The Palestinian factor

THE state of Michigan sits in the upper Midwestern portion of the United States. Once the hub of the American auto industry the state has since become part of what Americans call the Rust Belt. It is rusting because the American auto industry and the jobs that came with it have shifted elsewhere.
Rust, perhaps a better word than rot, is a metaphor for the flailing job landscape and the general feeling of malaise that surrounds many of the state’s residents as they look at their future. Apart from all of this, two other facts about Michigan are important in the contemporary context. Firstly, Michigan is defined as one of the ‘swing states’ that will decide next week’s presidential election in the US. Secondly, it is home to the largest geographic concentrations of Arab-Americans in the country.
The Muslim-Americans of Dearborn, Michigan, are largely from the Middle East and the 2023 figures put them at around 110,000. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the state by 154,000 votes. In the current poll estimates, former president Donald Trump is leading in Michigan. This indicates that the Muslim-Americans, including the large Arab-American voting demographic in the state, are likely going to decide the election in Michigan in his favour, as at the present moment, most of these crucial Michigan voters are not inclined positively towards the Democratic Party.

In the Michigan Democratic primary, when the present incumbent was still the presumed presidential candidate, a substantial number voted ‘uncommitted’ because of their disapproval of US support for Israel’s war in Gaza. The situation in the Middle East has only worsened since then with the Israel war machine dropping bunker buster bombs on Gaza and Lebanon, besides expanding its missile strikes to Iran.
On Tuesday, when the Israeli Knesset voted to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides humanitarian aid to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, the Biden-Harris administration could not even manage meaningful censure, only saying it was “deeply concerned” rather than calling out the ban for the gross humanitarian violation that it is.
Presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris likely knows this and has probably decided to either naively hope for the best or feels that she can make up the votes in other places — notably from the state’s large African-American population. The Obamas have been out in full force and are crowd favourites.
Former first lady Michelle Obama has been campaigning with Harris all of this past weekend. Singer Beyoncé was present at a Kamala Harris rally in Texas and even Taylor Swift, the other American songstress, is pitching for Harris against the spectre of a second-term Trump. Their collective efforts would have mattered more had the American electoral map not been as warped as it is. Not every vote actually counts — it is where the votes are that matters and a few hundred thousand of them will pick the next American president.

It is not just Arab- and other Muslim-American voters who are annoyed at Harris’s support for Israel and the near annihilation of Gaza and the latest round of hostilities aimed at Lebanon now. In a telling move, the young interns at the American leftist magazine The Nation published a piece in which they condemned the older editors of the magazine who have endorsed Kamala Harris. The Los Angeles Times, one of the larger newspapers in the US, refused to endorse Harris because of her support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Young people, who had mobilised on campuses earlier this year, are one of the key constituencies that Democrats are counting on. If they think that their votes don’t matter, then the result could be dire.
This is not to say that former president Donald Trump, if elected, would be good for making any kind of changes in US policy towards Israel. If anything, he and his supporters have espoused even stronger support for Israel. Those who would be in a future Trump administration include people who support the evangelical take on US foreign policy that seeks to hasten the end of the world by instigating a conflagration in the holy land. Others are simply opposed to Muslims and have routinely fanned the flames of xenophobia in their red state constituencies. The choices before American voters is, therefore, between genocide and genocide.
Most American voters do not care about Gaza at all. The two big issues for them are the economy and reproductive rights. On the former, Trump leads — not least because the sharp increases in food prices and rent in the country have turned off middle-class voters who remember better times under Trump.

The fact that those were the times before the Covid-19 pandemic struck does not seem to have changed their minds. Nor do they seem bothered by the xenophobia that leads Trump to make bizarre claims that immigrants are eating the pets of US citizens. Harris fares better on reproductive rights which has led to an increase in her support among suburban women — a constituency that is important and may win her the necessary margins for victory.
Whatever the outcome in the US election, it will affect the whole world. It is not, however, an outcome that will be known the day after the election. Both sides, in particular the Trump campaign team, have already set the stage for a barrage of court challenges as soon as or even before voting has concluded on Nov 5, 2024.
The mistake of 2020, according to those who are expected to begin the post-election legal battle of the Trump campaign, is that they were not prepared to fight in the courts. To them, the outcome in Michigan or anywhere will not be delivered at the ballot box but in the courtroom.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
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Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2024