Rally in Michigan Urges Protest Vote Against Biden’s Israel Policies
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With the state’s primary on Tuesday, speakers at a gathering in Dearborn, Mich., pushed voters to cast a ballot for “uncommitted” in objection to President Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Two days before the Michigan Democratic primary, speakers at a rally on Sunday in Dearborn, Mich., urged voters to withhold their support from President Biden over his policy on the war in Gaza — and said that only Mr. Biden and Democrats who support his Israel policies would be to blame if the protest vote helped former President Donald J. Trump win in November.
“You all know Trump is an existential threat to our democracy,” said one of the speakers, Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, “and President Biden is risking another Trump term over his support for the most right-wing government, most extremist government in the history of Israel.”
Ms. Tlaib is the only member of Michigan’s congressional delegation backing an effort encouraging Democrats to protest Mr. Biden’s stance on the war in Gaza by voting “uncommitted” in the state’s primary on Tuesday. That movement, led by a group called Listen to Michigan, has energized a primary that Mr. Biden is expected to win handily, but it has raised concerns that the president could be losing support he needs to win the swing state in the general election in November.
It is unclear how much support the push to vote “uncommitted” has garnered, even as Listen to Michigan has held rallies and visited mosques across the state since it began its efforts this month.
But the event on Sunday, which was organized by a group known as the Michigan Task Force for Palestine and drew more than 200 people to an indoor event space in Dearborn, was intended, in part, to show that support for the effort extends beyond Michigan’s large Arab American community. Other speakers at the rally included the Black pastor of a Baptist church in Detroit; a lawyer affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace, a group of progressive activists; and leaders of a local chapter of the United Automobile Workers, which has endorsed Mr. Biden but also backed a cease-fire.
“This is not an Arab issue for President Biden,” said Mayor Abdullah Hammoud of Dearborn, a Democrat who spoke at the rally and is backing the “uncommitted” effort. “It’s not a Muslim issue. He’s got a humanitarian issue on his hands.”
