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As Israeli airstrikes bombard Hamas and Hezbollah militants nearly 6,000 miles away from his home in Philadelphia, Saif Iqbal wants Vice President Kamala Harris to distance the United States from Israel—an attitude that could prove crucial in November.
Iqbal, 29, helped mobilize opposition to Donald Trump in 2020 as part of the Million Muslim Votes campaign, but the activist and lifelong Democrat isn't ready to commit to Harris.
Muslim Americans nationwide backed President Joe Biden by a huge margin in 2020, with 86 percent voting for the president and just 6 percent supporting Trump, a survey found.
However, the bloc of more than 2.5 million registered voters has increasing concerns over Harris' handling of the Israel-Hamas war—potentially shifting crucial support to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who leads the vice president in three battleground states among Muslims.
"Muslim voters are frustrated because they feel that the administration is unwilling to address human rights abuses that the U.S. is financially supporting," Iqbal told Newsweek.
Washington's unwavering diplomatic, financial and military support of Israel amid ongoing military campaigns in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon leaves many Muslim voters in an "impossible position," Iqbal said.
The escalating conflict could also be a factor for roughly 6 million Jewish Americans, though overall the Middle East is seen as less important than domestic issues and there is little sign of them being swayed by Trump's statements that he is the only one who can defend Israel.
Battleground states where the two voting blocs could prove pivotal include North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Biden won two of the three states four years ago, but the nearly 80,000 registered Muslim voters in the Peach State far exceeds the 11,700-vote margin of his victory.
"I haven't made a final decision yet," Iqbal concluded. "There's still time for Harris to change my mind, but as of now, I'm leaning towards Jill Stein."
Aliya Khabir, a Black Muslim voter in Philadelphia, said she is supporting Harris but strongly criticized U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, accusing the Biden administration of ignoring victims in Gaza, despite rushing to save Ukrainians following Russia's invasion in 2022.
"Neither of these parties are fair and just when it comes to foreign policy," Khabir, 45, said of Democrats and Republicans. She told Newsweek that Harris should "acknowledge the imbalance."
It is nearly a year since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping a further 250 in an assault that prompted an Israeli offensive that health officials in Gaza say has killed over 42,000 Palestinians. That war, and Israel's expanding offensive against Hezbollah militants firing rockets from Lebanon, have become part of the equation in the close-fought U.S. election.
Majed Moughni, a Lebanese American attorney in Dearborn, Michigan, said he cast a "protest vote" via absentee ballot hours before Israeli forces entered southern Lebanon to conduct ground operations against Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Moughni, who was born in Beirut, said he's struggling to process the "real-time destruction" of Lebanon, where Israeli strikes have killed many people.
The former supporter of President Biden accused Harris of failing to condemn the "indiscriminate attacks" and ignoring the will of more than 602,000 Lebanese Americans nationwide.
"To address this grievance, I will be voting against this administration that has supplied weapons of mass destruction to devastate the very country I was born in," Moughni told Newsweek. "The conflict in the Middle East is the single most decisive issue this election year. No other issue matters."
Moughni said he voted for third-party candidate Cornel West despite the extremely long odds facing the pro-Palestinian, anti-war progressive, who is polling at less than 1 percent nationally, according to RealClearPolitics data.
"My candidate will never win, but I know that my voice will be heard loud," Moughni said.
More than 82,000 Lebanese Americans live in Michigan, second only to California. Michigan's Wayne County, which includes Dearborn, also has the highest percentage of residents with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry (7.8 percent) among all U.S. counties, Census data shows.
Biden won the state in 2020 by more than 154,000 votes, but Moughni said Harris hasn't assuaged rampant fears among Lebanese Americans that his homeland will be decimated like the Gaza Strip.
"It's the right vote because both [Harris and Trump] depend on the Arab and Muslim vote, and if we show our presence, maybe by the next election they'll have more interest in raising awareness to the causes that we're fighting for," Moughni said. "It's going to make a difference; we're going to be counted."
Other Lebanese Americans in Michigan told Newsweek they felt invisible to the Democratic Party amid Israel's escalating military campaign in Lebanon.
"We have reached a nadir in the support for the two-party system in this country and in this specific instance, the Democratic Party," said Ali Dabaja, 43, of Dearborn Heights. "It's almost a paradigm shift for us. It's more clear to us that there are no humanizing voices within the party to our concerns and our pleads."
The expanding Middle East conflict is intensely personal for Dabaja, as Israeli airstrikes killed five of his relatives in Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon on September 23, including Dabaja's 40-year-old second cousin and her 8-year-old son, he said.
"This is a moment for Arab Americans, for Muslim Americans—the majority of us," Dabaja said. "There's no turning back from genocide. There's no turning back from massive bunker bombs that decimate and massacre our people." Israel denies accusations of genocide.
Dabaja said the "tough talk" of calls for diplomacy in the Middle East by President Biden and Vice President Harris runs counter to the steadfast support provided to Israel as it targets Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon. An Israeli airstrike near Beirut on September 27 killed Hassan Nasrallah, who led the Iranian-backed militant group for more than three decades, marking a significant escalation in the war-tattered region.
"It's not consistent," Dabaja said. "And for us, it's reaching a point where we can't return from it. We do hope that Biden, Harris and the Democratic Party can see that their policies, specifically of genocide in Palestine and now Lebanon, was their Achilles' heel and that support for Israel is gaining more and more momentum as a potential liability for this party and this country, honestly."
Dabaja, who plans to vote for Green Party candidate Stein, questioned whether the unwavering support of Israel by the Biden administration would ultimately hurt the United States' standing in the international community, as well as lead to possible security risks.
"We are witnessing something right now that's happening that the history books will look back at and lament on the lack of humanity," Dabaja said. "These are the moments that we don't feel that we're part of this community because we've been dehumanized to the extent that people don't even acknowledge us."
Harris and Stein are virtually tied at 29 percent among Muslim voters nationally, recent polling revealed. Trump finished third at 11 percent, while 16.5 percent said they remain undecided.
Stein's pledge to end the "genocide in Gaza" has further resonated with Muslims in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, where she leads both Harris and Trump. The vice president is leading Stein in Georgia and Pennsylvania, but trails Trump slightly in Nevada, according to a survey in late August.
Harris' fractured support among Muslims contrasts to the strong commitment she has received nationally from Jewish voters. Seventy-one percent said they will vote for the vice president, compared with 26 percent for Trump, a recent survey by the Jewish Democratic Council of America found.
In 2020, Biden had a 69 percent share of the Jewish vote, while 30 percent chose Trump. Those shifts are changing the calculations in the battleground states, whose Electoral College votes will determine who becomes president.
In North Carolina, where Trump won by 74,000 votes in 2020, there are at least 54,000 registered Muslim voters, compared with an estimated 50,000 Jewish voters. The former president is leading Harris by less than a percentage point in the Tar Heel State.
Biden won Pennsylvania four years ago by a slightly bigger margin—81,000 votes, or roughly half of the number of registered Muslim voters statewide. There is also a significant population of roughly 300,000 Jewish adults in the Keystone State.
Nationwide, nearly half of Jewish voters polled said they will be motivated by the future of democracy rather than Israel, which tied for ninth on a list of 11 issues identified in the JDCA's survey. Abortion and the economy ranked second and third, respectively.
Esther Graff-Radford, of Atlanta, voted for Biden in 2020 and said she is definitely voting for Harris, primarily due to her experience as a former federal prosecutor. Graff-Radford, a biracial convert to Judaism, praised Harris' perspective on the Israel-Hamas war.
"I believe she is sincere in her desire to see a world that's safe for the Jewish people she loves. Her family looks like my family," she said.
The Harris campaign's national security spokeswoman, Morgan Finkelstein, previously referred Newsweek to the vice president's comments during the debate when asked for a response to concerns shared by Muslim voters. Israel had a right to defend itself after the October 7 attacks, but "far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed," Harris said.
"What we know is that this war must end," she added, vowing to work "around the clock" on a ceasefire deal and a two-state solution.
Haris Tarin, the vice president of policy and programming for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said the "horrific images from Gaza and now Lebanon" are propelling Stein's ascension at the expense of Harris because the former has a "plan to make the atrocities stop."
"With the extremely thin electoral margins, American Muslims will be pivotal in all of the swing states and will absolutely be a deciding factor in the outcome of these elections," he said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations reiterated its call recently for the Biden administration to impose an arms embargo on Israel amid attacks in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah militants.
Sam Markstein, national political director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, said Jewish voters will similarly prove to be a "decisive group" in the presidential election. He accused Democrats of scrambling to mitigate losses within both Muslim and Jewish voting blocs.
"It's obvious Democrats have a real problem when it comes to just getting up and standing up for Israel," Markstein told Newsweek. "They can't do it."
Markstein said many Jewish voters are also worried about the rise of antisemitism domestically. Recent data released by the FBI revealed reported hate crimes nationwide reached a record high of 11,862 incidents last year. Antisemitic attacks rose some 63 percent from 2022, while hate crimes against Muslims increased 49 percent, data shows.
"Even though Jews only make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, anti-Jewish hate crimes accounted for 67 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes recorded by the FBI," Markstein said. "All these issues are deeply personal, they're very visceral for Jewish voters and we believe they'll be top of mind as folks start to vote early."
Other advocates, meanwhile, view Trump's characterization that Jews would be a big part of the equation if he loses in November as deeply troubling.
Jeremy Kazzaz, executive director of the Beacon Coalition, a Pittsburgh-based Jewish advocacy group, accused Trump of setting up Jewish voters to be scapegoats in the election regardless of the outcome.
"We see that as incredibly dangerous," Kazzaz told Newsweek. "A lot of voters going into the November election are really thinking about the safety and security of Jews in America."
Kazzaz praised Harris for fighting antisemitism as vice president, noting that her husband, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, who is Jewish, attended the groundbreaking ceremony in June for the new Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 worshippers were killed in 2018—the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
Harris has also denounced pro-Hamas protesters in Washington, D.C. as unpatriotic, antisemitic and dangerous, as well as giving a strong show of support for Jewish voters at the Democratic National Convention in late August, Kazzaz said.
"And that's the sort of behavior that should be an important indicator to Jewish voters," he said.
Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the nonpartisan Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said poll data showed that most Jewish Americans understand the complexity of the Israel-Hamas war—recognizing Israel's right to defend itself while having deep empathy for Palestinians and concerns about Israel's military response. She criticized Trump for saying that Jews who don't support him are somehow disloyal.
"And the danger of dividing Jews into these good and bad camps or giving permission to scapegoat Jews, we know exactly where that leads," Spitalnick said.
"Even if there are specific disagreements on Israel policy or Gaza, it's also important to be clear about the fact that there's only one presidential candidate that has leaned into antisemitism as a core talking point."
Spitalnick said the Jewish electorate is a diverse voting bloc motivated to act on myriad concerns facing all Americans, not just the Israel-Hamas war.
"The Jewish community is not a monolith," she said. "The Jewish community, like any other community, votes on a variety of issues, including democracy, the economy, health care, education and a variety of other topics, which does include Israel, but Israel is oftentimes not the top issue that most Jews are voting on."
