Arab Americans And US Politics

Articles about how Arab Americans are outraged by the Israeli genocide in Palestine are pretty much a dime a dozen these days. Here’s a more or less representative article:

Arab Community in Key Swing State Turning on Biden Campaign

The key swing state in question here is Michigan, and the article leads with this:

The Associated Press (AP) reported that a planned meeting between Biden Campaign Manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez and a group of Arab Michigan Democrats was “canceled after everyone invited — between 10 and 15 people — declined to show up.”

The article quotes a prominent local politician offering Dems some advice:

Dearborn, MI Mayor Abdullah Hammoud on Thursday evening wrote on X (formerly Twitter):

Little bit of advice – if you’re planning on sending campaign officials to convince the Arab American community on why they should vote for your candidate, don’t do it on the same day you announce selling fighter jets to the tyrants murdering our family members.

But who are these people?

Michigan is actually an outlier in the Arab American demographic. Michigan has far and away the largest Arab population—as a percentage of the total state population it is 3.1% as of 2020. Muslims are also the majority of Arabs in Michigan, unlike the religious breakdown Arab Americans nationwide, which is either evenly split or perhaps majority Christian. And in Michigan those Muslims are heavily Shiite, from Lebanon (think: Hezbollah), rather than Sunni.

Stiffler says that city really began to take on its distinct flavor in 1975, when civil war broke out in Lebanon.

“At that time, you had a lot of Lebanese Muslims coming from southern Lebanon. Entire families–almost entire villages–would come and re-settle here to Dearborn,” he says.

Today, Dearborn is a unique Arab-American community–both nationally and among the smaller Arab communities scattered around Metro Detroit.

The Dearborn community is overwhelmingly Muslim, and majority Shiite Muslim. Shiites are a minority in the Muslim world. It’s also mostly Lebanese, with smaller pockets of Iraqis, Yemenis, and Palestinians.

Nationally, Arab Americans are roughly half Muslims and half Christians. Metro Detroit also has a number of smaller Arab communities, many of them majority Christian—like the growing Chaldean community in Sterling Heights.

Yes, the Neocon forever wars across Syraq—and US/UK and Israeli support for fundamentalist Sunni jihadi outfits like al Qaeda and ISIS—led to the flight of many in the largish Christian and Shiite communities of the region, to the US. Americans tend to equate Arab and Muslim, but that’s not really true—not in the US and not in the world. I was unable to come up with surveys that targeted Christian Arab American views on Israeli genocide, but I suspect that Arab nationalism—which largely arose among Arab Christians from precisely those countries that provided the most immigrants to America—trumps the Muslim - Christian divide. That has been my limited experience. And if the Israel Lobby thought forcing Hezbollah supporting Shiites out of Lebanon to the US would somehow help maintain unthinking, reflexive American support for Israeli genocidal policies … Well, I did say that Zionism is a wacky worldview.

What all that means is that Arab American outrage is more broadly based than initial impressions might suggest. It’s not just a Muslim thing. On the other hand, Muslim American outrage isn’t just an Arab thing. The bottom line is that this is a very troubling development for the US political establishment, which is largely funded by the Israel Lobby. The unrest even extends beyond Arabs and Muslims in America to Hispanics and Blacks. The Catholic Vote article notes:

In last month’s GenForward poll of black voters, 17% of respondents indicated that they intend to vote for Trump over Biden. That proportion is more than double the 8% of the black vote that then-incumbent President Trump won in 2020. 

Indeed, if the poll’s results hold in November, Trump would be the first Republican presidential nominee to win 17% of the black vote since Gerald Ford in 1976.

Yeah, I know, this scenario tends to come up in every election year and then doesn’t pan out. This time may be different. Did you know that all three of the Americans killed in Jordan were Blacks? Public Blacks—entertainers, media types, politicians especially at the local level—have been far more outspoken than I can recall in the past. My guess is that they’re picking up vibes at the grassroots level. As for Hispanics—a very diverse demographic—they have never been so monolithically Dem, even taking that as a valid demographic category. This war, centering around a genocide supported by the American ruling class, is not playing well outside those who still tend to identify with the ruling class.

Now, back to Arab Americans. Here are some snapshots. First:

Today, it is estimated that nearly 3.7 million Americans trace their roots to an Arab country. Arab Americans are found in every state, but more than two thirds of them live in just ten states: California, Michigan, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Metropolitan Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York are home to one-third of the population.

The majority of Arab Americans are native-born, and nearly 82% of Arabs in the U.S. are citizens. While the community traces its roots to every Arab country, the majority of Arab Americans have ancestral ties to Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iraq.

That’s right. Arab Americans overwhelmingly live in Blue states and, in particular, large Blue metro areas. That also happens to be the importance of the Black vote for Dems. In fact, if you look at a Blue/Red map of America on a country or precinct basis, I suspect that those rough stats cited above will place most Arab Americans—and probably most Muslim Americans—in Blue areas.

That, of course, explains the ignorance of GOPers regarding the political leverage that these Americans potentially yield. The dilemma facing GOPers is that they need to have some selling points to offer Arab, Muslim, Black, and Hispanic Americans who are now disenchanted with the Dem party—voting isn’t usually a single issue thing. Well, I guess GOPers need to have a selling point to get conservatives to keep turning out, too. ‘Bibi told us to kill all those Arabs’ isn’t going to work. Complicating matters is the GOPer establishment refusal to capitalize on—I’ll say it again: Arab, Muslim, Black, and Hispanic American—outrage over the border crisis because, Orange Man Bad. The establishment GOPers led by Turtle McConnell think they can do a fake border deal …

Tom Luongo (Head Sneetch) @TFL1728

Translation: We already have all the people we need to turn the election, now we can make a gesture to half close the barn door.

F*ck these people!

Quote

Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_

BREAKING: Senate border deal details, per source familiar I just had a call with.

- Mandatory detention of all single adults.

- Mandatory “shut down” of border once average daily migrant encounters hits 5,000. Importantly, this 5,000 number includes 1,400 CBP One app…

SHOW MORE [Pls follow this link to see how fake it all is]

11:58 AM · Jan 27, 2024

… and thereby deprive Trump of his keynote campaign issue. It also happens to be, along with antiwar sentiment, a keynote issue for most Americans, including disenchanted Dems. Foot, gun, BANG! The ruling class is at war with Americans, and the willingness of GOPers to turn the controls over to the ever more radical Dems proves the point. This won’t end well.