Frankly Speaking: Does the Arab American vote matter?

Special Frankly Speaking: Does the Arab American vote matter?
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Updated 22 October 2024
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Frankly Speaking: Does the Arab American vote matter?

Frankly Speaking: Does the Arab American vote matter?

DUBAI: As the US presidential election looms, a YouGov poll commissioned by Arab News has revealed a near-even split between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris among Arab American voters. This result may surprise some, but according to a prominent Arab American analyst of Middle East affairs, it reflects the general sentiment among the US public, where key constituencies in swing states will determine the next occupant of the White House.

“Clearly, we see that the Arab American public generally reflects the same trend here as the American public because so many of these Arab Americans are not newly naturalized,” Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said on the Arab News weekly current affairs show “Frankly Speaking.”

The YouGov survey results suggest that the Israeli war in Gaza and other events in the Middle East weigh strongly on the mind of the average Arab American voter. “But at the end of the day, it’s American Arab rather than Arab American,” Maksad said. “They have to vote based on bread-and-butter issues, the well-being of their families, the issues that impact them at home, rather than have an impact overseas. That’s not surprising.

“They are second, third, fourth-generation Arab Americans. Some of them came here in the mid-1800s. And so, they very much reflect the general sentiment in the American population.”

He added: “When asked point-blank about the significance of Gaza, most Arab Americans rank it as the top issue. However, that doesn’t seem to reflect in their overall choice. You would expect that not so many of them would be voting for President Trump, who was so clearly pro-Israel, who moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem and allowed Israel to annex the occupied Golan Heights,” Maksad said.

“There might be some tension between what Arab Americans say when asked what they think about Palestine, and the fact that they are also Americans who have their livelihood to worry about, the economy being chief among them, but also things like immigration. For so many women, also issues relating to their reproductive rights and abortion.”

Historically, the Arab vote has had little impact on the results of US elections. But is that still the case or has something changed? “That’s not the case,” Maksad said, “because of where they (Arab American voters) are, where that constituency is. States like Michigan that are going to be crucial, but even in Georgia, a significant population. Close to where I am in Washington, D.C. is Virginia, and there is a significant Arab population there in northern Virginia,” he said.

Read our full coverage here: US Elections 2024: What Arab Americans want

Indeed, elections that hinge on narrow margins make smaller constituencies like Arab Americans vital to either party’s success. Their impact in key states is magnified when considering the razor-thin victories in recent elections. The race in many states is so tight that “the margin is 0.5 percent one way or the other,” Maksad told Katie Jensen, host of “Frankly Speaking.”

He added: “So, that makes the Arab American vote a crucial one, a crucial constituency to win. We see that reflected in the positions of the various campaigns and the efforts to cater to, and to win over, that segment of the population.”




Firas Maksad unpacked the YouGov survey findings with ‘Frankly Speaking’ host Katie Jensen. (AN photo)

Maksad added that the “willingness and excitement” of Arab Americans to vote, “far exceeding” that of the general population, is a “sign of health that the Arab American community is engaged in the democratic process here in the US, particularly when there are concerns about discrimination and racism.”

Some 40 percent of Arab Americans who were surveyed by YouGov considered themselves Democrats while 28 percent were Republicans. Yet a slim majority was going to vote for Trump.

“The question has been out there as to whether some of this is a protest vote against the Biden-Harris ticket or team for their inability or lack of a political will to rein in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Maksad said.

“But, again, what’s sort of puzzling about this is that if this is a protest vote, you wouldn’t necessarily vote for Trump because he is even more pro-Israeli for all the reasons that we’ve already discussed. You would go through a third party candidate like the Greens. So, I don’t know how much of that can be prescribed to what has unfolded in the Middle East.”

Maksad said that factors such as immigration and the economy need to be taken into account, too. “Immigration seemed to very interestingly rank very high on the minds of Arab Americans, which honestly, as an immigrant myself, I was not completely surprised by because those who immigrated here legally and went through the process, and paid the taxes, tend to feel pretty strongly about those who are cutting in line and not paying their fair share,” he said.

“So, illegal immigration here, which often plays in favor of Trump rather than Harris, could also be a factor.”

Looking ahead, Maksad said that a snapshot look at the latest US opinion polls suggested that the Trump campaign is gaining momentum. So, what would a Trump win mean for the Middle East?

“The sense, whether rightfully or wrongfully, is that President Trump is a much more forceful figure, particularly when it comes to the Middle East. Everybody here recalls the Abraham Accords (between Israel and several Arab countries), which many did not think were possible,” he said.

“There’s that sense then, this promise that President Trump has kept repeating that he will end those wars, whether it’s the war in Ukraine or the war in Gaza. We will have to see whether he will make good on that promise.

“Whether he will be able to bring Netanyahu to heel on issues that the US wants to … is an open question.”


Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo

Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo
Updated 10 December 2024
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Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo

Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo
  • 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima when the United States detonated an atomic bomb in 1945
  • Another 74,000 were killed by a US nuclear bomb in the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later

OSLO: This year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be presented Tuesday to Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo, which lobbies against the weapons now resurging as a threat 80 years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
The three co-chairs of Nihon Hidankyo will accept the prestigious award during a ceremony starting at 1:00 p.m. (1200 GMT) in Oslo’s City Hall, at a time when states like Russia increasingly threaten to break the international taboo on the use of nuclear arms.
“Nuclear weapons and humanity cannot co-exist,” one of the three co-chairs, Terumi Tanaka, told a press conference on Monday in the Norwegian capital.
“Humanity may come to its end even before climate change brings its devastating impacts,” the 92-year-old said.
Nihon Hidankyo works tirelessly to rid the planet of the weapons of mass destruction, with testimonies from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as “hibakusha.”
Around 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima when the United States detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city on August 6, 1945.
A further 74,000 were killed by a US nuclear bomb in Nagasaki three days later.
Survivors suffered from radiation sickness and longer-term effects, including elevated risks of cancer.
The bombings, the only times nuclear weapons have been used in history, were the final blow to imperial Japan and its brutal rampage across Asia. It surrendered on August 15, 1945.
Tanaka was 13 when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing five members of his family.
On Monday, he expressed alarm at the resurgence of nuclear threats and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop brandishing the threat to prevail in the war in Ukraine.
“President Putin, I don’t think he truly understands what nuclear weapons are for human beings,” he said.
“I don’t think he has even thought about this.”
Putin began making nuclear threats shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He signed a decree in late November lowering the threshold for using atomic weapons.
Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
On November 21, Moscow fired its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in an escalation of the almost three-year war.
The missile is designed to be equipped with a nuclear warhead, but was not in this case.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday that Moscow was ready to use “any means” to defend itself.
“It is crucial for humanity to uphold the nuclear taboo, to stigmatize these weapons as morally unacceptable,” the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, said on Monday.
“To threaten with them is one way of reducing the significance of the taboo, and it should not be done,” he added.
“And of course, to use them should never be done ever again by any nation on Earth.”
North Korea, which has increased its ballistic missile tests, and Iran, which is suspected of developing nuclear weapons though it denies this, are also seen as posing a threat to the West.
Nine countries now have nuclear weapons: Britain, China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United States, and, unofficially, Israel.
In 2017, 122 governments negotiated and adopted the historic UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), but the text is considered largely symbolic as no nuclear power has signed it.
This year’s Nobel prizes in the other disciplines — medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics — will be awarded at a separate ceremony in Stockholm.


Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say

Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say
Updated 10 December 2024
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Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say

Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say

MAIDUGURI: A gang of gunmen kidnapped more than 50 women and children in a raid on Kakin Dawa village in Nigeria’s northwest Zamfara state, police and residents said.
Kidnapping for ransom by gunmen, known by locals as bandits, is rife in northwest Nigeria due to high levels of poverty, unemployment and the proliferation of illegal firearms.
Zamfara police said the incident took place on Sunday and that additional security forces were being deployed to the area.


France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt

France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt
Updated 10 December 2024
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France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt

France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt

PARIS: French party leaders will gather at President Emmanuel Macron’s Elysee Palace office Tuesday afternoon in a bid to chart a route toward a new government, days after Prime Minister Michel Barnier was toppled in a confidence vote.
Shutting out the far-right National Rally (RN) and hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), the effort to find a way forward comes as caretaker ministers scramble to clarify France’s 2025 finances, after the previous administration fell over its cost-cutting budget plans.
“The aim is to move forward with a deal about a method” to build a new government on the unstable foundations of a hung parliament, people close to Macron said late Monday.
Barnier had been supported by conservative Republicans and Macron’s centrist camp, but the shaky alliance was far short of an overall majority in a National Assembly split three ways with the NFP left alliance and the RN.
It is unclear how leaders could build a broader base of support for any new government.
Most are unwilling to compromise on pet issues such as last year’s unpopular pension reform, or to tarnish their image with voters by compromising ahead of potential new elections next year.
“We will not participate in a government of ‘national interest’ with the Republicans or Macronists or whoever,” Greens party leader Marine Tondelier said Monday — a position mirrored by Republicans chief Laurent Wauqiez.
In a letter late Sunday, Socialist leaders told Macron they were open to “dialogue and pitting points of view against one another” to “find an exit from this deadlock situation that’s harmful to the French public.”
But they added that they would not join a technocratic government or one run by a prime minister from the right, and called for “a true change of political course” on “pensions, purchasing power and tax justice.”


Bringing so many parties together around one table marked progress from Macron’s first attempt to reach consensus after July’s snap election, commentator Guillaume Tabard wrote in conservative daily Le Figaro.
“But if even a minimal deal is to be found ranging from the Republicans to the Communists, it will require an enormous labor of negotiation that will take days or weeks,” he added.
“The promise to quickly replace Barnier, yet again issued with confidence, will once again be betrayed.”
In an apparent acknowledgement that progress will be slow, Macron’s office said that a special budget law to allow the French state to keep functioning would be presented to caretaker ministers Wednesday on its way to parliament.
Its three measures include authorizing the government to continue raising existing taxes until a new budget is passed by MPs, a ministerial source told AFP.
The state and the social security system will also be allowed to continue borrowing on financial markets to avoid any interruption of payments, the source added.


Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster

Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster
Updated 10 December 2024
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Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster

Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster
  • The statement came as governments worldwide are scrambling to forge new links with Syria’s leading rebel faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham

BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emannuel Macron are prepared to work with the Syrian rebel groups who ousted President Bashar Assad on certain conditions, a German government statement after a phone call between the two leaders.
The leaders of the European Union’s two largest powers welcomed the departure of Assad who had caused “terrible suffering to the Syrian people and great damage to his country.” The Syrian leader fled Damascus for Moscow on Sunday, ending more than 50 years of brutal rule by his family.
“(Scholz and Macron) agreed that they were prepared to work together with the new rulers on the basis of fundamental human rights and the protection of ethnic and religious minorities,” according to the German government statement published late on Monday.
The statement came as governments worldwide are scrambling to forge new links with Syria’s leading rebel faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), a group formerly allied with Al Qaeda and which is designated a terrorist organization by the US, European Union, Turkiye and the UN
Scholz and Macron agreed to work together to strengthen EU engagement in Syria, including support for an inclusive political process in Syria, and would discuss the way forward in close coordination with partners in the Middle East, the statement read.


Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption

Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption
Updated 10 December 2024
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Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption

Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption
  • Volcanic ash fell over a wide area, nine flights were canceled or diverted, schools were closed and a nighttime curfew was imposed in the most vulnerable area

MANILA: About 87,000 people were being evacuated in a central Philippine region Tuesday a day after a volcano briefly erupted with a towering ash plume and superhot streams of gas and debris hurtling down its western slopes.
The latest eruption of Mount Kanlaon on central Negros island did not cause any immediate casualties, but the alert level was raised one level, indicating further and more explosive eruptions may occur.
Volcanic ash fell on a wide area, including Antique province, more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) across seawaters west of the volcano, obscuring visibility and posing health risks, Philippine chief volcanologist Teresito Bacolcol and other officials said by telephone.
At least six domestic flights and a flight bound for Singapore were canceled and two local flights were diverted in the region Monday and Tuesday due to Kanlaon’s eruption, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.
The mass evacuations were being carried out urgently in towns and villages nearest the western and southern slopes of Kanlaon which were blanketed by its ash, including in La Castellana town in Negros Occidental where nearly 47,000 people have to be evacuated out of a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) danger zone, the Office of Civil Defense said.
More than 6,000 have moved to evacuation centers aside from those who have temporarily transferred to the homes of relatives in La Castellana by Tuesday morning, the town’s mayor, Rhumyla Mangilimutan, told The Associated Press by telephone.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said authorities were ready to provide support to large numbers of displaced villagers and that his social welfare secretary flew early Tuesday to the affected region.
“We are ready to support the families who have been evacuated outside the 6-kilometer danger zone,” Marcos told reporters.
Government scientists were monitoring the air quality due to the risk of contamination from toxic volcanic gases that may require more people to be evacuated from areas affected by Monday’s eruption.
Disaster-response contingents were rapidly establishing evacuation centers and seeking supplies of face masks, food and hygiene packs ahead of the Christmas season, traditionally a peak time for holiday travel and family celebrations in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
Authorities also shut schools and imposed a nighttime curfew in the most vulnerable areas.
The Philippines’ Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the nearly four-minute eruption of Kanlaon volcano on Monday afternoon had caused a pyroclastic density current — a superhot stream of gas, ash, debris and rocks that can incinerate anything in its path.
“It’s a one-time but major eruption,” Bacolcol told the AP, adding that volcanologists were assessing if Monday’s eruption spewed old volcanic debris and rocks clogged in and near the summit crater or was caused by rising magma from underneath.
Few volcanic earthquakes were detected ahead of Monday’s explosion, Bacolcol said.
The alert level around Kanlaon was placed on Monday to the third-highest of a five-step warning system, indicating “magmatic eruption” may have begun and may progress to further explosive eruptions.
The 2,435-meter (7,988-foot) volcano, one of the country’s 24 most-active volcanoes, last erupted in June sending hundreds of villagers to emergency shelters.
In 1996, three hikers were killed near the peak and several others were later rescued when Kanlaon erupted without warning, officials said.
Located in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the Philippines is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms a year and is among the countries most prone to natural disasters.