London: US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, known for her outspoken support for Palestinian rights, is the top choice among Arab American voters ahead of the US election, according to a recent poll. Appeared on November 5. .
Stein, who is running as a third-party candidate, has the support of more than 45 percent of Arab Americans surveyed by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the largest Arab-American grassroots civil rights organization.
That puts Stein, a physician and environmentalist, ahead of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, who won 27.5 percent of the vote in the same poll.
The survey was conducted between July 27 and 28 through a partnership between ADC, Molitico for data insights, and Community Pulse, which specializes in survey solutions.
According to Abed Ayoub, ADC's national executive director, the Arab-American electorate has increasingly gravitated toward Stein because of her support for Palestinian human rights and her opposition to the Israeli military's actions in Gaza since October.
“Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein's strong poll at 45.3 percent, similar to the previous poll, shows continued community support, largely due to her outspoken stance on Palestinian human rights,” he said in a post on social platform X.
Stein has been a favorite among Arab voters since the last ADC poll in May, when he led with 25 percent support. By comparison, President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race in July, and Republican nominee Donald Trump won 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
In 2022, 2.2 million people in the United States reported Arab ancestry in that year's Arab Community Survey. Most Arab Americans are native-born, and 85 percent of Arabs in the United States are citizens.
While this community has roots in every Arab country, most Arab Americans have ancestral ties to Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. The top four states in terms of Arab American population are California, Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan.
Ayoub noted in his post that Biden's decline in popularity among Arab Americans “is due to the retiring president's staunch support for continued Israeli actions in Gaza.”
The Israeli military began bombing Gaza in retaliation for a deadly attack by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, during which the Palestinian militant group took more than 200 hostages.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has exceeded 39,500, with at least 15,000 children killed and more than 12,000 injured, according to Gaza health officials.
Humanitarian organizations, human rights groups and governments around the world 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 August 1st post on X that the Israeli government is dragging America into “World War III.”
After Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas in Tehran and a senior Hezbollah figure in Beirut, was removed as a Mossad suspect last week, Stein singled out Biden and Harris for their “deafening silence” on “Israel's sharp escalation toward a wider war.” criticized
In a July 31 post on X, Stein called for “the U.S. to immediately cut aid to Israel, order a cease-fire, and arrest the war criminal (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) before he kills us all.”
The killing of Haniyeh on July 31 has intensified the fear of an all-out and regional conflict. Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed revenge and warned Israel that he had “paved the way for your severe punishment”.
Netanyahu's government has neither taken responsibility for Haniyeh's death nor commented. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the US was “not aware of or involved” in the killing.
quick The facts
• Arab Americans live in all 50 states, but up to 95 percent live in urban areas.
• New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC and Minneapolis are the top 6 metropolitan areas.
• Nearly 75 percent 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 rest's religious background is Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant.
However, a day before Haniyeh's death, Israel claimed responsibility for killing Fuad Shakar, a senior Hezbollah commander, in an airstrike on a building south of Beirut. Hezbollah has promised a “decisive” response to Shukar's murder.
Regardless of whether the United States was involved in these escalations or not, Biden's Middle East policy has faced intense criticism since October, with human rights groups calling on the US government to halt arms transfers to Israel.
In late April, Amnesty International reported that US arms to Israel “have been used in serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner contrary to US law and policy”.
In May, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his defense minister, and three Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Chris Habibi, director of national government affairs and director of advocacy at ADC, says the survey revealed two key insights. “First, President Biden is deeply disliked among Arab Americans,” he told Arab News.
“Second, being anti-genocide is a win-win situation for our communities across the country.”
Habibi added that the results of the survey reflect “what we want in the 10 months and 300 days that this genocide has been going on – an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo on all weapons sent to Israel”.
Biden suffered a resounding defeat in Michigan's Democratic primary in February after a majority of voters in Dearborn, a city with a large Arab and Muslim population, chose to vote “uncommitted” instead.
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud publicly endorsed the “non-aligned” vote movement, citing Biden's policy on the Israel-Gaza conflict, USA Today reported.
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, he would end military support for Israel's “apartheid state” and work for real peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Arabs and Muslims have been taken for granted in America. They are victims of racism, Islamophobia and violence against Arabs in this country.”
He added: “It is an absolute violation of our constitutional rights for the government to shut down our talks.” People are struggling to cope with the genocide that we see live in real time on our iPhones and computer screens.
Stein emphasized that sending weapons to Israel, which violates humanitarian rights and interferes with the delivery of humanitarian aid, is “against US law.”
He added: People who stand up to defend our legal values and human values are criminalized and accused of crimes.
Despite Stein's growing popularity among Arab-American communities, other presidential candidates still have time to win more support from Arab and Muslim voters before November.
The ADC poll shows that in addition to 27.5 percent of respondents who support Harris, 18 percent are undecided about their vote in November and 6 percent say they don't plan to vote.
“With nearly 1 in 4 voters undecided or inclined to vote, there's plenty of room for Harris or any other candidate to win more support if they take the right positions,” wrote Ayub of ADC on X. society to earn.”
