US 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,” says Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump. Muslim support for Trump helped him win Michigan and may have factored into other swing state wins, strategists believe.
They’re way more one-sided about the “war” (genocide) than I imagine the vast majority of Muslim and pro-Palestinian voters are, just in the wrong direction. What part of unconditionally supplying weapons to a country that is indiscriminately slaughtering civilians is “not one sided,” oh “rational_lib?”
It’s not one-sided because Trump is what one-sided looks like. Democrats still support trying for a Palestinian state, while Trump wants Israel to not stop at Gaza but take what remains of the West Bank too. You don’t get to define the sides the way you want, we’re still dealing with the American public here - and the American public is very anti-muslim and militaristic (I mean we do have to live in a world where 9/11 happened - which, by the way, was one of the more egregious examples of the counter-productive effect of attempts to make Americans care about Palestine).
I’m the last to justify continuing aid to Israel, but if you don’t understand the political difficulty of removing that aid you’re just not paying attention. This will be seen as a win for Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah and the backlash will be massive with lots of accusations that Democrats are embracing anti-semetism. And Democrats know from past causes like BLM that the same people advocating very forcefully for changing policy will morph into crickets when it comes time to defend those changes from backlash, having moved on to more exciting causes. So yeah, I disagree with aid to Israel but I can’t really blame them.