As the most powerful man in the world, Joe Biden can be celebrated internationally for his economic policies or for keeping Ukraine’s coalition of supporters together. Things often look very different at home – especially in an election year. Many American voters are more interested in high consumer prices or supposedly unregulated immigration from Mexico.
The attack by the terrorist Hamas and the war Israel is now waging in the Gaza Strip take this discrepancy to a whole other level. The fact that Israel hesitated for a long time before launching the ground offensive against Hamas is also attributed to Biden’s intensive talks with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. In Europe, people can once again welcome the US’s determination not only to support Israel militarily, but also to position itself against a possible expansion of the conflict against Iran and Hezbollah. And Biden’s balancing act of both condemning Hamas’ terror while calling for the protection of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and compliance with international law is likely to be noted with a certain admiration by some of his colleagues.
At first it seemed to be the same in the US. Even prominent Republicans praised Biden for his support of Israel. Otherwise, they never miss an opportunity to declare the president unworthy: for example, when they try to tell the story that Biden is responsible for rising gasoline prices or that the American president no longer really knows what he is doing because of his age. . All this threatens to affect more than just the core Republican electorate.
But now the votes are coming from a completely different source that will probably cause Biden new concerns in the coming election campaign. It is left-liberal America – the representatives of universities and unions, the art scene and Black Lives Matter activists, for example. And they are the Muslim and Arab Americans. Environments that are actually closely tied to the Democratic Party.
“I see you”
Today there are repeated vigils and demonstrations against Israel, with mainly young adults participating. The messages expressed there range from calls for a ceasefire to accusations of ‘genocide’ against the Palestinian civilian population and posters with phrases such as ‘Zionism is terrorism’. Last weekend, several thousand people took to the streets in New York again.
At the same time, a hate crime shocked the public: In the state of Illinois, a man stabbed to death a six-year-old child of Palestinian descent out of racist and Islamophobic madness. The president condemned the killing in a televised address to the nation. He said that in addition to anti-Semitism, Islamophobia must also be denounced. Biden recalled the time after the September 11 attacks, when Muslims, especially in the United States, were subject to general suspicion and hostility. And addressing Muslim American citizens, he promised: “I’ll see you. You are part of it. (…) You are all America.”
But for many that is not enough. They see this as lip service – and accuse Biden of accepting the deaths in the Gaza Strip. This is evident from the outrage that greeted the president when he said that Hamas’ figures on the number of Palestinian casualties could not be trusted. This is evident from the assessment of Biden’s performance by Democratic voters: they fell by eleven percentage points in October. And it could possibly be reflected in his election results as well.
“I have voted Democratic my entire adult life, even when the candidate was disappointing. “I told myself that voting for the Democratic Party is a form of damage control, as much as I oppose its policies in the Middle East in general and Israel-Palestine in particular,” writes political scientist Dana El Kurd in a recent guest. article for the left-wing debate magazine The Nation. “But seeing how Biden is now fueling violence after his administration ignored the Palestinians for almost three years (…), it makes it very, very difficult for me to vote for him in 2024.”
She also wants the US government to call for a ceasefire. Biden’s failure to do so and instead maintain military support for Israel, El Kurd writes, leaves the Muslim and Arab communities in the US feeling “shocked and betrayed.” A point she makes and one that is often heard elsewhere: while American citizens need to be brought to safety from Israel, the more than 500 people with American citizenship who the US State Department estimates are in the Gaza Strip , sit firmly there – as a second-class citizen.
What this criticism fails to recognize is that Biden’s solidarity with the Israeli government is not just a matter of his personal beliefs. The US is Israel’s closest ally and has been a guarantor of its security for decades. Without the US President’s demonstrative support for Israel in the current situation, the situation in the Middle East would be much more unstable.
Like many of his predecessors, Biden is also trying to mediate. He does not view solidarity with and warnings against Israel as a contradiction, and he has further sharpened his rhetoric in recent days. On Sunday he spoke again by phone with Netanyahu; According to the White House, he emphasized the need to “immediately and significantly increase humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of the civilian population in Gaza.”
Trump could benefit from this frustration
And yet Dana El Kurd accuses the president and his party of the following: Democrats simply take for granted the votes of Muslim and Arab Americans like them. At about 4.5 million people, Muslims make up a small portion of the U.S. population. But this share is growing quickly. The Pew Research Center estimates that their numbers could double by 2050. This is not the only reason why they are an important group of voters for the Democratic Party: almost 70 percent voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
It is unlikely that many of these voters will vote for Donald Trump in next year’s presidential election, who attracted early attention with his anti-Islamic statements. The ex-president has just promised to reinstate his travel ban, known as the Muslim ban, on a number of predominantly Muslim countries if he returns to power.
Theologian Cornel West, who wants to run as an independent candidate in the 2024 elections, would be more likely. Just a few days after the Hamas terrorist attack, he said in an interview with Politico that “mainly Israel and the US” were responsible for the deaths on October 7 and those afterward. In the past, he has repeatedly compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian population to South Africa’s apartheid regime; He attributes the fact that his professorship at Harvard was not extended to his views on the conflict in the Middle East.
Election research shows that in case of doubt, a vote for a third candidate like West makes Trump stronger. But even if voters simply stay home to protest Biden’s Israel policy, that could significantly weaken his election chances. This mainly affects the important swing states where Democrats have a small lead over Republicans. This includes Michigan, where a large number of Americans with ancestors from Arab countries live. Several American media report that representatives of Muslim communities are now announcing that they will withdraw their support for Biden. In the last election, they gave him the votes he needed to beat Trump.
A divided party
If the president increasingly seeks to court this group of disappointed people in the future, this could make his political and moral tightrope walk even more difficult: Some of the most violent anti-Semitic incitements are manifested during protests on campus and in the streets. Jewish Americans, and not just students, are restless and afraid. The further the Israeli army pushes into the Gaza Strip and the higher the number of civilian deaths rises, the more extreme this polarizing development could become.
Biden has made it clear that nothing will change in terms of US support for Israel. Accordingly, he is unlikely to be able to convince those who therefore renounce him. Conversely, the president will have to avoid the impression that he is softening in favor of voices dominated not by sadness and anger, but rather hatred of Israel and people of the Jewish faith.
It will not be easy to navigate these questions through an already challenging election campaign. Biden’s party, the Democrats, is also divided: an annual survey by the polling institute Gallup showed in February that for the first time a majority of Democrats surveyed sympathized with the Palestinian population instead of with the Israeli population.
This article first appeared on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here is the original.
Soource :Watson
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
