As November and the 2024 U.S. presidential election draw closer, vlog’s Program in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies hosted television journalist Hafez Al Mirazi to discuss the Arab-American voter climate. The event was co-sponsored by Asian studies, film and media studies, and Core Communities.
A longtime critic of censorship in journalism, Al Mirazi has more than 40 years of broadcast experience, serving as the BBC Arabic radio correspondent from Washington, D.C., between 1998 and 2000 and the Al Jazeera D.C. bureau chief for the 2000 U.S. election. He taught television journalism at the American University of Cairo and is currently a weekly columnist at the Egyptian news website AlManassa.
A U.S. citizen who was born in Egypt, Al Mirazi is familiar with the difficult decision Arab Americans will face in the poll booths this November. According to Al Mirazi, the political concerns of Arab people have shifted from oil to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Palestinian autonomy, and Israeli expansionism.
Al Mirazi says that Donald Trump failed in his attempts to cater to a Jewish-American audience, and he has upset many Arab American voters in the process. Al Mirazi estimates that Arab-American support for Trump will be cut in half compared to the last election cycle after Trump said “I want the job finished” in support of Israel’s attack on Palestine.
Similarly, President Joe Biden faced criticism from Arab Americans, who established an “Abandon Biden” campaign as a result of his approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, Arab-Americans have shown some level of forgiveness toward the party, according to Al Mirazi.
Above all else, Al Mirazi argues, Arab-Americans wanted a “commitment from Democrats to a ceasefire now and to stop delivering bombs and weapons to Israel, which they didn’t get.”
Many Arab Americans, Al Mirazi says, are drawn to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who listed the conflict in Gaza as a paramount issue. Her support of Palestine has earned the respect and support of Arab-American voters, though not enough to outweigh support for Harris.
The Arab-American voter population is concentrated most densely in swing states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania and therefore has the potential to influence the election’s outcome. The most difficult job, according to Al Mirazi, will be getting Arab-Americans to the polling booths; the demographic had a 54% voter turnout in the 2020 election, compared to the 66% national average.
Meanwhile, in Arab countries, many people follow the U.S. presidential election closely. “People deprived of a peaceful transfer of power through elections are keen on watching it,” Al Mirazi says.
The narrative spun by state-controlled media in many Arab countries poses the close nature of U.S. presidential elections as a promise of impending doom. “Unfortunately, Arab media look at what is going on in Washington and the elections in the U.S. and say, ‘Look, society is divided: they have a problem. They’re about to have a civil war,’” Al Mirazi says.
For his part, Al Miraz believes the actual implications of such a tight race are much more optimistic. “You are sure that four or five years from now, even if you have whatever problem with the guy that the election brought in, you can get rid of that person through the ballots, not the bullets.”