While writing this, I am watching the game. World Series, game 3, the Dodgers at Yankee stadium. Unbelievable: Freddie Freeman hits his third homer in the third game. This will be good.
***
In Detroit, one of the election issues is the Arab vote. There are about 350000 citizens of Arab descent in Michigan, for the longest time Lebanese, lately Iraqi, Syrians, Yemenis and others. Most of them are Muslims, but a large number are Christians, originally from the age-old “Church of the East”, then Catholic under the pope. The ones I know are utterly Catholic, don’t like the current pope and view themselves as “conservative”. They vote Trump.
Metro Detroit has the largest Arab population in the United States. In Dearborn, home of the Ford Motor company, the streets are teeming with Mideastern restaurants, the store signs are in Arabic, lots of women walk fully veiled. The city of Hamtramck, an enclave of Detroit city, is majority Muslim. In the last century, the dominant part of the citizenship was Polish American.
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Michigan is a “swing state”. In 2016, Donald Trump won 10 000 votes more than Hillary Clinton (out of about 5 million), four years later, Joe Biden won by 150 000. The Arab vote surely can make a difference, as can almost every part of the electorate as sliced by election mechanics. In the maelstrom of polls and strategies it is easily forgotten that actually, the individual citizen is free to make up his or her own mind. At least in civil ed class.
Not unlike Jewish Americans in regard to Israel, Arab Americans have a special concern for “the old country”. The horror about what happens in the Occupied Territories, widespread within the Democratic party, particularly those more to the left, resonates particularly with the party’s electorate in places like Dearborn and Hamtramck. “Gaza is the main issue”, says Sami Khaldi, the director of the Dearborn Democratic club. The traditional equation, about 70 percent of the Arab vote for the Democrats, has changed. There is an “uncommitted movement”, deeply alienated by the Biden administration’s quasi-unconditional backing of Israel’s war. It made a strong showing in the Michigan primary last summer, and it remains to be seen how much of it will be directed against Mrs. Harris, the Vice-President. Some Arab leaders in Detroit openly came out for Donald Trump who showed up several times and showcases them on the stage at his rallies in the state. Mayor Amer Ghalib of Hamtramck, a Democrat, came out to officially endorse Trump.
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My friend E., who works in real estate all over the city of Detroit, tells me another thing. “The Muslims tell me that they don’t like the LBGT stuff and all that”.
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His point is proven Sunday evening in Remas restaurant on Joseph Campau Avenue in Hamtramck. A Yemeni place I enter to the blaring of the muezzin from the Islamic Center across the street. Three dozen men are sitting at a long table in the middle of the place, all obviously Arabs, some in traditional garb, some bearded, some not. When the large plates of food are done with, a man stands up and gives a speech, in Arabic, addressing another man opposite of him. Then this one stands up and speaks, then the others pitch in, one by one, apparently discussing some kind of organization or arrangement. I ask whether this is a club holding a meeting. “A wedding”, says one. So – where are the women, and where is the bride, I ask. “This is to set the date”, says the man. Obviously no concern of the bride nor her mother.
***
I ask one man about Gaza and pro-Trump leanings. Ahmad, originally from Yemen. “Sure”, he confirms. “But the war is not the only thing. It is just one more element”. So, what are the others, I ask. “The bullshit around men and women” he says. Not a friend of multi-gendered humanity, this one. “I don’t like Trump”, he says. “He does not like me. But we need someone who brings us forward, me, my son, my grandchildren, my business”. Ahmat is running gas stations. He is convinced that his business will do better with a President Trump.