Biden ‘choosing Netanyahu over American democracy’: Dearborn mayor

Abdullah Hammoud, the Democratic mayor of Dearborn, says the US president risks losing reelection against Donald Trump by siding with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Frankly, it’s Biden right now who is choosing Benjamin Netanyahu over American democracy,” says Hammoud during an interview with AFP.

“For me, when there’s an issue that’s impacting my residents directly, it would be irresponsible if I walked away from the table. And we obviously have a very unique voice in this moment of time. And I think it’s hyperfocused obviously because of the electoral politics that we have before us and the importance of the city of Dearborn on a national scale in the Electoral College, especially in a swing state like Michigan.

“Dearborn is unique. We’re a global city, where nearly 55 percent of our residents are of Arab background. And so for many of us, when you talk about what’s happening in Gaza, these are our family and our friends. And many of us come from war-torn countries. I often tell folks that Dearborn is beautiful in many ways. And one of the ways is, many immigrants came over here for economic opportunity. But at the same time, Dearborn, frankly, is a result of poor foreign policy decision-making by those in the highest of offices. Each and every single time there’s been an invasion or a conflict across the Arab diaspora, you saw a migration of folks to the city of Dearborn. And so whether it was the Iraq war with the Iraqi migration, the war in Yemen with the Yemeni migration, the civil war in Lebanon (with) the Lebanese migration, that tends to happen time and time again. Same thing with the folks obviously across all of Palestine,” says Hammoud.

“For us, it was trying to use this leverage that we have now to demonstrate to the mainstream Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, that his current stance on Gaza is unacceptable — the things that he has supported, the things that he has said are unacceptable — in the hope that it would move the needle. But as we’ve seen thus far, maybe some terminology has changed, maybe some recognition of Palestinian suffering has come to the forefront. But we haven’t seen any demonstrable change as it pertains to the actual policy on the ground and how it’s impacted people in Gaza and Palestine,” says the Dearborn mayor. “. . .  why is he (Joe Biden) risking all that to support unequivocally Benjamin Netanyahu and the rest of the war criminals that he has in his cabinet?

” I think if you look at all the polling amongst Muslim Americans or Arab-Americans, they recognize that Trump is also a threat. And I’ll be the first to say that we don’t want to see Trump reelected to the White House. But people want to be inspired to come out.”