'Between someone that kills you, or insults you': Arab Americans face tough choice this election

In Dearborn, Michigan, many have rallied around third-party candidate Jill Stein

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Amer Zahr greets voters and hands them flyers outside a community centre in Dearborn, Michigan. The Palestinian-American comedian and activist is running for a place on the local school board, and early voting is well under way.

With just two days until the 2024 US presidential elections, all eyes are on swing states that will decide the outcome of the election, including Michigan, home to the highest concentration of Arab Americans.

Like many in Dearborn, the capital of Arab America, Mr Zahr endorsed Bernie Sanders for president four years ago, but ultimately supported Joe Biden, in an effort to remove Donald Trump.

But anger with the Biden administration's support for Israel in Gaza and Lebanon has pushed voters away from the Democrats and into the arms of third-party candidate Jill Stein, or Mr Trump.

“The Democratic Party has shielded Israel during this genocide and we ended up in the situation we're in now,” Mr Zahr tells The National, adding that he plans to vote for Dr Stein.

“We have a historic opportunity as Arab Americans to show our power, and it's become clear to us that the best way to show our power this year is by unseating the party that's in the White House. And so voting third party is one iteration of that, and the Trump vote is another.”

Most Arab-American residents in Dearborn have long voted for the Democrats, but Israel’s military campaign in Gaza – and more recently its invasion of Lebanon – have personally affected the community.

Dr Stein, from the Green Party, has said she supports an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel. Mr Trump has promised to bring peace to the Middle East if he is elected, although he has not provided any details.

Abdullah Hammoud, Dearborn's first Arab-American Mayor and a Democrat, last week declared he would not be endorsing Ms Harris, and has instead advised his constituents to “vote their conscience”. He also urged people to focus on local issues and races.

“In the city of Dearborn, everybody knows somebody who has been killed, injured or displaced,” Mr Hammoud tells The National, adding that his wife has lost relatives in Lebanon.

“We haven't seen a willingness yet from Vice President Harris to abandon the current course that President Biden has taken on the genocide in Gaza and the conflict in Lebanon … I'm not sticking my name behind an individual candidate."

Dearborn’s influential Arabic and English weekly newspaper, The Arab American News, has also not endorsed a presidential candidate.

“Both are warmongers,” says Osama Siblani, the paper’s publisher. “I cannot even fill the bubble with the names of any of these candidates. It’s very depressing.

“They have done absolutely nothing to encourage us to vote for either of them. They keep sending billions of dollars for rockets and bombs to strike our homeland and to kill our people. How do you even get on board with any of those people?”

Osama Siblani reads a copy of The Arab American News. Joshua Longmore / The National

Sensing an opportunity, Mr Trump's campaign has increased its engagement with Arab-American voters, seizing on the community's anger with the Biden administration.

Some Dearborn residents say the Trump team's approach and message have been catching on; others say they are determined to punish Ms Harris over the administration’s support for Israel. More still say they cannot vote for the former president who passed the so-called Muslim travel ban.

“It’s the difference between someone who kills you and someone who insults you,” Nasser Beydoun, a Lebanese-American businessman who last year ran for Senate as a Democrat, tells The National.

“I’ll take the insult. The biggest message we can send is to defeat Harris.”

A lack of enthusiasm for both main candidates is causing concern that people will not turn out to vote this election, local leaders say.

“People here are just generally disengaged, they don't agree with the top of the ticket at all,” says Mustapha Hammoud, a Dearborn city councilman. “They don't feel like their vote matters.”

Four years ago, he and many others in the community volunteered to help increase voter registration and encourage people to vote. Very little of that is happening this year, he said.

His family, he says, used to entirely vote Democrat, “without question”, preferring the party's social and economic policies. This election, each member is going to vote something different he says.

“People in my family are so angry about what they see as an administration complicit with a genocide that they're willing to vote for Trump,” the councilman says, adding that his grandparents have had to flee the Lebanese village of Tebnine.

“And then others who have never voted third party before are voting third party and that's just a microcosm of things – that same scene is playing out all around kitchen tables, all around Dearborn.

“People who never thought that they would drop the Democratic Party are much more willing to do so.”

Mustapha Hammoud is a city councilman in Dearborn. He says his family once voted entirely Democrat. Now it is split. Ahmed Issawy / The National