Arab American Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Osama Siblani told CNN’s News Central that his newspaper would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris due to the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Middle East conflict.
Siblani noted that he has been in contact with the Harris and Biden campaigns over the last five months or so.
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“And we did not see anything that brings to our attention the interest of our community and what’s happening overseas. Our homes, our friends’ homes, our families overseas are being killed by American- made bombs,” he told CNN’s John Berman.
“We have been trying to say to them, please stop this war for 12 months. And 43,000 right now dead in Gaza, 2,200 in Lebanon. Thousands have been injured, 100,000 in Gaza and over 11,000 in Lebanon. Total destruction of homes and properties,” he added.
Siblani said that both Harris and former President Donald Trump failed to give the issue proper attention.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event on October 10, 2024, on the Gila River Indian Community reservation in Chandler, Arizona. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
That has led to the outlet withholding its endorsement this cycle.
Berman asked if Siblani sees Trump and Harris’s foreign policy as the same.
“Eventually, you know, as far as foreign policy, I think both of them are the same. Domestically in here, we have been trying to reach to Kamala Harris,” he said,
Siblani added that roughly seven-in-ten Arab Americans in Michigan voted for Biden in 2020, only for their community to be left without “a seat around the table.”
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He explained:
And when his wife, Jill Biden, showed up in here and him and his vice president candidate at that time, Kamala Harris, we supported them. We have interviewed Kamala Harris. We’ve interviewed people from his campaign. And they said, we will have a seat around the table. We don’t have a seat around the table. We don’t have a seat in the room. We don’t have a seat in the building, in the neighborhood, in the city, in the country. And therefore, why would we? And we voted for him because we were voting against Donald Trump.
The Arab American newspaper is based in Dearborn, Michigan, which is densely populated with Arab Americans and Muslims. Most Democrat Dearborn voters joined the Listen to Michigan campaign and voted uncommitted in the Democrat primary in protest of Biden and Harris’s handling of the war.
A whopping 57 percent of voters ticked the uncommitted option, while just 40 percent voted for Biden, in one of the first signs Biden and Harris faced a crisis of epic proportions with Arab American and Muslim voters.
