In scene unimaginable 4 years ago, Michigan Arabs bask in Trump win they helped clinch
Buying notion he can succeed in ending Gaza war where Biden and Harris failed, minority community ostracized by GOP nominee in previous elections helps him flip key swing state
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
DEARBORN, Michigan — Optimism and hookahs were bubbling in concert on Tuesday night at the Arab Americans for Trump election watch party in Dearborn, Michigan, as the major TV networks called one state after another for the former and soon-to-be future US president.
It was a scene that was virtually unimaginable just four years ago, when Joe Biden won nearly 90 percent of the vote in the southern part of Dearborn, where a similarly overwhelming percentage of residents are Arab and Muslim.
But riding the community’s utter fury over the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, Donald Trump managed to win a plurality of the vote in Dearborn — 47 percent to 28% for Vice President Kamala Harris, who only beat Green Party candidate Jill Stein by six percentage points, according to an NBC News projection.
Some pro-Palestinian activists tried to quickly paint the Michigan results as a repudiation of Harris’s decision to stand by President Joe Biden’s support for Israel throughout the war.
But results across the country demonstrated that Harris’s problems extended much further than the Arab and Muslim communities, with more consequential drops in support identified among Black and Latino voters.
Nonetheless, the several dozen men still at the Lava Java hookah bar after 2 a.m. could not help feeling vindicated, as network analysts began pointing out that Michigan could be the state that officially puts Trump over the 270 electoral vote threshold. (Wisconsin was the one that ultimately put him over the edge.)
Attendees at the election watch party hailed from various areas throughout the Middle East — from the Palestinian territories to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. But they were unanimous about their primary reason for backing Trump: They believe he can succeed in ending the ever-expanding Israel-Hamas war where Biden has failed.
They also are socially and fiscally conservative, making the Republican Party a more natural political home in many ways.
“For a long time, the issue of Palestine is what kept us with the Democrats, but after Gaza that is no longer the case,” said Ali, an attendee at the watch party who declined to share his last name.
“Moving a plaque from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem does not equal killing 43,000 people,” said Arab Americans for Trump national chairman Bishara Bahbah, dismissively describing Trump’s embassy move in comparison to the Hamas-run health ministry’s death toll from the Gaza war during Biden’s tenure.
The Biden administration has made repeated efforts to broker a ceasefire and regularly calls out Israel over the high civilian casualty count in Gaza, but progressive critics say the Democratic president’s refusal to lean harder on Jerusalem has allowed the war to drag on for 13 months. Biden officials counter that they can’t coax the parties into a ceasefire if the parties don’t want one, placing particular blame on Hamas for the ongoing impasse.
Trump, for his part, has pledged to swiftly end the Mideast war but has not provided any details regarding how he plans to do so.
Bahbah claimed that the president-elect could well impose an arms embargo on Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignores his call to quickly end the war in Gaza.
“If he says to Netanyahu, ‘End the war by the time I enter office’ and Netanyahu fails to do so, there’s nothing stopping Trump from stopping the flow of arms to Israel,” Bahbah said.
He asserted that Trump has much more influence over Netanyahu, compared to Democratic presidents whose counsel the Israeli premier has long ignored. Moreover, Bahbah maintained that the former president never really got over Netanyahu congratulating Biden on winning the 2020 election.
Trump’s record as president — from moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, to cutting aid to the Palestinians, to steps legitimizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank — offers nothing to suggest that he would abandon the Jewish state in his second term.
It was these policies that likely brought far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir to react with similar elation to Trump’s victory as his Arab supporters in Dearborn.
But Bahbah insisted that “the Trump of 2016 and 2020 is a very different person than the Trump of 2024.”
“He’s been exposed to the Arab Muslim American communities. He has had at least 15 meetings with Arab and Muslim leaders,” the Trump supporter argued.
Indeed, a new member of Trump’s inner circle is Lebanese-born businessman Massad Boulos, whose son Michael married Tiffany Trump in 2022.
“Trump has committed himself publicly multiple times that he will end the wars and bring peace to the Middle East, and he is someone who keeps his word,” Bahbah said.
But the former president has also urged Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza and used the term “Palestinian” as an insult in comments over the past year that have alarmed members of the Arab American community.
Bahbah said Trump simply meant that he wants to end the war and has ceased using the term “Palestinian” disparagingly since the first presidential debate in June.
The mayor of the neighboring town of Dearborn Heights was similarly dismissive of the criticism long lobbed at Trump over his rhetoric and policies targeting immigrant communities like his own.
Asked about Trump’s disparaging comments on immigrants and the ban on immigration he instituted against Muslim-majority countries in his first term, the mayor of the neighboring town of Dearborn Heights argued that the former president’s policy only targeted seven of the world’s 40-plus Muslim countries in order to prevent the entry of former ISIS fighters.
Bill Bazzi was one of two Arab mayors to endorse the Republican presidential candidate, explaining Tuesday that the Middle East was a much calmer region when Trump was in office.
“During his administration, there were no new wars, and he worked to pull the US out of wars that previous administrations started,” Bazzi said.
A soft-spoken military veteran, Bazzi recalled growing up in southern Lebanon during a civil war in the 1970s, which also featured aerial bombardments from Israel.
“I remember sleeping under a stairwell when our village was getting bombed. We could feel the earth shake,” he continued. “I was a product of war, and I don’t want to see other kids go through what I went through.”
Despite the grim outlook regarding the current state of affairs back in the Middle East, attendees at the Dearborn watch party couldn’t help but celebrate Trump’s victory as it solidified well after midnight on Wednesday.
Shortly after Fox News called Pennsylvania for the former president, one of the attendees muted the channel, pulled out a loudspeaker and hit play on his iPhone.
The Arab Trump supporters clapped along to Lebanese pop star Ramy Ayach’s “Mabrouk,” with one of the attendees busting the president-elect’s signature YMCA dance move.
Caught up in the moment, they didn’t immediately notice as the major news networks began to broadcast Trump’s victory speech from Florida.
The muted the music and refocused on the TV screens throughout the hookah lounge, as Trump basked in what still felt like an improbable victory, given the margin.
But as the speech dragged on and Trump began inviting various celebrity supporters on stage, folks at Lava Java began to lose focus.
It was nearly 3 a.m., and barely any of the watch party attendees noticed when Trump renewed his pledge to “stop wars” and even highlighted the support he has received from Arab and Muslim Americans.
And when he gave a shoutout to professional golfer Bryson Dechambeau, Trump appeared to lose the Dearborn crowd for good.
“Four more years,” quipped a smiling Ali, taking a puff from his hookah.
