Topsy-Turvydom In Michigan: Trump Courts Muslims, Bill Clinton Angers Them

In Michigan, Donald Trump went on November 1 to Dearborn, Michigan to court Arab voters. He has apparently enrolled in this outreach effort his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Lebanese-American Massad Boulos. Could it be that when he says he wants Israel to hurry up and “finish the job,” he means that he wants Israel to end the fighting now, both with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon? Israel still has to deal with the thousands of Hamas combatants who have managed to regroup in northern Gaza, as well as obtain the release of the hostages who are still alive. In Lebanon, it will still take a few months to end the threat from a much tougher foe, Hezbollah. One hopes Trump doesn’t mean to hasten the IDF to end hostilities before its goals have been achieved, but he needs to make this perfectly clear.

More about both Trump, and Bill Clinton, speaking in Michigan, can be found here: “Role reversal: Trump stumps for Arab votes, Bill Clinton speaks truth to state with large Arab pop.,” by Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, November 3, 2024:

Even in a US election campaign full of surprises – remember President Joe Biden bowing out mid-campaign in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris – last week’s role reversals in Michigan had some observers scratching their heads.

One of those head-scratching moments was when former president Donald Trump showed up on Friday for a campaign stop in Dearborn, Michigan, the largest Arab-majority city in America in a state with an estimated 200,000 Arab voters.

The significance of the Muslim vote in Michigan is greatly exaggerated. There are 8.45 million registered voters in the state. Only 200,000 of them are Muslim. But you would hardly know that from the breathless reports about the power of the Muslim vote. That’s exactly what Muslims in America want the world to think.

Why was this a head-scratching moment? It is one thing for Trump to go to the grave of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as he did in October, and make a play for Jewish voters, even though he knows that historically, Jewish voters have favored his opponents by wide margins and vote heavily for Democrats.

But there was still a certain logic to it: after all, he is unapologetically pro-Israel, and when he was president, he took a number of extremely significant steps that helped Israel….

Trump did more for Israel than any President in history. He moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem. He recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights,signing on March 25, 2019 a proclamation stating that “the United States recognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.” He withdrew from the Iran deal and reimposed sanctions on Israel’s most dangerous enemy, Iran. Trump cut the annual US aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) – $500 million – claiming that its purpose had been to facilitate a peace process, but since the Palestinians refused to negotiate, it no longer made sense to fund them. Trump closed the PLO office in Washington. In addition, he cut the annual US contributions to UNRWA, claiming that the agency was corrupt and perpetuated the Palestinian refugee problem, and in its schools, was indoctrinating pupils with hostility to Israel and to Jews. Most important, perhaps, was Trump’s rejection of Obama’s claim that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal and the main obstacle to peace. He was especially offended by a resolution initiated by Obama at the UN Security Council in December 2016, when Trump was already president-elect. The UN resolution (2334) stated that Israel’s settlement activity constituted a “flagrant violation” of international law and had “no legal validity.” On November 18, 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that “the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law.”

What was as surprising for some as Trump’s whistle-stop in Dearborn was a speech former president Bill Clinton, a Kamala Harris surrogate, gave two days earlier at a church in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, a three-hour drive away.

What was surprising, or rather, counterintuitive, was that in the heart of Michigan, with both candidates chasing after the Arab and Muslim vote, Clinton gave a vigorous defense of Israel’s war in Gaza.

What was striking about Bill Clinton’s speech?

Two things were striking about Clinton’s nine-minute discussion about Israel in the speech that went viral among Jews and pro-Israel supporters and triggered angry blowback by anti-Israel activists and pro-Palestinian organizations.

The first was Clinton’s honesty. He stood up and essentially put to lie the narrative of Palestinian victimhood popular among some progressive and pro-Palestinian supporters in Michigan.

Clinton said that when he was president, Yasser Arafat was offered a state on 96% of the West Bank and Gaza, could choose from inside Israel where he wanted to take the remaining four percent, and was offered a capital in east Jerusalem, including control of two of the four quarters in the Old City.

“And they said no,” the former president declared.

Part of the reason, Clinton said, was that “Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians; they wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable. Well, I got news for them: They [the Jews] were there first before their [the Muslims’] faith existed. They were there in the times of King David, and the southernmost tribes had Judea and Samaria.”…

Here’s what I think: If Trump becomes president for a second time, he would again be as supportive of Israel as he was the first time. Muslims who are counting on Trump to be less favorable to Israel will be greatly disappointed. And Clinton — well, that speech he delivered to an audience of Muslims and Arabs was most welcome. It’s too bad it took three decades — since the disastrous Oslo Accords that he helped to fashion — for the scales to fall from his eyes.

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