US Prez Biden’s support for Israel triggers startling dip in Arab American support

It is a well-known fact that US President Joe Biden has pledged his unfettered support to Israel since it suffered the deadly terrorist attack on its people by Hamas militants early on October 7. But his stand for Israel has also lead to his popularity dwindling among Arab Americans and Palestinians in the United States, who are outraged over Biden’s response to Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza, which has killed more than 8,000 people and more than a quarter of them children. The first national poll of Arab Americans since the war in Gaza began shows how deep that sense of betrayal goes, with only 17% of Arab American voters saying they will vote for Biden in 2024—a staggering drop from 59% in 2020. “This is the most dramatic shift over the shortest period of time that I’ve ever seen,” James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, which released the poll on Tuesday, told TIME magazine. Biden’s popularity is not the only thing that has taken a hit due to his stand on the Israel-Hamas conflict. Only about 23% of Arab Americans now identify with the Democratic Party, marking the first time a majority did not claim to prefer the Democrats since the institute began tracking party identification in 1996. Those identifying as Independents rose to 31%, the highest it’s ever been. The poll results are likely to increase concerns among Democrats about Biden’s standing with Arab Americans heading into the 2024 Presidential election, particularly in Michigan, where an estimated 277,000 Arab Americans call the state home, and Biden won in 2020 by almost 155,000 votes. The smaller Arab American populations in Pennsylvania and Georgia were also larger than Biden’s margins of victory there. All three states are ones Biden flipped after Trump won them in 2016. Of the roughly 3 million Arab Americans residing in the US today, more than half voted for Biden in 2020. In places such as Dearborn, Michigan, which boasts one of the largest Arab American populations in the country, the overwhelming majority did so. Arab American community leaders and activists tell TIME that this wasn’t because they had any illusions about Biden’s pro-Israel stance. But, it was because they believed that he would be better than Trump, whose xenophobic and Islamophobic policies disproportionately affected the Arab American community. Though 2024 appears likely to throw up a rematch between Biden and Trump, Arab Americans insist Biden cannot take their support for granted. None of those who spoke with TIME say that their lack of confidence in Biden means that they’ll be inclined to vote for Trump. But some remain conflicted about whether the situation would be any worse under the former president either. “Look, we’re not silly—we know what Trump has done to our communities,” says Amer Zahr, the president of the Dearborn-based New Generation for Palestine. But when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he continues, “The policies are basically the same. Except when Trump does it, you get some pushback from the Democratic Party.” Zahr, who was a national surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2020, eventually supported Biden to keep Trump from winning another term. “If Trump were president and all of this was going on right now, we would probably get a lot more Democratic politicians at our rallies,” Zahr says. “But Biden doing it means that we don’t.” The reality, of course, is that Arab Americans base their vote on more issues than just the Middle East. The economy, education, and climate change are likely to be among their concerns next November. But the duration of the war, and the extent to which Biden is seen to enable it, could lead to that issue carrying more weight than it has with many voters in previous elections. Efforts by the White House to repair the relationship through meetings with Arab and Muslim American leaders appear to have done little so far to mitigate the damage caused, according to The Washington Post. According to the Arab American Institute poll, 68% of Arab Americans support an immediate ceasefire. Biden has proposed only a “humanitarian pause” in the bombardment in order to allow for the flow of aid into Gaza and the exit of American and other foreign nationals from the Strip. Arab Americans also want him to take the issue of rising Islamophobia and anti-Arab discrimination more seriously and do more to make substantial and meaningful progress towards a permanent peace deal. “Just changing his tone—that’s not enough,” says Sami Khaldi, the president of Dearborn Democratic Club and a former 2020 Biden delegate. “Every president comes here and says the best solution for the Middle East crisis is to have a two-state solution, but you don’t see anyone have the courage to do it. We need him to do that.”