Last week, Muslim and Arab American leaders in Michigan refused an invitation to attend a listening session with Joe Biden’s campaign. It was too late, they said, for the president to win their support after ignoring their communities’ pleas for a ceasefire in Gaza for the past four months. Their dissatisfaction with the president could be detrimental to his success in crucial swing states, which he desperately needs to win in order to be re-elected.
The session was the first time that a delegation was sent to Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit where more than half of the 109,976 residents are of Middle Eastern or North African descent. Still, the Dearborn mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, along with some 15 other leaders, declined the meeting, citing the US-backed Israel-Gaza war in which more than 25,000 Palestinans – most of them women and children – have been killed.
