Critics question US vice president’s meetings with handpicked community members without change in Middle East policy.
Despite touting her unwavering support for Israel as the country wages war in Gaza and Lebanon, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is trying to garner support in Arab and Muslim communities in the United States before elections next month.
In recent weeks, the US vice president and her team have held meetings with Arab and Muslim “community leaders” while receiving endorsements from Muslim individuals and groups aligned with her Democratic Party.
But many advocates argue that as long as Harris maintains her pledge to continue to arm Israel and refuses to distance herself from President Joe Biden’s unconditional support for the US ally, nothing will help her standing with Arab and Muslim voters.
Moreover, critics have slammed the private meetings by Harris and her top national security adviser with handpicked attendees – whose identities are often not made public – as not representative of the communities her campaign says it is hoping to win over.
“Such groups and faceless individuals are mere tokens for the Democratic Party, paraded by Harris’s campaign to check off a box recommended by an algorithm — a strategy she maintained campaigning on trends and memes rather than impactful policy,” Laura Albast, a Palestinian American activist in the Washington, DC, area, told Al Jazeera.
She said the perception that voters would approve US-backed atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon because the person shaking Harris’s hand looked like them was “insanity”.
Meetings
Harris’s push to reach out to Arab and Muslim voters comes as Israel’s military assaults on Gaza and Lebanon are escalating, heightening anger and anxiety in these communities just weeks before the November 5 elections.
For months, community members have urged the vice president to break from Biden and put conditions on US military aid to Israel to pressure the country to end its onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
But Harris has rebuffed those calls. In August, her campaign rejected pleas to allow a Palestinian American speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
And this week, she joined Biden on a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which the US administration expressed “ironclad” support for Israel.
Harris met with Arab and Muslim advocates in Flint, north of Detroit, Michigan – a key battleground state with sizeable Arab communities – on Sunday. Days earlier, her top national security adviser held a similar meeting virtually.
Hussein Dabajeh, a Lebanese American political consultant in the Detroit area, decried the lack of transparency around such meetings.
He said the Harris campaign is “afraid” to have an open dialogue with representatives of the community, so it is reverting to behind-closed-doors discussions to appear like it is listening to Arab and Muslim Americans.
He stressed that the main audience for these meetings is not Arabs and Muslims but the broader electorate as the Democratic Party is trying to portray its candidate as inclusive and caring.
“It’s a meeting just to check off the headline. There’s no actual substance behind it,” Dabajeh told Al Jazeera.
“It’s unfortunate that the people meeting with them believe after one year of our people getting massacred that these fake meetings are still going to do it.”
The Biden administration and campaign – before he dropped out of the presidential race – also held similar meetings that failed to improve his standing among Arab and Muslim Americans or quell the outrage over his support for the war on Gaza.
The US provides Israel at least $3.8bn in military aid annually, and the Biden administration has authorised $14bn in further assistance to its ally to help fund the ongoing war.
‘Critical times’
One group that did attend the Flint meeting is Emgage, a Muslim American political advocacy group.
“Emgage Action called on Vice President Harris to do everything in her power, should she win, to end the war and reset US policy in the region,” the group said in a statement.
“Emgage Action also reiterated the organization and the Muslim community’s disappointment in the handling of the crisis that has endangered the well being of our communities at home and is now widening to a broader regional war.”
Deputy Wayne County Executive Assad Turfe, who lost family members during Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon, also attended the meeting.
“I met with Vice President Harris and shared this deeply personal loss. I emphasized that we need her leadership now to help bring an end to the violence,” he wrote in a social media post. “I hope that her administration will take this call seriously and act swiftly to bring the much-needed relief and action that we all hope for.”
He said he brought up the issues of displaced people in Lebanon, the need for evacuating US citizens trapped in the country and immediate humanitarian aid.
“In these critical times, we may not all agree on strategy, but we must still work together and advocate to end this war and provide relief to the people of Lebanon and Gaza NOW! We must push for action that not only saves lives but restores hope and dignity to those who are suffering,” Turfe said.
Harris endorsement
Emgage raised many eyebrows late last month when it announced it was endorsing Harris’s bid for the White House – days into Israel’s devastating bombing campaign in Lebanon, which has already destroyed large parts of the country.
The group, which almost exclusively endorses Democrats and is led by figures who have worked in Democratic administrations, argued that the endorsement is rooted in preventing the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, from winning.
“This endorsement is not an agreement with Vice President Harris on all issues, but rather, an honest guidance to our voters regarding the difficult choice they confront at the ballot box,” it said in a statement.
Emgage also praised the Biden-Harris administration for appointing Muslim Americans to federal jobs.
But as the war rages in Gaza and people flee southern Lebanon amid a relentless Israeli bombardment supported by the Biden-Harris administration, some advocates see the nod of support for the vice president not only as misguided but also insulting.
Suehaila Amen, a community advocate in Michigan, had a scathing message for Emgage: “I’m disgusted by the fact that none of you have any dignity or honour, that the mass slaughter of Muslims on a global scale isn’t enough for you to hold your head up high.”
Michigan is home to a large Lebanese American population, tens of thousands of whom hail from Lebanon’s southern villages and towns that have been largely depopulated and decimated by the Israeli offensive.
Emgage and two of its representatives did not return Al Jazeera’s repeated requests for comment on the criticism of the group’s position.
Amer Zahr, a Palestinian American activist and comedian, called the Emgage endorsement of Harris a “spit in the face of our community”.
“Emgage has announced that, as far as they are concerned, no amount of massacred Arab children is enough to abandon the Biden-Harris administration,” Zahr told Al Jazeera.
“According to Emgage, genocide is excusable in order to stay loyal to the Democratic ticket. Their statement openly and proudly states that securing federal appointments trumps repeated vetoes of ceasefire resolutions, proud declarations of Zionism and tens of thousands of Arab bodies under the rubble.”
Harris’s position
Separately from the Emgage endorsement, 25 Muslim imams and community figures – mostly from Georgia and the Washington, DC, area – penned a joint statement last week backing the vice president.
In the endorsement – first reported by NBC News – they credited Harris for speaking out against “the devastating loss of life in Gaza and the unfolding humanitarian crisis” . But the authors avoided any mention of the vice president’s support for the Israeli offensive, which they described as a “genocide”.
“When the war in Gaza began, she traveled and met with regional leaders and made clear that the US would pursue a two-state solution, and what reconstruction of Gaza would look like, she also made clear that international humanitarian law must be respected,” the statement said.
Several Biden administration officials have decried the suffering in Gaza.
For example, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he sees his “own children” in the eyes of Palestinian children enduring displacement and bombardment.
Still, according to recent US media reports, Blinken defied assessments by various US officials when he certified that Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza – a decision that allowed the US to continue to transfer arms to its ally.
And like Blinken, when talking about Palestinian pain, Harris uses passive voice about the atrocities in Gaza and avoids assigning responsibility to Israel.
Moreover, Harris often stresses that her support for Israel is “unwavering”. She has been part of an administration that has overseen unconditional support for the brutal war on Gaza, and recently, she welcomed Israeli escalation in Lebanon.
When asked recently what she would have done differently from Biden, Harris said “not a thing that comes to mind”, stressing that she has been part of the decision-making process at the White House on most important issues.
The Biden-Harris administration has vetoed three proposals at the United Nations Security Council that would have called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
This week, Harris described Iran – not Russia or China – as America’s “greatest adversary”, a position that further aligns her with the Netanyahu government.
‘Political agenda’
Given Harris’s record and the equally staunch support for Israel of her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, as well as his anti-immigrant rhetoric, many Arab and Muslim voters feel frustrated with the two-party political system in the US.
On Monday, the Abandon Harris campaign, a Michigan-based Muslim group that says it aims to hold the Democratic administration “accountable for the Gaza genocide”, endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president.
“Our movement remains dedicated to ensuring that the American people, especially the Muslim-American community, recognize the responsibility we share in standing up against oppression and using all our power to stop genocide — wherever it may arise,” the group said in a statement.
“On the precipice of the election, we endorse Jill Stein.”
Stein has virtually no chance of winning the presidency, but she has seen a surge of support in Arab and Muslim communities, according to recent polls, in part due to her advocacy for Palestinian rights.
Trump has also seen his numbers improve in Arab and Muslim communities, and last month, he was endorsed by the Yemeni American mayor of Hamtramck, a Muslim-majority city in southeast Michigan.
As the election nears, recent campaigning has sparked debates about the representation and priorities of Arab and Muslim communities in the US, whose members share similar cultures and religious practices but are not a monolith.
“We unequivocally condemn those from our community who continue to exploit the blood of Arab people for their political agenda,” the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said in a statement on Sunday.
“This includes individuals and organizations from our community that are in lock-step with the Democratic and Republican parties, putting party over community, politics over justice, and overlooking a genocide for access.” – AL JAZEERA
By Ali Harb