Houston’s Lebanese community is turning to Trump as war rages with Israel

The Republican candidate is winning support from a diaspora that feels betrayed by the Biden administration's tolerance of Netanyahu

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Bob Ajouz tinkers with a giant coffee-roasting machine that he designed in his sprawling facility in Houston, Texas. Even as he is hard at work, his mind is thousands of kilometres away in Lebanon. The 81-year-old Lebanese American is livid with the administration of President Joe Biden over its support of Israel’s war on Hezbollah.

“It is very sad,” Mr Ajouz said of Israel's assault on Hezbollah targets. “It is very nerve-racking.”

Mr Ajouz, who has siblings and other relatives in Lebanon, said his loved ones were safe, but the fear that something could happen to them is ever-present.

Over the past month, Israel has launched daily strikes across Lebanon that it says are aimed at Hezbollah targets. In September, the Israeli military killed Hezbollah's longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah and it has continued to deal devastating blows to the Iran-backed militant group.

More than 2,500 Lebanese people have been killed and roughly 12,000 wounded in the past year and another 1.2 million displaced, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

In 2020, Mr Ajouz voted for Mr Biden, but Washington’s seemingly endless support for Israel’s military campaigns has forced him to reconsider.

“I hate Trump, but I'm going to vote for Trump,” he told The National. “It’s not only me – a lot of us because of that particular point. It's my family that has been butchered in Lebanon by [Mr Biden's] own 2,000-pound bombs.”

Bob Ajouz says he will vote for Donald Trump in the presidential election because of Joe Biden's handling of Israel's war against Hezbollah. Joshua Longmore / The National

An estimated 40,000 Lebanese Americans live in Houston, the fourth most populous city in the US, making it one of the biggest concentrations of people of Lebanese descent in the country.

“Everybody here has family in Lebanon,” said Julia Nader, owner and executive director of Lebanon Times magazine, which serves the local community.

Amal Nassar, who fled Lebanon as a young child during the civil war that raged from 1975 to 1990, said Israel’s most recent military campaign has stirred up traumatic childhood memories that she had buried long ago.

“I remember it like yesterday when my father told us, ‘We need to cross the street, there are snipers. If one of us falls, you keep going,’” Ms Nassar told The National.

“That is the worst thing a child could hear. Imagine a parent telling you you're going to cross the road, you might get killed. If one of us gets killed, you keep running.”

That memory has played over and over again in Ms Nassar’s mind as images of the carnage left by Israeli air strikes on her birth country play out on television screens daily.

Amal Nassar made a last-minute decision to vote for Donald Trump in 2020. This time, she already knows she will vote for him. Joshua Longmore / The National

“The past few weeks have been a nightmare,” she said. “It has been a nightmare because you see your country, your fellow citizens, family, friends, being displaced, tortured, killed. Every day we hear of someone who died, or someone who lost their home, or it's been truly a nightmare.”

The estate agent said that in 2020 she made a last-second decision to cast her ballot for Donald Trump. This time around, there will be no hesitation.

“Definitely, I will be voting for Trump,” she said. “I honestly believe, people are turning away from this administration because of what we're seeing. We're disappointed. We feel we are not second class [citizens], we are third class.”