Why many Arab voters in Michigan are flocking to Trump ahead of US election

Samraa Luqman wants Arab Americans to be blamed if Democratic candidate Kamala Harris loses to her Republican rival Donald Trump in the United States election.

For too long, Democrats have taken the Arab vote for granted, and it is time for them to pay the price for the United States-backed Israeli war on Gaza and Lebanon, Luqman said.

“I will show up the next day if Harris loses, I will say: It’s because of this community, it is because of Gaza and because of the genocide, that you lost,” Luqman told Al Jazeera in her office in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn.

“Take the credit for your power. I’m all for it.”

The Yemeni American activist is part of a growing electoral bloc that would have been unthinkable a few years ago: Arab Americans for Trump.President Joe Biden’s unconditional support for Israel amid the horrific atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon has left many community advocates like Luqman so distraught that they are forging an alliance with Trump in the hope of change – any change.

Despite his history of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, Trump has extended an arm to such disaffected voters – an outreach campaign that culminated in a visit to Dearborn, where he met with dozens of Arab Americans on Friday.

With a pendant depicting the map of historic Palestine and the Dome of the Rock and a Palestinian flag dangling from her necklace, Luqman argued that voting for Trump is a gamble but supporting Harris is a guaranteed loss when it comes to Israel-Palestine.

“Even if he will continue this genocide at a 99 percent chance, I’m going to take that 1 percent chance that he’s going to stop it, as opposed to the 100 percent chance that it’s going to continue under Harris,” she told Al Jazeera.

Trump in turn has promised “peace” in the Middle East with few details on how he would achieve it and even fewer details on whether he would alter the staunchly pro-Israel approach he pursued in his first term.

But for Luqman, supporting Trump is not entirely about the former president, but about holding the current vice president accountable for the Biden-Harris administration’s unprecedented military support for Israel.

“I do not believe that a genocide can ever go unpunished. And for me, it should never, ever be rewarded with a second term,” she said.

“My message to Washington, to Democrats and Republicans, after this election is that if you do what Biden has done, you will not be rewarded.”

While some Harris supporters insist that she will not be a continuation of Biden, she has done little to distance herself from his pro-Israel policies and has promised to keep the flow of American weapons to Israel uninterrupted.

Trump in Dearborn

That chasm between Arab Americans and the Democratic Party has created a space for Trump to exploit.

In a close race, the tens of thousands of Arab voters can be decisive in Michigan, one of a handful of swing states that will decide who the next president is.

Trump made a brief campaign stop in Dearborn, an Arab-majority city that has come to symbolise the Arab and Muslim American experience, on Friday.

For years, Trump’s far-right allies demonised Dearborn with false accounts about the city adopting Islamic law and no-go zones that are inaccessible to the authorities.

And so, the warm welcome he received from voters, businesspersons and activists was as much a shift by him as it was by them.

Albert Abbas, a business owner, read out a statement with Trump standing next to him decrying the “betrayal of those in power”.