Survey shows why neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump can take the Arab American vote for granted

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Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest as US President Joe Biden attends the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Detroit, Michigan on May 19, 2024. (AFP)
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Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest as US President Joe Biden attends the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Detroit, Michigan on May 19, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 11 August 2024
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Survey shows why neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump can take the Arab American vote for granted

  • Americans with Arab ancestry in key battleground states are gravitating toward Green Party candidate Jill Stein
  • Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will need to win back voters after Joe Biden’s Gaza stance cost the party support

LONDON: Jill Stein, the US Green Party’s presidential candidate known for her vocal support of Palestinian rights, has emerged as the top choice among Arab American voters in the lead-up to the US elections on Nov. 5, according to a recently conducted poll.

Stein, running as a third-party candidate, has garnered the support of over 45 percent of Arab Americans surveyed by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the largest Arab-American grassroots civil rights organization.

This places Stein, a physician and environmentalist, ahead of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, who received 27.5 percent of the vote in the same poll.

The survey was conducted between July 27 and 28 through a partnership between the ADC, Molitico for data insights, and the Community Pulse, which specializes in polling solutions.

According to Abed Ayoub, ADC’s national executive director, the Arab-American voter demographic has increasingly gravitated toward Stein owing to her advocacy for Palestinian human rights and her opposition to the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza since October.

In a post on the social platform X, he said: “Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein’s strong polling at 45.3 percent, akin to the previous poll, demonstrates consistent community support, largely because of her vocal stance on Palestinian human rights.”




Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at a Pro-Palestinian protest in front of the White House on June 8, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Getty Images via AFP)

Stein has been a favorite among Arab voters since ADC’s last opinion poll in May, where she led with 25 percent support. In comparison, President Joe Biden, who withdrew from the presidential race in July, and Republican candidate Donald Trump, polled at 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

In 2022, 2.2 million people in the US reported having Arab ancestry in that year’s Arab Community Survey. The majority of Arab Americans are native-born, and 85 percent of Arabs in the US are citizens.

While the community traces its roots to every Arab country, the majority of Arab Americans have ancestral ties to Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Iraq. The top four states by Arab American population size are California, Florida, Minnesota and Michigan.




Activists show people how to vote uncommitted, instead of for US President Joe Biden, outside of Maples Elementary School in Dearborn during the Michigan presidential primary election on Feb. 27, 2024. (AFP/File)

Ayoub noted in his post that Biden’s declining popularity among Arab Americans was “due to the retiring president’s staunch support for Israel’s continued actions in Gaza.”

The Israeli military launched a bombing campaign in Gaza in retaliation for the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during which the Palestinian militant group took more than 200 hostages.

The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza has since surpassed 39,500, with at least 15,000 children killed and over 12,000 others injured, according to Gaza’s health authorities




A Democratic voter uncommitted to President Joe Biden hands out fliers to voters outside of a polling location at Maples Elementary School on February 27, 2024 in Dearborn, Michigan. (Getty Images/AFP)

Humanitarian organizations, rights groups, and governments worldwide have repeatedly called for a ceasefire, but Israel has continued its military operations.

Stein has consistently criticized Biden and his administration for their unwavering support for Israel, warning in an Aug. 1 post on X that the Israeli government was dragging the US “into WWIII.”

Following the suspected Mossad elimination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a senior Hezbollah figure in Beirut last week, Stein criticized Biden and Harris for their “deafening silence” on “Israel’s massive escalation toward a wider war.




Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest in Dearborn, Michigan as US President Joe Biden attends the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Detroit, Michigan on May 19, 2024. (AFP)

In a July 31 post on X, Stein demanded that “the US immediately cut off aid to Israel, mandate a ceasefire, and arrest war criminal (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) before he gets us all killed.”

The killing of Haniyeh on July 31 has heightened fears of an all-out, regional conflict. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge, warning Israel that it had “paved the way for your harsh punishment.”

Netanyahu’s government has neither claimed responsibility nor commented on Haniyeh’s death. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was “not aware of or involved in” the killing.

FAST FACTS

• Arab Americans live in all 50 states, but up to 95% live in metropolitan areas.

• New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis are the top 6 metropolitan areas.

• Nearly 75% of all Arab Americans live in just 12 states: California, Michigan, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

• Nearly a quarter of Arab Americans are Muslim, while the religious background of the rest are Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant.

However, the day before Haniyeh’s death, Israel claimed responsibility for killing Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander, in an airstrike on a building in southern Beirut. Hezbollah has promised a “definite” response for Shukr’s killing.

Whether or not the US was involved in these escalations, Biden’s Middle East policy has faced sharp criticism since October, with human rights groups urging the US administration to halt arms transfers to Israel.




Abbas Alawieh, spokesperson for Listen to Michigan, a group who asked voters to vote uncommitted instead of for US President Joe Biden in Michigan's US Presidential primary election, during an election night watch party in Dearborn, Michigan on February 27, 2024. (AFP)

In late April, Amnesty International reported that US weapons supplied to Israel had been “used in serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner inconsistent with US law and policy.”

In May, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his defense minister, and three Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Chris Habiby, ADC’s national government affairs and advocacy director, says the poll revealed two key insights. “First, President Biden is deeply unpopular among Arab Americans,” he told Arab News.




Chris Habiby, national government affairs and advocacy director of ADC. (Supplied)

“Second, being anti-genocide is a winning position for our communities across the country.”

Habiby added that the poll’s results reflect “what we have been demanding for the 10 months and 300 days this genocide has been ongoing — an immediate, permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo on all weapons being sent to Israel.”

Biden faced a significant defeat in the Michigan Democratic primary in February when a majority of voters in Dearborn, a city with a large Arab and Muslim population, chose to vote “uncommitted” rather than for him.




Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest in Dearborn, Michigan as US President Joe Biden attends the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Detroit, Michigan on May 19, 2024. (AFP)

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud publicly supported the “uncommitted” vote movement, citing Biden’s policy on the Israel-Gaza conflict, according to USA Today.

In contrast, Stein has actively courted the Arab American vote in Michigan and beyond.

In an interview with Arab News in June, Stein pledged that, if elected, she would halt military support for Israel’s “apartheid government” and push for a genuine peace between Israelis and Palestinians.




Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at a Pro-Palestinian protest in front of the White House on June 8, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Getty Images via AFP)

“Arabs and Muslims have been taken for granted in America. They are victims of racial profiling, Islamophobia and violence against Arabs in this country,” she said.

“There is an absolute violation of our constitutional rights by the government to shut down our dialogue. People are trying to grapple with this genocide we are seeing live and in real-time on our iPhones and computer screens.”

Stein stressed that it is “against US law to send weapons to Israel, which is violating humanitarian rights and interfering in the delivery of humanitarian aid.”

She added: “The people who are standing up to assert our legal values and our human values are being criminalized and charged with crimes.”




US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the 114th NAACP National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 29, 2023. (AFP/File)

Despite Stein’s growing popularity among Arab-American communities, other presidential candidates still have an opportunity to gain more support from Arab and Muslim voters before November.

ADC’s poll indicates that, in addition to the 27.5 percent of respondents who support Harris, 18 percent are undecided about their vote in November, and 6 percent said they do not plan to vote.

“With nearly 1 in 4 voters either undecided or inclined to sit out the election, there is plenty of room for Harris or any other candidate to earn more support from the community if the right positions are taken,” wrote ADC’s Ayoub on X.
 

 


US broadcast regulator rejects Trump call to pull ABC licenses over presidential debate

Updated 20 September 2024
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US broadcast regulator rejects Trump call to pull ABC licenses over presidential debate

  • Jessica Rosenworcel said "the Commission does not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage"

WASHINGTON: The chair of the Federal Communications Commission rejected former US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Walt Disney-owned ABC should lose its broadcast licenses over the network’s moderating Sept. 10 presidential debate.

“The First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy. The Commission does not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage,” FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said on Thursday.

The FCC, an independent federal agency, does not license broadcast networks, but issues them to individual broadcast stations that are renewed on a staggered basis for eight-year periods.

Trump has repeatedly complained about how ABC moderators handled the September 10 presidential debate, calling them "dishonest" and partial to his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

He said Linsey Davis and David Muir fact-checked him three times for every instance that they corrected Harris.

Appearing on "Fox & Friends" the morning after the debate, Trump repeated his accusations against the two debate moderators and demanded that ABC be punished.

"They ought to take away their license for the way they did that," he said.

 


Turkiye in new bid to revive Somalia-Ethiopia talks

Updated 20 September 2024
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Turkiye in new bid to revive Somalia-Ethiopia talks

ISTANBUL: Turkiye will hold separate talks with Horn of Africa rivals Somalia and Ethiopia to ease tensions before a new round of Ankara-hosted talks, the foreign minister said on Thursday.

Relations between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa have soured dramatically since Ethiopia struck a controversial maritime deal in January with the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland.

The memorandum of understanding gives Ethiopia — one of the world’s biggest landlocked countries — access to the sea, but Somalia has condemned it as an assault on its sovereignty.

Turkiye, which has been conducting shuttle diplomacy between Ethiopian and Somalian foreign ministers since the summer, mediated two rounds of talks in July and August.

The third round, which was supposed to take place on Tuesday, was canceled as Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara would rather meet them separately before another round of talks.

“Because there are some lessons we learned from the previous two rounds of talks,” Fidan told the Anadolu news agency. 

Fidan said he would directly talk to the two parties to “bring their positions closer” and help them reach a deal.

Under the Jan. 1 deal with Addis Ababa, Somaliland agreed to lease 20 km of its coast for 50 years to Ethiopia, which wants to set up a naval base and a commercial port.

Somaliland has said Ethiopia would give it formal recognition in return, although Addis Ababa has never confirmed this.

Somaliland, a former British protectorate of 4.5 million people, unilaterally declared independence in 1991, but the international community has never recognized the move. Addis Ababa had access to a port in Eritrea until the two countries went to war between 1998 and 2000. Since then, Ethiopia has sent most of its sea trade through Djibouti.

Fidan said he was hopeful about a deal between the two rivals.

“I believe we have brought the parties closer to a certain degree. Hopefully, we will continue this ... I am hopeful,” he said.


Russia attacks Ukraine geriatric center and power grid

Updated 20 September 2024
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Russia attacks Ukraine geriatric center and power grid

  • Moscow says it is advancing in eastern Ukraine
  • Ukraine faces winter power shortfall, IEA says

KYIV: Russian forces hit a geriatric center in the Ukrainian city of Sumy and targeted its energy sector in a new wave of airstrikes on Thursday, killing at least one civilian, Ukrainian officials said.
A UN monitoring body said attacks on the power grid probably violated humanitarian law while the International Energy Agency said in a report that Ukraine’s electricity supply shortfall in the critical winter months could reach about a third of expected peak demand.
During a daytime strike on the northern city of Sumy, a Russian guided bomb hit a five-story building, regional and military officials said.
One person was killed and 12 wounded, the interior ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said rescue teams were checking to see whether people were trapped under rubble.
Images from the site shared alongside the ministry’s post showed elderly patients evacuated from the damaged building lying on the ground on carpets and blankets.
In his nightly video address, Zelensky said that Russia had launched 90 guided bomb attacks in the past 24 hours
He also said that Ukraine’s forces had “managed to diminish the occupiers’ assault potential in Donetsk region,” though the situation remained difficult in areas subjected to the heaviest attacks, near the cities of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had captured the village of Heorhiivka, east of Kurakhove.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s military, in an afternoon report, referred to the village as one of several engulfed by fighting. Popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said the village was in Russian hands.
Overnight, Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down all 42 drones and one of four missiles launched since Russia invaded Ukraine more than 2-1/2 years ago.
Russian forces have pummelled the energy system in the Sumy region in multiple strikes this week, reducing power in some areas and forcing authorities to use back-up power systems.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said power cuts had been in force in 10 regions due to airstrikes and technological reasons.
In a sign of its concern, the European Union said a fuel power plant was being dismantled in Lithuania to be rebuilt in Ukraine, and that electricity exports would also be increased.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said Russia’s attacks violated international humanitarian law by jeopardizing essential services, including water and heating, while also threatening public health, education and the economy, according to the report.
Kyiv says targeting energy system is a war crime, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for four Russian officials and military officers for the bombing of civilian power infrastructure.
Moscow says power infrastructure is a legitimate military target and dismisses the charges as irrelevant.

Sumy a frequent target
Moscow has repeatedly attacked the Sumy region, which borders Russia’s Kursk region, the site of a major Ukrainian incursion in which Kyiv says it seized over 100 settlements. Russian shelling killed three people near Krasnopillia in the Sumy region on Wednesday evening, local prosecutors said. More shelling on Thursday wounded two people and damaged a medical institution, they added.
Russia has taken back two more villages in Kursk, a senior commander said on Thursday, adding that Russian forces were also advancing in eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky, however, said the incursion into Kursk region had succeeded in diverting nearly 40,000 Russian troops to the area.


Mission specialist for Titan sub owner tells Coast Guard goal was to ‘make dreams come true’

Updated 19 September 2024
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Mission specialist for Titan sub owner tells Coast Guard goal was to ‘make dreams come true’

  • Five people were killed last year when Titan submersible imploded last year enroute to Titanic wreck
  • The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration

A mission specialist for the company that owned the Titan submersible that imploded last year told the US Coast Guard on Thursday that the firm was staffed by competent people who wanted to “make dreams come true.”

Renata Rojas was the latest person to testify who was connected to Titan owner OceanGate. An investigatory panel had previously listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Rojas’ testimony struck a different tone than some of the earlier witnesses, who described the company as troubled from the top down and focused more on profit than science or safety.

“I was learning a lot and working with amazing people,” Rojas said. “Some of those people are very hardworking individuals that were just trying to make dreams come true.”

Rojas also said she felt the company was sufficiently transparent during the run-up to the Titanic dive. Her testimony was emotional at times, with the Coast Guard panel proposing a brief break at one point so she could collect herself.

Rojas is a member of the Explorers Club, which lost members Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet in the Titan implosion. The club described Rush as “a friend of The Explorers Club” after the implosion.

“I knew what I was doing was very risky. I never at any point felt unsafe by the operation,” Rojas said in testimony Thursday.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on problems the company had prior to the fatal 2023 dive.

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come and resume next week.

Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said.

No one on board survived. Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman were the other two people killed in the implosion.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.


UK urged to scrap ‘racist’ visa route

Updated 19 September 2024
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UK urged to scrap ‘racist’ visa route

  • Long and expensive visa route for immigrants has been labeled ‘racist’ after analysis showed most applicants who feel forced to go through it are people of color
  • Analysis of Home Office data showed that all but one country in the top 10 nationalities who felt forced to use the route were those with predominantly non-white populations

LONDON: The UK has been urged to scrap a 10-year visa route and cap all routes to settlement in the country at five years.

The long and expensive visa route for immigrants has been labeled “racist” after analysis showed most applicants who feel forced to go through it are people of color, according to a report in The Guardian.

The 10-year route to a visa is used by hundreds of thousands of people who are not eligible for other immigration schemes because of a lack of income or professional qualifications. Many work in low-paid jobs, such as cleaning or care work. Other common routes to settlement in the UK take five years.

According to freedom of information data obtained by the charity Ramfel, there are 218,110 people on the 10-year route.

Analysis of Home Office data showed that all but one country in the top 10 nationalities who felt forced to use the route were those with predominantly non-white populations. The top five were Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Ghana and Bangladesh. Overall, 86 percent of people using the route were from Asian or African countries, while 6 percent were from Europe.

People seeking to gain a visa via the 10-year route must renew their leave to remain with the Home Office every 30 months, meaning four renewals. The fee for each renewal is £3,850 ($5,095). The Home Office can grant a fee waiver but many requests are refused.

According to a 2023 report on the 10-year route by the legal advice and support service Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, the think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research and the charity Praxis, the most common way of covering the fees was to borrow money, with many people remaining in debt afterward and struggling to pay for basic living costs.

A GMIAU spokesperson said: “These numbers confirm what people on the 10-year route already know: It is a racist policy. People are being driven into debt, forced to choose between paying thousands of pounds in visa fees to keep their legal status and keeping their families fed and warm.

“Ten years is far too long for anyone to wait to settle. The route must be scrapped. A good place to start would be to cap all routes to settlement at five years.”

Nick Beales, of Ramfel, said: “The 10-year route is an enduring legacy of the hostile environment. Like many other Conservative policies from this period, the racist intent is clear, with African and South Asian nationals far more likely to be placed on this arduous and often brutal route toward securing permanent immigration status.”