By Ahmad Faruqui*/
At the national level, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are running next to next according to several polls. But whoever wins the popular vote in the US will not get to sit at the Oval Desk in the White House unless they also get the most electoral votes. This is a peculiarity of the US constitution which prevented Hillary Clinton from being elected president in 2016.
This election will be decided by a few hundred thousand voters in a few swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina. In several of these states, Arab and Muslim Americans represent several thousand voters. How they cast their ballot may well decide whether Trump wins or loses.
Arab and Muslim anger towards President Joe Biden is totally justified. Without his “ironclad security guarantee” to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, it would have been unable to wage a genocidal campaign in Gaza. Despite his occasional calls for restraint, Biden has continued to provide Netanyahu an almost unlimited supply of 2,000 lb. bombs, advanced artillery and tank shells, fighter aircraft and other arms and ammunition to Israel. These have been used indiscriminately against civilian targets in what has been called a war of self-defense by Netanyahu. Gaza has been reduced to rubble, including hospitals, schools, offices, and apartment buildings. Electricity, medicines and food are in short supply. Sanitation has been destroyed. Epidemics are spreading and famine has reached thousands of Palestinians living in Gaza.
More importantly, more than 40,000 have been killed, including several thousand babies and children, who could not possibly be considered members of Hamas. More than a hundred thousand civilians have been injured, possibly for life, and millions in Gaza, the West Bank and in the Arab and Muslim world more broadly have been grieved. There are no words to describe their suffering.
But “Genocide Joe” is no longer the candidate of the Democratic Party. Vice President Harris is the candidate. She did not attend Netanyahu’s speech to the Joint Session of Congress, nor did nearly a hundred elected Democrats. Harris met Netanyahu a couple of days later. Afterwards, she spoke to the press and said that too many civilians have been killed and the war needs to end.
By contrast, Trump invited Netanyahu to his sprawling estate in Mara Lago, Florida, had a meal with him, and later lambasted Harris for not supporting Israel as it “fights for its survival.”
During his debate with Kamala, he stated that if he is not re-elected, Israel will be destroyed in just two years. Trump castigated her and called her an enemy of the Jews. He went so far as to say that no Jew should vote for Kamala since she has repeatedly said that too many civilians have been killed, called for a ceasefire and the creation of a Palestinian state with full civil and human rights for its citizens,
Arab and Muslim Americans should not let their anger at Biden cause them to vote for a third-party candidate like Jill Stein. At the national level, she is unlikely to get more than one percent of the vote. However, a recent poll suggests that she has as much support among Arab and Muslim Americans as Kamala in three key swing states: Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.
If the Muslim-American vote is divided between Stein and Kamala, Trump may win these swing states. In 2016, Stein’s supporters ensured Hillary Clinton’s defeat to Trump.
Trump has made it very clear that he will not be kind to anyone who lives in the US and who holds pro-Hamas views. He is likely to equate being pro-Palestinian with being pro-Hamas. It’s worth noting that he has labeled the pro-Palestinian protestors at several US universities earlier this year as antisemitic.
A second Trump presidency will cause enormous harm to the Arab and Muslim American community. He is seething with revenge. He has said that he will not only impose a Muslim travel ban, but also deport Muslims living in the US, even if they have a green card or an American passport, if he labels them as being antisemitic.
In addition, in his second term, he is likely to curtail many of the fundamental freedoms that are enshrined in the US Constitution, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. He may also entrench himself in office, eliminating the need for any future elections.
Trump has talked about imprisoning anyone who opposes him, to release those who were arrested for attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2020 and to unleash the Proud Boys in areas of the country that voted against him.
Trump will enrich the wealthy and impoverish the poor. His economic plan, focused on tariffing imports, has been criticized by 14 Nobel Laureates. It will simply raise the prices of goods and service in the US and harm consumers. He will reduce taxes on the wealthy and curtail if not eliminate social security payments and payments for medical expenses.
Finally, with his strong focus on promoting fossil fuels such as natural gas, he will rescind the many programs that are currently in place for promoting renewable energy, such as solar and wind. Americans will breathe dirty air and the climate of the planet will be harmed, endangering the health of the current population and the lives of the generations to come, and not just in the US but throughout the globe.
Arab and Muslim Americans should think what a second Trump presidency will do not just to them who are living in the US, but to Arabs and Muslims anywhere else in the globe who dare to speak out on behalf of Palestinians.
A Trump victory on November 5 will spell doom for people throughout the globe. Arab and Muslim Americans are uniquely positioned to prevent such a grim future from materializing.
%Ahmad Faruqui is a frequent commentator on political issues who has traveled to six continents over the past half century. He is a native of Pakistan and an economist by training.
