The People Who Turned On Democrats Over Gaza Don't Want Your Blame After Trump's Rant

Yahoo

07-02-2025

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After Donald Trump's incendiary call for Palestinians to leave Gaza and for the United States to take control there, it didn't take long for a now-familiar chorus to begin.
'Heck of a job, Dearborn. Especially you, Rashida Tlaib,' posted a political columnist. 'I have ZERO sympathy for the Palestinian-Americans who stayed home or voted for Trump. You get what you deserve,' added another liberal commentator. An MSNBC host reminded her audience, 'I think now it's very appropriate to reiterate that elections have consequences.' A Washington correspondent sneered, 'Hope everyone is happy now that they got Genocide Joe out of office.'
The people in Dearborn and other Arab American enclaves—many of whom spent months telling professional Democrats what was happening in their communities and begging for a change in policy toward the war in Gaza—are watching the blame game with resignation.
Mohyeddin Abdulaziz, a Palestinian American lawyer and longtime Democratic organizer in Arizona, told me he spent months campaigning against the presidential candidate of his own party, hoping to pressure the Biden administration into reversing its policy of arming Israel. Like virtually every Palestinian in the global diaspora, he said he carried the grief of witnessing a never-ending influx of videos showing the aftermath of Israel's relentless aerial bombardments. Dismembered children, the bodies of babies, mass graves—Abdulaziz described the anguish of knowing that the bombs used to kill his people were paid for in part by his tax dollars. Continuing to support the administration responsible seemed impossible. He felt abandoned by his own party.
First, he tried to apply pressure through internal channels, warning Democratic leaders that the party's unflinching support for Israel would cost them at the polls. 'We told them that we have more votes than the anti-Trump Republicans and Liz Cheney supporters. They made a decision not to communicate with us and instead spent time and money promoting their relationship with Liz Cheney,' he said.
He and many others continued to protest but were always ready to find a way to support Kamala Harris if she distanced herself from Biden's policies. But she never did. 'I am so disappointed and still disappointed in the Democratic Party,' he said. 'Kamala failed.'
When he first read Trump's proposal to expel Palestinians from Gaza and turn it into 'the Riviera of the Middle East,' Abdulaziz was stunned. 'Usually, perpetrators of war crimes or genocide don't talk about it. They want to disassociate themselves. But it was so brazen there in the White House, talking about it as if it was neutral, or a deal.' Still, he doesn't believe much would have changed if Harris had won. He said those who are now blaming people like him are an extension of the Democratic Party's persistent refusal to listen to and understand its voters. 'They have shown no imagination, no understanding of what happened, and no ability to move forward. If they thought our vote was insignificant, how can they blame us for their defeat afterward? It just doesn't make sense.'
In Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state that broke for Trump, Palestinian American activist Reem Abuelhaj spent much of the election season bolstering the No Ceasefire, No Vote movement. As with Abdulaziz in Arizona, the goal was not to hand Trump the election but to wield political power in a critical state to save lives.
'For people who a vote for genocide was a red line, who were being vocal during the election, they were giving the Biden–Harris administration an opportunity to change course and do the right thing. First and foremost, for Palestinians in Gaza, and secondly, to secure a victory in the election,' she told me. Instead, those voters were shut out. 'It's not surprising that after a year of watching children get brutally killed by U.S. bombs on social media and everywhere else, many people in the U.S. were not motivated to go out and vote for a party that was paying for that,' she said.
'It's obviously horrific to hear this call for ethnic cleansing,' she added. 'But this is just the next step in a long series of political leaders supporting this policy.'
Hamid Bendaas, the communications director for the Policy Project at the Institute for Middle East Understanding, finds it telling that the people now finger-pointing tend to single out Palestinians and Arabs, not others who opposed the war. According to an IMEU poll, Arab and Muslim voters were far from alone in abandoning the Democrats over Gaza; voters across racial and political demographics did so too. 'Millions of people felt this way. The question is: Why were they not willing to do something that most Democrats support? Why were they unwilling to listen to their own base?' Bendaas asked.
James Zogby, the founder of the Arab American Institute, has spent decades working within the Democratic Party. He believes that Harris' campaign did everything in its power to alienate Arab voters—and that no one should be surprised that it succeeded. As for Trump's comments and the response from some liberal commentators, he thinks the party is getting played: 'This is a distraction,' he said. 'He throws out these absurd, bombastic ideas, knowing they'll dominate the conversation while his administration pushes through devastating policies elsewhere.'
Zogby is still active in Democratic leadership and says he is urging insiders not to scapegoat Arab American voters and to try to understand how painful the past year and a half has been for them. 'I do not want to see us marginalized. I told the campaigns, when they would tell me 'It's a binary choice and they'll make the right choice,' I said, 'The 'binary choice' is not going to be the one you think it is. The binary choice is going to be vote or not vote,' and people chose not to vote,' he said. 'I will not accept anyone from my party, the Democratic Party or anyone from the campaign, to put the blame on us. The blame is on them. They created this dilemma. They made it difficult for people to go to the polls. They made it difficult for people to choose the Democratic nominee.'
Zogby told me that even so, he's embarking on difficult conversations within his community as well. 'That doesn't mean that we celebrate having brought down Democrats or that we taught them a lesson,' he said. 'This is very painful. This is not an easy situation. And I think we have to understand that and deal with the reality of it. I will fault the campaign, but I'll say we have to think about what just happened.'
Layla Elabed, a co-founder of Listen to Michigan and one of the most prominent faces in the 'uncommitted' movement, is observing a similar dynamic at play in the current environment. 'I just don't think what we're seeing on social media and on mainstream media is helpful,' she said. 'It's kind of giving the opposition exactly what they want.
'I don't know anybody who cast a protest vote during the general election who are gloating about it,' she told me. 'The few folks that I talked to that voted third party or skipped the top of the ticket, it wasn't, like, a joyous moment.'
She said Democrats still have a lot of work to do and that, indeed, not everyone in these communities regrets their vote, even after this week. 'I've seen folks who feel like they made inroads with the Republican Party and want to continue to organize within that party for their interests, even around Palestine.
'We can go over the mistakes that the Democratic Party made. We can go over the retrospection of movements that were trying to get Democrats to do better,' she added. 'Personally, I am moving toward organizing around racial solidarity because this kind of division that we're seeing right now is only going to serve those who are attacking our civil liberties.'