Muslim Voters Support Bernie Sanders in Michigan – Mass Media Can’t Work Out How to Explain This

A strange thing happened this week in the United States.  Against all the odds, polls were predicting that Hilary Clinton would win Michigan in the US’s rust belt by over 20%, Sanders gained a narrow victory by 1.5%. 

How to explain this?  Well one explanation is that Michigan’s Black voters split down the middle.  The other explanation is that working-class whites don’t buy Clinton’s support from Wall Street.

But the major surprise is that large numbers of Arab voters did what the US media has always told its readers was impossible.  The media narrative is that Arabs are anti-Semitic, hate Jews etc.  That after all is what motivates the Palestinians.  It’s nothing to do with land confiscation, killing of civilians, expulsion of refugees etc.  It’s all to do with that ingrained hatred of Jews.  Anti-Semitism explains all.

But you see Muslims aren’t quite as stupid as the American media would have their readers believe.  Their main concern is anti-Muslim racism (or Islamaphobia as it’s called).  Bernie Sanders, unlike Hilary Clinton, addressed this issue and opposed it.  Clinton has remained silent.  Sanders record on Israel is not good but it’s better than the other candidates and he has at least criticised the brutality of Israel’s military, unlike all other candidates.

That is why, contrary to the normal ruling class narrative of anti-Semitic Arabs, 60% of Arabs in Dearborn are estimated to have voted for the Jewish candidate.  Strange that!

Tony Greenstein

Sanders’s outreach to Arab Americans on Islamophobia helped deliver Michigan surprise

 Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss on March 9, 2016

One of the great storylines from last night’s surprise victory for Bernie Sanders in Michigan is that he won the Arab-American vote– and the mainstream media are stunned that Arab Americans would vote for a Jew. Sanders won heavily-Arab-American Dearborn, by 7100 votes to Hillary Clinton’s 4700 votes. That’s a 59 to 39 percent Sanders stronghold inside Wayne County, which was a Clinton stronghold. Wrote law professor Khaled Beydoun:

The Detroit Free Press’s Niraj Warikoo reports that Sanders’s victory was fueled by young Arab and Muslim voters, and that he put out an Arabic ad at a time when Hillary Clinton wasn’t working that community.

On Monday afternoon, Sanders spoke to a packed theater that included many Arab-American Muslims, including several women wearing hijab, the Islamic headscarf, who sat behind him as he addressed the crowd. He was introduced by Detroit native U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to Congress. Sanders met before the speech with the publisher of the Arab-American News, which endorsed him last week.

The narrative of Arab-American Muslims in Dearborn supporting a Jewish candidate was one that struck many on social media as a symbol of unity at a time of division on the campaign trail.

Here’s that ad:

It quotes Sanders, thrillingly:

And if we stand for anything we have got to stand together and end all forms of racism, and I will lead that effort as president of the United States.

The Arab American News endorsed Sanders last week and cited his vigorous denunciation of Islamophobia.

Sanders stands for racial justice and has unequivocally condemned Islamophobia.

Beydoun made a similar point on Twitter:

And notice the Arab newspaper’s brisk and refreshing acknowledgment of Sanders’s Jewishness and of America’s unfair policy on Israel’s human rights abuses. It’s impossible to imagine this language in a non-Arab publication.

On foreign policy, Sanders has shown the most even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Although his views on this issue do not rise to the aspirations of Arab Americans who would like to see Washington take a clear stance against Israel’s human rights abuses and occupation of Palestinian land, Sanders’ call for ending the blockade on Gaza is a step in the right direction. His condemnation of Israeli attacks that kill Palestinian civilians is unprecedented by any major presidential candidate.

Sanders is a Jewish American. This newspaper and the community at large do not have a bias against anyone’s ethnic or religious affiliation. Ideas are what matters.

Bear in mind, Sanders won the state by little more than 18,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast. Much of that margin was surely Arab-American.

Jeremy Scahill noted the obvious foreign policy angle:

Much of the commentary on the Sanders victory in the Arab-American community has noted the media’s surprise at it. IBTimes:

Political commentators and media outlets were quick to pounce on a “fascinating” statistic from Bernie Sanders’ victory in the Michigan primary on Tuesday night: Democrats in Dearborn, a city whose population is 40 percent Arab, voted overwhelmingly for Sanders over rival Hillary Clinton (59 percent to 39 percent). The subtext of pointing out this particular statistic is clear. How, the media wondered, could a predominantly Muslim group support a Jewish candidate?

An Arab American supporting Bernie Sanders

Many noticed NY radio host Brian Lehrer’s tweet from last night, because it assumed Arab Americans would not vote for a Jewish candidate (Lehrer is Jewish and almost never touches real criticism of Israel).

Ali Abunimah tweeted (and he’s been widely retweeted):

Ayesha Siddiqui said,

New York Times reporter Liam Stack, formerly in Cairo, said:

Teachable moment, for the mainstream media.

P.S. Donald Trump won Dearborn on the Republican side, 39 to 29 to 17 (Trump/John Kasich/Ted Cruz). But his vote total, 3153, is less than half of Sanders’s 7126 and less than Hillry Clinton’s 4730. 

It’s a good assumption Trump’s Islamophobia didn’t resonate with Arab Americans.