Arab American leaders in Michigan on Friday refused to meet with President Biden's campaign manager, citing the commander-in-chief's support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
The planned rally in Dearborn, Michigan, was said to be part of the Biden campaign's “listening tour.” detroit newsand Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, and about a dozen Muslim and Arab American elected officials, officeholders and community leaders were expected to be involved.
When word got out about the planned summit, Wayne County Deputy Executive and Conference Coordinator Asad Taaf canceled it, citing “outrage” in the community.
“Unless something drastic happens, the Arab American and Muslim communities are lost,” Taaf said of the community's feelings toward the 81-year-old president. “At this point, as far as I can see, we can't convince them. That was the idea of this meeting.”
“Until there's a ceasefire, the consensus in the community is basically that they're not welcome here,” he added.
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud (D), who was invited to attend the meeting, said he would not speak to Biden campaign officials until Israeli military operations in Gaza are halted.
“Palestinian lives cannot be measured by poll numbers,” Hammoud said. I wrote to X. “Their humanity demands action, not lip service. When elected officials see atrocities in Gaza only as an election issue, they take away our unspeakable pain. It turns into political calculation.”
“I'm not going to entertain a conversation about elections while watching a livestream of our government-sponsored genocide,” he added.
Biden's support among Arab Americans is due to his support for Israel in its war against Hamas, the terrorist organization that massacred about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 240 in the Jewish state on October 7, 2023. It's plummeting.
According to a John Zogby Strategies poll commissioned by the Arab American Institute last October, only 17.4% of Arab American voters said they would vote for Biden in 2024.
The same poll in 2020 showed Biden's approval rating among Arab Americans was 59%.
The negative sentiment could pose a major problem for Biden in Michigan, a key battleground state with large Muslim and Arab-American voting blocs.
Nearly 26,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
The Biden campaign did not respond to The Post's request for comment.
