In a backstage waiting room at Friday’s campaign rally in Flint, Michigan, Arab American advocates urged Vice President Kamala Harris to break away from President Joe Biden’s Israel policy and work toward ending the war in Gaza. He called for more forceful promotion.
The conversation was scheduled to last 10 minutes but ended up lasting 20 minutes, said Wael Al-Zayat, CEO of Emgage Action, a group that aims to encourage Muslim-Americans to vote. Harris did not make any promises, but told her that “she too wants to end the war and will do everything in her power to do so.”
“She (said) that she was committed to working with our community, to including our community, and that she completely understood what we were saying. She said that if she wins, I hope that I will be able to achieve all of these things once I become president,” Al-Zayat told CNN.
Emgage Action leaders said they had been in contact with other Arab American leaders who were present and had been invited within the past 48 hours. Their message to Harris was simple, he says. She needed to “put some distance between how she governs on this issue and the current administration’s policies with which we disagree.”
Further context: The meeting comes amid growing dissatisfaction with Harris’ response to Israel’s recent escalation in Lebanon and concerns that her campaign is unwilling to listen to critical voices. It was held in Harris’s impasse is partly due to her position that the vice president does not decide America’s foreign policy.
But as the ongoing Israel-Hamas war expands into a multi-pronged conflict involving Iran, which fired missiles into Israel this week, and Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon and Yemen, prominent Arab American groups We are looking for more additions.
Read more about Harris’ meeting with Arab American advocates.
