and 34 approve, while 50 percent are opposed. This phenomenon was expressed, for example, by students at the prestigious Harvard University, who published a statement denouncing “Israel’s apartheid regime,” provoking the anger of some of the institution’s donors.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri tried to speed up the adoption of a resolution condemning demonstrations criticizing Israel on university campuses, linking them to anti-Semitic acts.

Ultimately scuttled by his Democrat colleague from Maryland, Chris Van Hollen, the resolution and the debate it provoked spoke volumes about the unease within Democratic ranks over the way the conflict was dealt with.

The topic of a cease fire was another point of controversy. “People who are calling for a ceasefire now don’t understand Hamas,” Hillary Clinton told a round table on Monday. Clinton, a former presidential candidate, explained that “It would be such a gift to Hamas because they would spend whatever time [that] there was a ceasefire in effect rebuilding their armaments... to be able to fend off an eventual assault by the Israelis.”

The tone was set on Oct. 18 when the US vetoed a resolution proposed by Brazil at the UN Security Council that called for “pauses” in the fighting to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered to Gaza, which has been cut off for almost a month.

On the other side, hundreds of Capitol Hill staffers signed an open letter imploring their bosses to “join the calls for an immediate ceasefire,” and Josh Paul, who was in charge of arms transfers for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, resigned from his post in protest over Washington’s position.

While the death toll continues to rise among Palestinian civilians, exceeding 8,300 at the time of this report’s publication according to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, Biden sparked outrage after declaring he had no confidence in the figures given by the Hamas-run institution. “I’m sure innocents have been killed. And it's the price of waging a war,” he said.

‘The United States can put an end to war crimes’

Biden’s indifference has been met with anger, especially considering the influence he has on the course of the war . “This is now Biden’s war,” Sarah Leah Whitson, an American lawyer and executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) posted last week on her X account.

After Israel imposed a 36-hour blackout on the Gaza Strip on Friday evening, communications were restored under US pressure, according to the Washington Post who quoted a senior US official.

“In case it wasn’t clear, the US can stop Israeli war crimes when it wants to so it is choosing which to stop and which to allow and it is allowing most of them,” wrote Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American writer and Washington-based political analyst on X.

The US’ influence is also evident in the delay of the ground invasion, which was postponed several times due to pressure from Biden in particular.

“I understand the frustration & disappointment of many Muslim & Arab communities with the Biden Administration's support for Israel's response but voting 3rd party, sitting out, or voting Trump ain't it. A GOP Administration will be worse on everything, especially this issue,” posted Pakistani-American author and journalist Wajahat Ali on X.

Donald Trump, who promised last weekend to reimpose visa restrictions for certain Muslim-majority countries, remains a favorite among the Republican candidates for 2024.

This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Joelle El Khoury.