In Gaza War, Trump Allies See Opening to Lure away Arab, Muslim Voters

The Washington Post / Abigail Hauslohner

16:17 JST, September 8, 2024

PHOENIX – The catered Lebanese dinner had ended, and the guests’ plates had been cleared. Now Massad Boulos, whose son Michael is married to Donald Trump’s daughter Tiffany, was holding forth with Arab American voters and explaining why – despite what they may have heard – the former president is their best bet for ending Israel’s war in Gaza.

At first glance, it was an unlikely scene. But some Arab and Muslim Americans, constituencies that tend to lean Democratic, have been galvanized this election cycle by a sense that their party has betrayed them.

The administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent in November, has been unable to stop a major U.S. ally’s devastating military campaign, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. Throughout the world, many Arabs and Muslims have come to see Israel’s actions as a genocide, while in America, about 750,000 people channeled their anger by voting “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries, rather than align behind the incumbent.

For Boulos, who calls himself Trump’s “envoy” to Arab and Muslim American communities, to assert in this setting that Trump would be a better friend to Palestinians is still no easy sell. The former president’s standing within these communities often is overshadowed by his past rhetoric and policies appearing to vilify Muslims and Arabs – including a social media post Sunday that appeared to show Muslim men burning an American flag. “Meet your new neighbors if Kamala wins. Vote Trump 2024,” it read.

But what if some could be persuaded to vote for Trump anyway?

In a tight presidential election that pollsters predict is likely to be decided on the margins, Boulos, 54, reasons that a little outreach could make all the difference. “Our community in Arizona is so big and so important, we can make a difference. We can make sure we get that margin,” he told the group that night in late August.

As Trump’s representative to Arab and Muslim American voters – a role the Trump campaign does not dispute – Boulos over the past few months has made six trips to Michigan, a critical swing state and home to the largest Arab American population, where uncommitted voters accounted for 13 percent of Democratic primary votes cast. Now he was in swing state Arizona, with more outreach here and elsewhere still to come, he said.

Boulos, who said he is a longtime proponent of the GOP, got to know Trump after their children began dating in 2018, and he drew closer to the former president after Michael and Tiffany married at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach estate, in 2022. He has roots in Lebanon and said he now splits time between South Florida and Nigeria, where he oversees his family’s billion-dollar conglomerate, SCOA Nigeria.

Trump in the past has given family members critical roles within his campaign and administration, notably his staunchly pro-Israel son-in-law Jared Kushner, who served as an adviser and Middle East liaison. Boulos says that he has no formal role with the campaign but that he and Trump have had numerous conversations about the Middle East and Gaza, and that Trump has appeared receptive.

The war, which began 11 months ago after Hamas-led militants carried out a stunning cross-border attack on Israel, has reduced much of Gaza to rubble. The Oct. 7 attack killed about 1,200 people and saw 250 dragged back into Gaza as hostages, according to the Israeli government. But months of negotiations mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have failed to deliver a cease-fire and hostage-release deal. Meanwhile, fewer than half the hostages have returned to Israel alive, while the war has given rise to starvation and disease throughout the enclave.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign, declined to answer questions about Boulos and his work on behalf of the former president’s reelection bid, or about any aspirations the campaign may have for winning votes from Arabs and Muslims. But she said Trump is committed to peace in the Middle East.

“President Trump wants peace and prosperity for all people,” Leavitt wrote in an email, emphasizing a pair of normalization treaties Israel signed with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain during his administration. “President Trump will once again deliver peace through strength to rebuild and expand the peace coalition he built in his first term to create long-term safety and security for both the Israeli and Palestinian people.”

In Phoenix, a few dozen men and women, mostly of Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian descent, had gathered in the sprawling foyer of Bishara Bahbah’s home, where the furniture and a grand piano had been shoved aside to make way for two large dining tables, and where Boulos spoke facing a large artistic rendering of Jerusalem’s Old City – claimed by Israelis and Palestinians – on the opposite wall. Bahbah invited a Washington Post reporter to observe the event.

A Palestinian American who recently retired from a career in financial services, Bahbah is the founder of Arab Americans for Trump. He had joined Boulos during a similar event in Michigan, and invited him here to address this group of mostly friends and family. Also in attendance was Abe Hamadeh, the one Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for Congress who is Arab and has Muslim roots – and expected to win in a reliably Republican district.

Boulos urged those gathered to consider the values they as “Middle Easterners” share with the Republican Party. “We are conservative by nature,” he told them.

But he centered his argument for Trump around the major issue he knew was on everyone’s mind, even though it’s one Trump himself has barely mentioned on the campaign trail: the bloodshed in Gaza. “Those massacres would not have happened if there was a strong president at the White House,” he postulated. “The entire war wouldn’t have happened.”

“I know there have been a lot of questions and this and that about certain statements,” he continued, vaguely alluding to Trump’s derogatory branding of a political opponent as a “Palestinian,” and his pledges to deport pro-Palestinian demonstrators. But Trump’s “clear and unequivocal position on this is that he is totally and absolutely against this war. … And he’s totally and absolutely against the killing of civilians.”

Trump’s public references to Israel and the Palestinians have been broad and contradictory, leaving room for interpretation. At times he has appeared to criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and urge an end to the war, statements Boulos emphasizes during these events. “I’m not sure that I’m loving the way they’re doing it,” the former president told a conservative radio host in the spring, describing footage of the Gaza bombardment as “heinous” and warning that Israel was “losing the PR war.”

At other points, Trump has cast himself as more pro-Israel than even Jewish Democrats. “Nobody did for Israel what I did for Israel, including defense, including billions and billions of dollars a year, $4 billion a year for years, when other people wanted to cut it off,” he told Israeli news outlet Israel Hayom this year.

His social media post depicting Muslim men as “your new neighbors” under a Harris administration came hours after news broke that Hamas had killed six Israeli hostages.

“Every U.S. president will support Israel,” said Wadih Daher, a California-based businessman and a member of Arab Americans for Trump, who had flown to Phoenix for the meeting at Bahbah’s house. Trump will do the same, Daher said. But while the Biden administration has waffled on whether to criticize or facilitate Israel, Trump, he believes, will make the war stop.

“Trump is a dealmaker. He is a businessman,” Daher said. “He will get a deal on the table and make a deal.”

Boulos, tall and bespectacled and clad in a dark suit, was in sympathetic company that night in Phoenix. All of those gathered in Bahbah’s home were furious at the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict, and most already leaned Republican. Even so, there was skepticism.

One man asked whether since-retracted media reports were true – that Trump told Netanyahu not to agree to a peace deal before the U.S. election. “The exact opposite,” Boulos responded.

“The problem,” ventured another man seated across the table, is that neither candidate really cares about Palestinians. “Unfortunately,” the only people to condemn what is happening in Gaza have been Democrats, he added, referring to liberals’ condemnation of the heavy bombardment, and the blockade-fueled starvation and disease, that have killed thousands of Palestinian children.

“I haven’t heard a single Republican stand up and say, ‘This is wrong,’” the man said.

“He said it,” Boulos insisted of Trump. “He said, ‘This war must end.’”

An anger not to be underestimated

A quarter-century ago, most Arab and Muslim Americans voted Republican, according to polling by the Washington-based Arab American Institute (AAI) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). If Trump were to lure them back, it would be a major electoral coup.

In the aftermath of 9/11, when President George W. Bush launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and innocent Muslims and Arabs were caught in the often discriminatory dragnet of his “war on terror,” many of those who historically had voted with the GOP chose to switch sides. Trump’s decision, days after taking office in 2017, to ban entry into the United States to the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries further solidified the Democrats’ appeal.

But the anger over Gaza is not to be underestimated, activists say.

Abbas Alawieh, a co-founder of the uncommitted movement and a longtime Democratic operative in Michigan, said he has spoken to “community members who’ve voted for Democrats their whole lives, who are saying they can no longer support the party or its candidates.”

“I think the party has a bigger problem on their hands than it cares to acknowledge,” he said.

The extent to which the votes of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, in response to Gaza, may affect November’s election remains a gaping unknown.

A Pew Research Center poll released in March found that 60 percent of Muslim Americans believe Biden has favored the Israelis “too much,” with just 6 percent saying he’s struck “the right balance” in his management of the conflict. Other surveys are far too limited in their scope and methodology to offer clear or conclusive insight about the views of Arab and Muslim voters, though at least one showed Biden trailing Trump decisively in four key states – Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia – before he dropped out of the race in July.

There has been no such polling since Harris became the party’s nominee several weeks ago, though observers note that far fewer pro-Palestinian demonstrators showed up at the Democratic National Convention than activists had been predicted.

Usama Shami, president of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix, Arizona’s largest Muslim congregation, said most people there abhor Trump. But Shami, who said he consistently votes Democratic, acknowledged feeling so disgusted by Biden’s handling of the war that – like many others – he didn’t bother to vote in the primary, a largely symbolic gesture at the time, as Biden faced no serious opposition for his party’s nomination.

“It was the first time in my life I didn’t vote,” he said. “Because of Gaza and Biden.”

‘The pain and betrayal’

According to AAI, Arizona ranks 14th among the states for the size of its Arab population, with a majority clustered in the Phoenix metro area. The organization estimates, based on census data, that there are about 61,626 Arab Americans of voting age living there – more than five times the vote margin of Biden’s 2020 win in the state.

After the Democratic Party last month rejected the uncommitted movement’s request for a Palestinian American to speak from the main stage at the Democratic National Convention, some Arab and Muslim political activists came away frustrated but committed to voting for Harris anyway.

“I’m not going to waste my vote,” Shami said.

Others feel less conciliatory.

“I’m spending a lot of my time talking to Arab and Muslim American community members about the dangers of Donald Trump,” Alawieh said. “But the pain and betrayal” they feel from the “administration’s unconditional support of weapons for Netanyahu run so deep that warnings about Trump oftentimes do not resonate. Many folks don’t believe that Trump would be worse on this issue. A common sentiment is, what could be worse than genocide?” he added.

Israel has strongly denied allegations, leveled by international human rights groups and the International Criminal Court at The Hague, that it has deliberately targeted civilians and used starvation as a method of warfare during its 11-month war in Gaza. The Israeli government has pointed repeatedly to Hamas’s practice of staging military operations from within Gaza’s dense civilian areas.

Two days after Boulos addressed the group at Bahbah’s house in Phoenix, Trump spoke to thousands at a rally in neighboring Glendale, Ariz. One man stood in the audience, close to the stage, wearing a shirt that read “Palestine for Trump.”

The former president made no mention of Israel or the Palestinians during his speech, although he alluded briefly to his distaste for foreign wars “that never end,” saying, “We don’t even know who the hell the country is that we’re fighting.”

It was unclear if he was talking about the conflict in the Middle East or in Ukraine – where he has vowed to withdraw U.S. support – or someplace else entirely.

Midway through the speech, a man stood near the back of the stadium. “President Trump! President Trump!” the man shouted, raising his hand in an attempt to get Trump’s attention. “I am from Iraq, and I support you! And I’m going to vote for you!”

“Shut up!” another man yelled.

Trump, at the opposite end of the stadium, never heard them.