Kamala Harris courts disillusioned Arab Americans over Jewish groups, records show

Vice President Kamala Harris appears to prioritize winning back Arab American and Muslim voters who were dejected by President Joe Biden’s handling of war in the Middle East over courting the Jewish voter.

That's according to an internal review of her calendar meetups with both groups since becoming the Democratic nominee for president. 

Harris met with Arab American advocates ahead of a campaign event in Flint, Michigan, on Friday. That followed a meeting with activists with the Pro-Palestinian Uncommitted Movement, which has declined to endorse her, in Michigan in July. 

Her public schedule hasn’t included meetings with Jewish groups since meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu privately in July, after she declined to preside over his joint address to Congress. 

In August, her campaign nominated Ilan Goldenberg as its liaison to the Jewish community, and on Aug. 15, Harris sent campaign officials to meet with Jewish leaders in Michigan. In September, she called the parents of the late Hersch Goldberg-Polin, the American hostage slain by Hamas. Fox News Digital could not find a record of any other face-to-face Jewish outreach by Harris.

Wa’el Alzayat, the CEO of Emgage Action, told CNN that Harris had told the Arab group on Friday "that she also wants the war to end and that she will do all she can to work in this regard."

The Arab Americans told her she needed "to show distance between how she would govern on this matter with the current administration policies, which we don’t agree with."

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Michigan, which Biden narrowly won in 2020, is a crucial battleground state this election. It has the second-highest population of Arab American residents, who make up around 3% of its population. 

On the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, former President Donald Trump will speak to Jewish community leaders at one of his Florida resorts in Doral. Harris will briefly speak to journalists and plant a pomegranate tree on the grounds of the Vice President’s Residence in honor of those killed a year ago.

One year on from the outbreak of war with Hamas in Gaza, Israel is now entrenched in war on other fronts too. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) recently launched a ground offensive in Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, and last week missiles rained down on Tel Aviv — though most were intercepted — from Iran.

Jewish Americans tend to vote Democratic — in 2020, Biden won 69% of their vote. Trump won 30%.

Harris’ focus on Arab American outreach could in part be due to shifting polling within the community and an aggressive outreach from the Trump campaign to capitalize on that.

Arab Americans also historically favor Democrats — but new polling suggests that could change. Of likely voters in the community, Arab Americans favor Trump over Harris 46% to 42%, according to new polling by the Arab American Institute.

Trump has been airing ads aimed at Arab Americans in Michigan, and his former director of national intelligence Ric Grenell and his daughter Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman, have been leading his outreach to the community.

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"His outreach now is much better, much different than it was in 2016 and 2020," Adel Ayoub, leader of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told Fox News Digital of Trump.

Biden won 60% of the Arab American vote in 2020, but support from that community has cratered since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. 

The National Uncommitted movement launched a campaign calling on voters to cast uncommitted ballots in swing state primaries to send a message to Democrats, and more than a million did so. 

Harris spoke with leaders of the Uncommitted Movement in August. That same month, her campaign manager met with Arab and Muslim leaders. 

Trump has blamed Harris and Biden for loosening sanctions on Iran, thus emboldening Iran's proxies to carry out the attack last year. 

Trump has repeatedly said that Jewish voters who vote for Democrats "should have their head examined" and that if he loses the Nov. 5 election, "the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that."