'Not welcome here': Arab leaders cancel Dearborn meeting with Biden campaign manager
The organizer of a planned meeting between President Joe Biden's campaign manager and a group of Arab and Muslim American leaders in Dearborn said it was canceled Friday after some in the wider community objected to the gathering amid fury over Biden's handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Some Arab American political leaders from Metro Detroit who are Democrats flatly rejected any overtures from the Biden campaign until the president advocates for Israel to cease its military assault on Gaza.
Assad Turfe, who was coordinating the sit-down of Arab leaders and officials with Biden's campaign in Dearborn, said he made the decision to cancel Friday afternoon's group meeting "in the best interest of the community."
"As the community got to learn about the meeting, there was definitely a lot of outrage and, ultimately, the decision was made to cancel the meeting," said Turfe, the deputy county executive of Wayne County whose family is from Lebanon.
The meeting was to be between Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and 10-15 Arab American elected officials, office holders and representatives from the larger community organizations, Turfe said.
The Biden campaign did not comment on the cancelation of Friday's group meeting. Other meetings between Rodriguez and individual leaders of the Arab community in Michigan went forward Friday, according to two sources.
The group meeting was among several that Rodriguez was convening with leaders from Michigan, including local elected officials and leaders from the Arab and Palestinian-American, Hispanic and Black communities.
The meetings are part an effort by the White House and Biden reelection campaign to meet with core constituency groups around the country, and the campaign said it "will continue to have thoughtful conversations with groups."
Turfe said the Biden campaign had requested the meeting with Arab leaders and officials in recent weeks as part of the listening tour.
Arab leaders from the Muslim and Christian communities had intended to share firsthand the "sentiments" of the community and estimated that many who supported Biden in 2020 likely won't do so in November, citing 26,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and thousands of others displaced or facing famine, Turfe said.
"Unless something drastic happens, you have lost the Arab American and Muslim community. At this point, from what I can see, there's no winning them over. That was the idea of the meeting," Turfe said.
"Until there's a cease-fire, the overall consensus in the community is they're not welcome here, essentially."
Israel’s three-month assault in Gaza has killed more than 26,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Another 65,000 Palestinians have been wounded since Oct. 7, when the war was sparked by a bloody assault by Hamas fighters that took 240 hostages and left over 1,200 Israelis dead.
Meeting invitees speak out
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, Wayne County Commissioner Sam Beydoun and Democratic state Reps. Alabas Farhat of Dearborn and Abraham Aiyash of Hamtramck were among those invited to the meeting with Biden's campaign manager.
Hammoud, Farhat and Aiyash declined. Farhat said he agreed with the decision to cancel.
"This pushback is not just about failed policy — it's about humanity," Farhat said. "It's unrealistic to expect that political conversations will re-secure our support for the president when only a cease-fire can truly reopen that door."
Aiyash, who serves as Michigan's House majority floor leader, said he will "not allow our communities to be utilized for political expediency" after 110-plus days of U.S.-backed Israeli bombings of Gaza.
"Since October 7th, I have received ZERO correspondence from White House, DNC, or MDP leadership about the concerns from our community on the ongoing genocide unfolding in Gaza," Aiyash said on social media.
He added that the lack of outreach to him as Michigan's highest ranking Arab and Muslim state elected official showed "there isn't a legitimate concern or respect for our communities here in Michigan (and broadly across the US)."
Hammoud, the Dearborn mayor, tweeted Friday that it's "not a moment for electoral politics."
"When elected officials view the atrocities in Gaza only as an electoral problem, they reduce our indescribable pain into a political calculation," Hammoud wrote. "I will not entertain conversations about elections while we watch a live-streamed genocide backed by our government."
Prominent state Democrats have voiced concern about Arab Americans in Michigan — who tend to vote Democratic — staying home or even voting for the Republican nominee in November could have a significant impact in the battleground state. Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Michigan in 2020 by about 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points.
Michigan has among the largest communities of Arab Americans in the country, with over 300,000 residents of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry, according to Census Bureau estimates. If a sizable faction of them swings from Democrat to Republican, Turfe noted, that could be a problem for Biden.
Some in the community questioned why Biden would send a campaign official and not someone from the White House. Rodriguez previously was director of Biden's White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
Lexis Zeidan, a 31-year-old Christian Palestinian American and activist in the community, said she was invited to the meeting but felt it was important to understand the community’s disposition toward it first. She said the resounding feedback she received was, “Biden and his team are not welcome here.”
Zeidan, a Dearborn native and Detroit resident who voted for Biden in 2020, said the Biden campaign had taken for granted the Arab American vote in Michigan. Biden has lost her vote, she said.
“For the longest time, they thought we’d forget, and reality is going to set in for them today,” Zeidan said.
'He has to stop the war'
Zeidan also questioned Biden’s decision to send a campaign official to meet with the group rather than White House staff.
“It is completely tone deaf for his senior campaign official to believe they could set foot in this community and believe we’d like to meet with the campaign team of a murderer,” Zeidan said.
Abed Ayoub, national executive director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said he asked for the group meeting to be canceled.
“There’s a collective effort within the community nationally to hold the Biden campaign accountable, and there’s an insistence that any meeting needs to be after the implementation of a cease-fire,” Ayoub said.
“The campaign did this quietly because they know this is our position,” Ayoub said of attempts to set up the meeting.
Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News in Dearborn, said he did meet Friday with Rodriguez at his office for about 45 minutes, despite pressure not to do so.
Siblani said he wanted to "convey the disgust."
"I was frank. I told her exactly what the community feels: I told her they canceled the meeting because they do not feel like the discussion is going to get them anywhere," said Siblani, who supported Biden in 2020 but won't vote for him again.
"You have to understand the community you are visiting ― it consists of Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinians and Yemenis, and these are the countries that Joe Biden is bombing. ... This dialogue should have been three months ago. No way in hell that we can support him."
Rodriguez listened and was "gracious and understanding," promising to convey his message to Biden, Siblani said.
"You're still giving (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) money. You're still giving him weapons. You're still giving him ammunition to go and kill," Siblani said.
"I said, 'We are not able even to discuss this. If you are here to listen, then listen very carefully, because our community is not going to give Biden the vote because we do not trust him.'"
If Biden himself comes to Michigan and requests a meeting with Arab Americans, "he is going to be faced with the same thing ― people are not going to meet with him," Siblani said.
What Biden has been doing
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report last month shifted Michigan's presidential election from the "leans" Democrat category to "toss-up," citing in part Democratic ire at Biden over his deference to Israel and response to the Palestinian casualty rate.
The administration since October has sought to engage and dialogue with Arab and Muslim American community leaders about the conflict, including a sit-down in October between Biden and several national leaders at the White House.
CNN has reported that leaders in that meeting demanded a cease-fire and urged Biden to show more empathy for Palestinians. It's unclear whether Biden has since met with other cease-fire advocates, though they frequently interrupt his public speeches and at a Tuesday event held up a banner reading “Genocide Joe.”
“I understand their passion, and I've been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza," Biden told an audience in South Carolina after protesters interrupted his remarks earlier this month.
Biden has warned that Israel is losing international support and has urged Netanyahu to change his far-right government, saying Israel "can't say no" to an independent Palestinian state.
In a genocide case brought by South Africa, the United Nations’ top court in the Hague on Friday ordered Israel to take steps to prevent death and genocidal acts in Gaza and said must permit more aid to enter. The panel did not say Jerusalem must halt its military offensive there, according to the Associated Press.
Israel has denied the genocide charges and had asked the International Court of Justice to toss the case, with Netanyahu saying the fact that the panel was willing to discuss the genocide charges was outrageous and a “mark of shame that will not be erased for generations,” according to AP.
A statewide poll this month found a 38% plurality of likely general election voters in Michigan said Israel has gone "too far" in its response to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, while 22% said Israel's military retaliation in Gaza has been about right, and 14% said it hadn't gone far enough.
The survey of 600 respondents also found nearly one in three (32%) of respondents said the United States' support of Israel amid the conflict has been adequate, while another 28% feel it's been over the top, and 16% said it's not enough.
The poll was conducted Jan. 2-6 by the Glengariff Group for The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4) and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The survey found that Democratic and independent voters were more likely to conclude that Israel has gone too far, and base Democratic voters said U.S. support for Israel is too much
Poll respondents had mixed responses on the question of whether U.S. humanitarian support in Gaza has been sufficient or excessive, with 34% saying they don't know. Twenty-six percent of voters said humanitarian support has been about right, 12% said there's been too much and 29% said not enough has been provided.
Staff Writer Sarah Rahal contributed.
mburke@detroitnews.com