LONDON: US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, known for her outspoken support for Palestinian rights, has emerged as the top choice among Arab-American voters ahead of the November 5 US election, according to a recent poll.
Stein, who is running as a third-party candidate, has the support of more than 45 percent of Arab Americans surveyed by the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the largest grassroots civil rights organization for Arab Americans.
That put Stein, a physician and environmentalist, ahead of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who received 27.5 percent of the vote in the same poll.
The survey was conducted between July 27 and 28 through a partnership between ADC, Molitico for insights, and Community Pulse, a specialist in polling solutions.
According to Abed Ayoub, ADC's national executive director, the Arab-American voting demographic is leaning more toward Stein because of her support for Palestinian human rights and opposition to Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip since October.
In a post on social media platform X, he said: “Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein’s strong 45.3 percent poll result, which is the same as the previous poll, shows continued support from the community, largely because of her clear stance on Palestinian human rights.”
Stein has been popular with Arab voters since ADC's last poll in May, when she received the most support at 25 percent. By comparison, President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the presidential election in July, and Republican candidate Donald Trump received support at 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
As of 2022, 2.2 million people in the United States reported having Arab ancestry in that year's Arab Community Survey. The majority of Arab Americans were born in the country, and 85 percent of Arabs in the United States are citizens.
Although the community has roots in all Arab countries, the majority of Arab Americans have ancestral ties to Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. The four states with the highest numbers of Arab Americans are California, Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan.
Ayoub said in his post that Biden’s declining popularity among Arab Americans was “a result of the outgoing president’s strong support for Israel’s ongoing actions in Gaza.”
The Israeli military launched a bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip in response to a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2013, during which the Palestinian militants took more than 200 hostages.
The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip has climbed past 39,500, with at least 15,000 children killed and more than 12,000 injured, according to Gaza health officials.
Humanitarian organizations, human rights groups and governments around the world have repeatedly called for a ceasefire, but Israel continues its military operations.
Stein has been a consistent critic of Biden and his administration over their unwavering support for Israel, warning in an Aug. 1 post on X that the Israeli government was dragging the US “into World War III.”
After Mossad was suspected of eliminating Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a top Hezbollah figure in Beirut last week, Stein criticized Biden and Harris for their “shocking silence” on “Israel’s escalation of the war more broadly.”
In a July 31 post on X, Stein called on the U.S. to “immediately stop aid to Israel, order a ceasefire, and arrest the war criminal (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) before he kills us all.”
Haniyeh's killing on July 31 raised fears of a more violent regional conflict. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge, warning Israel that “they have paved the way for severe punishment for you.”
Netanyahu's government has not claimed responsibility or commented on Haniyeh's death. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was “unaware of or involved” in the killing.
fast fact
• Arab Americans live in all 50 states, but as much as 95% live in metropolitan areas.
• New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis round out the top six metropolitan areas.
• Nearly 75% of Arab Americans live in 12 states: California, Michigan, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
• Nearly a quarter of Arab Americans practice Islam, while the rest are Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant.
However, a day before Haniyeh's death, Israel claimed to have killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Fouad Shukr, in an airstrike on a building south of Beirut. Hezbollah promised to respond “clearly” to Shukr's killing.
Regardless of whether the US is complicit in the violence, Biden's Middle East policy has faced fierce criticism since October, with human rights groups calling on the US government to halt arms transfers to Israel.
In late April, Amnesty International reported that US weapons supplied to Israel were “used in serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner inconsistent with US law and policy.”
In May, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his defense minister and three Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Chris Habibi, ADC’s national director of government affairs and advocacy, said the survey reveals two important insights. “First, President Biden is extremely unpopular among Arab Americans,” he told Arab News.
“Second, combating genocide is a successful stand for our communities across the country.”
Habibie added that the survey results reflect “what we have been demanding for 10 months and 300 days since the genocide, which is an immediate and permanent ceasefire and a ban on all arms sales to Israel.”
Biden suffered a major defeat in Michigan's Democratic primary in February, when a majority of voters in Dearborn, a city with a large Arab and Muslim population, voted “no” instead of voting for him.
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud publicly supported the “nonbinding” ballot measure, citing Biden’s policies on the Israel-Gaza conflict, USA Today reported.
In contrast, Stein has been actively seeking votes from Arab Americans in Michigan and elsewhere.
In an interview with Arab News in June, Stein pledged that if elected, she would end military support for Israel's “apartheid government” and push for genuine peace between Israel and Palestine.
“Arabs and Muslims are underrepresented in America. They are victims of racism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab violence in this country,” she said.
“The government’s shutdown of our negotiations is a total violation of our constitutional rights. People are struggling to fight the genocide that we are witnessing live in real time on our iPhones and computer screens.”
Stein stressed that “the supply of weapons to Israel is against U.S. law, a violation of human rights and an interference with the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
“People who are standing up for our legal and human values are being prosecuted and charged,” she added.
Despite Stein's growing popularity in the Arab-American community, other presidential candidates still have a chance to gain more support from Arab and Muslim voters before November.
The ADC poll found that in addition to the 27.5 percent of respondents who backed Harris, 18 percent were undecided on whether to vote in November, and 6 percent said they had no plans to vote.
“With nearly one in four voters still undecided or likely to drop out, there is ample opportunity for Harris or other candidates to gain more support from their communities if they take the right stand,” ADC’s Ayoub wrote on X.
