|
By Katie Glueck
(NOVEMBER 7, 2024 / NY TIMES) In the final hours before Election Day dawned, some of Donald J. Trump’s top surrogates in Michigan were onstage in a Grand Rapids arena, distilling the choice in the campaign into a stark and striking message.
(...)
It is an extraordinary new coalition. Along the way to his decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump drew at least some Arab American and Muslim voters who are outraged by the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. He managed to do so without alienating the right-leaning American Jews who see Mr. Trump as Israel’s strongest champion.
(...)
The two groups hold sharply divergent expectations for the president-elect. And both strongly pro-Israel Trump voters and some of Mr. Trump’s Arab American backers are skeptical that his ascent this week is the start of a durable cross-ideological, interfaith coalition.
For Mr. Trump, the question is whether he can keep both happy — or if he will even try.
(...)
“Whatever he did on his campaign trail in last two months, I think he won the hearts and minds of many Muslims,” said Rabiul Chowdhury, a founder of Muslims for Trump who is based in Pennsylvania. “This guy is a Muslim-friendly guy.”
Mr. Trump is, of course, the same guy who blocked citizens of predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States during his last presidency, and who spent years demonizing and insulting Muslim Americans.
As president, he repeatedly made clear he supported the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, taking several steps that Muslim and Arab voters found inflammatory, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
(...)
But in interviews throughout the campaign, Arab American and Muslim supporters said they were ready to take a chance on him anyway.
Some were already aligned with the socially conservative views of the Republican Party. Many were nostalgic for the relative quiet of 2019.
They also noted his efforts to campaign in Dearborn and the time spent in the area by his surrogates, especially Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman and an in-law of Mr. Trump’s, and Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting intelligence chief.
By contrast, they said, they saw Ms. Harris as inaccessible to the community.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with him and his policies with Israel,” said Samraa Luqman, an environmental and social justice activist who helped organize support for Mr. Trump in Dearborn. “I can say that he offered hope, whereas the Democrats offered none.”
Ultimately, she added, the devastation of Gaza — which followed the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — happened on the Biden-Harris administration’s watch.
“Nothing is worse than what is happening right now,” she said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s strongest supporters in the pro-Israel Jewish community insisted that he would continue to be a stalwart supporter of Israel despite his broadly isolationist rhetoric.
“We have a four-year track record of knowing how he governs and how he views the world,” said Matt Brooks, the chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “The idea that somehow he’s a totally different, 180-degree person from who he was four years ago, doesn’t pass the smell test.”
He also said there were areas of common ground, pointing to developments like the expansion of diplomatic ties between Israel and Arab states during the first Trump administration.
(...)
Some Trump supporters from both the Jewish and the Arab American and Muslim communities acknowledged the obvious tensions now at play.
“I do have concern that these American Arabs, Dearborn Arabs, will try to pressure Trump to have Israel stop the defensive war before they complete their mission,” said Morton A. Klein, who heads the Zionist Organization of America.
But he expressed hope that the president-elect and his advisers would reach a different conclusion about Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza.
“He would never agree with these positions, I don’t believe,” Mr. Klein said.
| 
