More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
“We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads.
“Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones,” the letter continued. “As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities.”
This is the opposite of my experience in Palestinian spaces in the US, including at community centers and community organizations. There have been some people attempting to organize support for Harris, but they have been shut down and signs against Harris put up. Of course among very politically engaged left groups of Palestinians the sentiment is 100% anti-Harris, but that is not representative. Both of these sentiments are things from across several states, including cities with large Palestinian populations. Also, to be clear, not all Palestinians are Muslim. These spaces are also not exclusively muslim. There are Palestinian Christians with this same trend.
Palestinians are not a monolith, of course. They will have diverse opinions.
And here is the problem with your argument. This is what I wanted you to say. Almost none of the Palestinians around here, or anyone they know, is in the camp that they won’t vote, because they know that Trump being in office means things, like a lot of the Palestinians in the US, will be sent back to Palestine, to be part of the genocide, they are trying to save people from. Maybe, like the bias within those who signed this letter, where you go, creates an oppositional bubble. Maybe the ones here are in a less privileged position, one that makes them significantly more vulnerable to the GOP’s bigotry? Simply living in a state that will harbor immigrants against the Feds, type of privilege.
There are ~47,000 christian Palestinians, ~15 million Palestinians. So this isn’t the caveat you are trying to create, in this informal space. The Palestinians, and the greater muslim population here, remember when Trump was in office. When many of them were arrested, caged, and deported, on the flimsiest of bullshit, and had their property, businesses, and families stripped from them, in the anti-muslim fervor. Things like getting deported because you divorced your wife, of over 10 years, with whom you have kids, after being remarried, with more kids, for almost 20 years, for “abusing” IR-1 marriage visas. There is also the cases of blew 0.00% BAC, got arrested, blood sent out, and the person was gone before the results of the test was reviewed by the courts. The ones where records errors ended up in a lot of people getting deported, or, at least, held in ICE camps, for months. Records errors that suddenly spiked several hundred percent after Trump’s muslim targeting policies went into affect. Oopsie, sorry we destroyed your life for literally no reason, but don’t worry, we take accountability, and admit that was our bad. Good thing we have immunity, otherwise we might be in trouble.
I had already implied it. I did not say, “there are no Palestinian signatories”, did I? I said it was a conspicuous subset of people, namely the heads if NGOs and party insiders. This necessitates diversity of positions taken and of class dynamics. I am not tokenizing Palestinians or treating them as a monolith to throw around like a cudgrl, saying “this is what Palestinians want so you should to”. Solidarity requires that you become informed and work in solidarity with the oppressed, not seek out tokens. People throughout this thread are trying to use Palestinians in this way to justify their complicity.
How did you get a read on what all of the Palestinians in your area are doing wrt supporting Harris? I am very active among my local community and I would never say “almost none” about basically anything. But I can tell you that I can turn out the vast majority who attend community events to anti-Harris actions where they change the slogans and have conversations to that effect.
I spend most of my time reading: Palestine in community centers and appropriate religious gatherings. I don’t think it is particularly biased towards radical or left action. The wider group has to press local imams to be less defeatist, even.
My community is poor and vulnerable.
ICE constantly raids. They tend to focus on the Latino community, though not exclusively. My compatriots do direct action to delay or prevent arrest at suspected raid targets.
It is the caveat I am trying to create. I know Christian Palestinians. The entirety of my point was about not assuming uniformity.
Deportations were around the same as under Obama and Biden-Harris. They have increased over the last year, targeting student protesters and political organizers. The primary impact of Trump’s policies are: basically anyone brown from the Middle East was to make reentry after travel extremely difficult, forcing people here to suffer because they could not visit dying relatives or weddings or family with new children. I was active across several states during this period, including dramatically racist red states, and do not know what you are talking about. To be clear, Palestinian immigrants have been under constant and extreme and unfair scrutiny for decades, facing exactly the flimsy excuses for deportation that you describe. This is why one of the things we focus on in our work is protecting Palestinian immigrants from risk and doing whatever can to get them full citizenship. It is usually then that they feel comfortable taking risks for some kinds of solidarity actions. Many lament their inability to participate for years because they are worried they will be deported and/or separated from their families if they do so much as attend a rally. Some do so anyways.
The examples you give are the kinds of things that happened before and after Trump as well. But despite being across several communities and doing direct work among them, there was never a sentiment that this had changed.
The Latino community faced a dramatic increase in such deportations and arrests, particularly due to Trump’s targeting of DREAMers (who Obama made vulnerable via incomplete legalization).
The first point - Your previous comments made it seem as though you were saying only people in such position held that opinion. Whether you meant to or not.
I moved here about 7 years ago. There are not many great places to get a good variety of foods here, without driving to one of two close, bigger, cities. There is, however, a healthy community from the middle east, a lot of which happen to be Palestinian, due to a history of taking refugees, and other political outreach actions over the past 50 years, or so. Though that tide has changed in the past ~20 years. So, having a hobby of cooking, I found myself at their stores, a lot. They got to know me, we discussed food, they invited me to classes that teach cultural practices, and history, cooking being the most popular. I started attending their cooking classes.
This lead to a conversation where I mentioned that, in one of the close, larger cities, I have a cousin who is a civil rights lawyer, who is in a firm that specializes in immigration. This community, naturally, has a lot of connections to people living in this city. So I got a stack of business cards, and gave them to a number of people, who largely own local businesses, to hand out, in case they know people, in that city, that needs, or may need, legal help with immigration matters. This lead to me being more, and more, in discussion, with that community, about political issues. I also have volunteered help to a couple organizations that work with marginalized demographics, which lead to me handing out business cards of representatives of these organizations. This ingratiated me with a bunch of people. So I started attending their out reach program. I also began to attend their community meeting they hold at a local mosques, and theater one family owns. I offer a number of voluntary services. to these groups, on occasion. Mostly IT work.
Then the genocide started. I have worked with people to design billboards for the issue. I have canvassed for them. I have been generally active, and helpful, as I can. There is an organization here called CAIR, it is national, I assume you know who they are. Through this exposure I have been around a number of this community large enough, to be the vast majority, locally, at one time or another. I have sat in meetings and listened to them talking. I have seen where they decide to apply their donated funds to take political action. I have a friend who translates discussions to english for me. There isn’t a huge group that are hard line on the idea of staying out of voting, in the presidential election, totally. A lot of those that are, discuss how white Americans have to participate, and while they will stand out, they urge that, if you are going to vote, vote for Harris. The reasons I have been given for this, is simple, while no party is good for them, and the US immigration practices are most often hostile, unlike the people you know, they saw a very noticeable increase of activity from the government, against their community, when Trump put forth his anti-muslim sentiment. My cousin’s law firm says they experienced a large spike in cases during that time, as well, particularly ones that the government “lost” (as in it was deemed illegal/unconstitutional, but too late now, and no one was punished). One of the big, specific, things they discuss is that long term, established, people, in their community, started to be targeted, where as, previously, their was no question about their immigration status, or position as Americans. They saw a lot more prying into who they were related to, arbitrary contact with individuals, etc. They saw a lot more of these people being taken by ICE, and deported. As the situation has gotten more desperate they have been using their local businesses to reach out to non-middle eastern customers, and some have literally been putting pamphlets, explaining the situation, in their bag, as they check them out. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t like Harris. They see one that is not backing off selling weapons to Israel, and the other is vowing to take an active role in accelerating the genocide, so they are either voting the former, or suggesting that other Americans do so, because they are in the extreme of the rock and a hard place analogy. There is no good choice, there is only the possibility of, some level of, harm reduction.
There is more, but I have explained enough of my personal life, for you to get the picture.
I don’t think they did. I think you read it into it because you had a defensive response.
Thank you for contributing to and working with your community and thank you for sharing.
Yes of course. It is a weak organization. I was curious to see if they had any recent news and looked at their website. They are hosting a gala in November at which Jamaal Bowman, who voted for the iron dome, will be present. I’m sure he is there because he was targeted due to even just taking a (late) milquetoast stance against Israel and then losing due to AIPAC, having abandoned any grassroots organizer-based strategy. CAIR has been largely excised from my local community because they compromise too heavily in exchange for nothing and are a vehicle for exactly the NGO climber types I’ve mentioned before. The community watches their people leave and then turn their backs. Of course, they do not say this very publicly, as family is important, but when having individual conversations, so many are happy that their kids are getting paid well but are unhappy that they spend their time with such groups.
I am returning to this point because it is important. These types of organizations are easily coopted and defanged, and they follow a single trajectory given their funding models and staffing methods. They split a community into those in them and those without, and those within them have a different interest and begin to socialize with the insiders. Even an org like CAIR, which is outside the mainstream of political discourse at least half the time, is impacted by this and sets its sights low and uses ineffectual methods of advocacy.
For clarity, you mentioned business cards many times. When you say community, do you mean a wide community of everyday people, or mostly business owners, heads of NGOs, and maybe imams?
“A lot” can mean 3 or 7 or 50. There are, of course, some people who advocate for this. But the idea that they are even outnumbered by those opposed it completely alien to my experience and, if you don’t believe that to be enough (as you have your own experience), it is also in disagreement with the polls, including those done by CAIR!
They are currently the worst they have been since 9/11, per the very nice and opinionated uncles my community. It goes in waves.
What does your cousin say about now, the last year? Are you near any college campuses or places where actions take place? The current islamophobia is focused on targeting those who take actions resisting the genocide, generally targeted by Zionists with doxxing and harassment that they leverage into calls for expulsions and deportations. While fascists are often doing this, people that present themselves as liberals also do so.
This did not stop under Biden, in my area. There is still constant fear.
It reeeally sounds like you mostly talk to business owners.
This is foolish, of course, as the Biden-Harris administration is actively doing the genocide and they are extremely competent at ensuring its continuation at full steam. Israel is already doing, more or less, whatever it wants outside of implied restraints on how to attacks Iran. This is why the position you present is a minority position among both Palestinian Americans and the wider muslim community.
There is a good choice. You vociferously oppose the genocide and have discipline.
Those interested in electoralism often talk about “accountability” and “pushing” for things. This is the chance to test that theory. If a person will still vote for a genocider candidate, what does accountability mean to them? Nothing, of course.
Re: harm reduction, again, this is the administration doing the genocide, supporting it to the hilt. There is no harm reduction here, it is full-steam-ahead genocide. These are bog standard Dem PR talking points, not the common positions of real people affected by this.
To be honest I’m not sure why you’re sharing so much of your personal life, though it is nice of you to do so. I think it would be good for you to share less information, for your own security.