Opinion: For Arab Americans furious over Gaza, are fears about Trump enough to vote Harris?
Is the disappointment the activists feel in Biden and Harris on Gaza worth the risk they clearly see in Trump winning the White House?
Arab American activists are keenly aware of both their leverage and the dangers in deploying it.
They demanded on Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris push for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon, with the threat to Israel of an American arms embargo if it does not comply. But the activists acknowledged that a Trump victory next week will only make that terrible situation so much worse.
Speaking in a virtual media briefing organized by the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, those tensions rang out as some of the activists sounded far more committed to abandoning Harris and the Democratic Party than others.
Their leverage comes from the too-close-to-call presidential election. The support or abandonment by any particular constituency could tilt the margin to victory or defeat.
Harris has been successfully barnstorming for support from moderate Republicans repulsed by former President Donald Trump's behavior. And she has worked to make up ground that President Joe Biden had lost with Black and Latino voters since she entered the race 101 days ago.
But she's still vulnerable on her left flank from people outraged by the atrocious scale of civilian death in fighting prompted by the terrorist attacks Hamas launched from Gaza on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Has Harris done enough on Gaza to convince the voters she needs?
Halah Ahmad, a spokesperson for Listen to Wisconsin, cited during Tuesday's call her group's success in April in getting more than 48,000 Democratic primary voters to support "uninstructed" rather than for Biden, who was then still on the ballot as his party's expected nominee in November.
"We sent a clear message that voters in a key battleground state are willing to part ways with the Democratic Party over this genocide," Ahmad said. "The message that voters still feel is – if you cannot protect us from a genocide, especially one that has been protested at this scale, you cannot expect us to see you as protectors of any notion of democracy."
She spoke just before James Zogby, a pollster and Democratic National Committee member who co-founded the Arab American Institute. Zogby, who has endorsed Harris, said his polling shows Arab American Democrats "overwhelmingly want to suspend aid to Israel if it doesn't comply with an immediate cease-fire."
Harris, he said, "has done a little better but not enough" on the issue ‒ nonetheless she could reap immediate political benefit from taking a stronger position than Biden on Israel's actions.
"I still think she has to move, and I don't think that us biting off our nose to spite our face is the message that we send," Zogby said.
Do these activists want Trump to win instead? Not really.
I had to ask: Is the disappointment the activists feel in Biden and Harris worth the risk they clearly see in Trump winning the White House?
Trump's message to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has been a simple "do what you have to do." He used the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks to ponder how nice Gaza could be if its waterfront was redeveloped.
His disgraced and disbarred lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, used a campaign-approved speech at Trump's rally in New York City on Sunday to assail Palestinian toddlers as dangerous.
Zogby acknowledged the choice "as a horrific bind."
"The reality is that nobody can draw for me a straight line between defeating Harris, electing Trump and ending genocide," Zogby said "It's just not there. And the risk is too great of four years of Donald Trump for me to want to take that risk."
Rania Batrice, a longtime Democratic operative who chairs the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, called Harris "far from perfect" but predicted an ongoing effort if she is elected president.
Batrice sees that as an entirely different kind of fight if Trump wins, citing his threats to criminalize protesting.
"He's going to criminalize all these tools that we do have at our disposal to show up and demand change," Batrice said. "She hasn't done enough, but there's a fight there that we can have, that we just can't have with Donald Trump."
What I also heard in this briefing was a genuine sense of anger that any of the activists could be blamed for balking on Harris, even if that helps Trump win.
"Vice President Harris has put many voters in an impossible position where we are being asked to vote for a candidate who is avidly supporting a policy of unconditional funding and arming Israel to carry out its genocide in Gaza and its war in Lebanon," said Reem Abuelhaj, a spokesperson for No Ceasefire No Vote in Pennsylvania.
Why Arab American and Muslim voters can't give up on Harris
Harris' campaign pointed me toward a Black Muslim rally for her in Philadelphia two weeks ago. The Democratic nominee and her campaign have been meeting with Arab American and Muslim leaders in other cities.
My sense of those meetings are they do as much to enforce frustration than relieve it, with Harris expressing concerns about Israel's actions, the return of hostages and the suffering of civilians. But there's not much to grab hold of there. It's part of a larger script.
A line from that script, when Harris pivoted in a CNN town hall event last week from Gaza to grocery prices, left the activists seething days later.
Even so, what Batrice said during the call stuck with me. She didn't endorse Harris. Far from it. But she endorsed the idea of not giving up on the fight, and she acknowledged "that the allies who have been fighting alongside us will not have that ability under a Trump presidency."
Harris might have the capacity to do better when it comes to Israel, Gaza and Lebanon. Or she might be more like Biden on this than she is letting on. But Trump doesn't just lack that capacity. He clearly has no interest in it.
Follow Paste BN elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan