Normally I love to say "I told you so," but...
A Reuters article reports on Muslim Americans' disappointment that their support for Trump's election has not magically resulted in a change in his longstanding unconditional support for Israel.
U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Republican Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration's support for Israel's war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon have been deeply disappointed by his cabinet picks, they tell Reuters.
"Trump won because of us and we're not happy with his secretary of state pick and others," said Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump.
Oh my word. In the run-up to the election I spent way too much time online trying to convince Abandon Harris voters that they were being played. Mostly this just got me screamed at. Not once, as far as I can tell, did I change anyone's mind.
Over many years I've known a lot of well-meaning people who aren't good at politics, but I don't think I've ever come across an interest cohort that has squandered its opportunities as systematically as pro-Palestinian groups have done this year. The Uncommitted Movement refused to support President Biden in the primaries, which cost Palestinian-American Georgia state representative Ruwa Romman an opportunity to speak at the Democratic National Convention. As though realizing the catastrophe that was about to unfold, but still being too stubborn to admit its mistake, the Uncommitted Movement belatedly urged followers not to vote for Trump, while refusing to endorse Harris. In the end, Arab-American voters may have cost Vice President Harris Michigan's electoral votes, although this wasn't the tipping point in Trump's decisive victory.
The pro-Palestinian movement is being widely attacked online even as Trump has appointed the rabidly pro-Israel Gov. Mike Huckabee, who says things like, "There is no such thing as a West Bank. It's Judea and Samaria," to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
I've watched with increasing dismay as the far-right Israeli government prepares to annex the West Bank, putting the final nails in the coffin of the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It seems inevitable that there will be widespread expulsions of Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan during Trump's second term. The odds of a peaceful settlement to the conflict during my lifetime, and maybe my nieces and nephews' lifetimes, seem vanishingly small.
In the coming years, the Democratic Party and Arab Americans are going to have to arrange a reconciliation. Dems will almost certainly move to accommodate the large number of young voters who support the Palestinian cause, and Arab Americans will want to come in out of the cold. I only wish the rapprochement had come earlier, when it might have mattered, and that I didn't get to say "I told you so."