Trump Won Over Many Arab Americans in November. Now they are angry, feeling betrayed. "Where do we turn?" [View all]

[Demovictory9]

Trump Won Over Many Arab Americans in November. Now, Has He Lost Them?
In Detroit and its suburbs, anger is deep over Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. So is the sense that there is nowhere for Arab Americans to turn.

When Haneen Mahbuba saw the news of the deadly Israeli missile strikes on Gaza this week, she found herself so crestfallen that she struggled to breathe.

“Suddenly, it felt like I was suffocating,” Ms. Mahbuba said. While taking in what had happened from her Detroit-area home, she saw a photo of a child maimed by the violence — a girl who seemed to be nearly the same age as her daughter.

“I immediately prayed in prostration to God to end this madness,” she said. “So many in my community feel abandoned and let down. The human rights organizations have let them down. The politicians have let them down.”

“Where do we turn?” she wondered.

Ms. Mahbuba’s reaction highlighted the anger, anxiety and betrayal felt by many Arab Americans in the Detroit suburbs in the wake of President Trump’s first months in office, and particularly after the latest round of Israeli missile strikes on Gaza on what Israel said were Hamas targets. In nearly two dozen interviews across the region over the last three weeks, a common theme emerged: a sense among Arab Americans that their political concerns, especially about Gaza, have been largely shunted aside by both major political parties.

----------------


His foreign policy seems wildly unpopular, and those who endorsed Mr. Trump find themselves under an uncomfortable microscope.

“I’m receiving a lot of hate mail,” said one supporter, Faye Nemer, head of the local Middle Eastern and North African Chamber of Commerce.

----------------

They noted that Mr. Trump had shared a cartoonish, A.I.-rendered video of Gaza reimagined as an opulent, Trump-branded tourist resort....

Mr. Baydoun and his friends mocked the clip. “This is the president of the United States we’re talking about, putting out something like this!” one of them said. “The president of the United States!”



https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/trump-arab-americans-gaza-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5k4.b_WN.D__dBJnq8iGm&smid=url-share