The US election was not about Jews or Israel, but you could see signs of the role Israel’s war against Hamas played in the battle of Donald Trump vs Kamala Harris if you looked hard enough.
It might be in the “Free Gaza” or “Arms Embargo Now” graffiti I spotted in Washington, DC. It might be in the “End the Genocide” placard held up by a student protester, as he roller-skated outside the indoor sports arena on the campus of Michigan State University in the last weekend of the campaign while, inside, Harris addressed one of the last rallies of her ill-fated bid to be president. Or it could be in the remarks the Democratic candidate delivered that day in Michigan, where she broke from her standard stump speech – which rarely changed – to address the large Arab American community that lives in that key battleground state.
“We are joined today by leaders of the Arab American community, which has deep and proud roots here in Michigan,” the Vice President said. “And I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon. It is devastating. And as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure, and ensure the Palestinian people can realise their right to dignity, freedom, security, and self-determination.”
As she spoke, there were noises from one part of the crowd. It wasn’t clear if it was a heckler or, if it was, what they were saying. Perhaps keen to drown out the interruption and to avoid damaging footage on the TV news, the crowd cheered and applauded. Though it was noticeable which bits of Harris’s comments got the warmest reaction. It came not at the start of her sentence, when she spoke about the release of the hostages or Israeli security, but rather at the end, when she promised Palestinians dignity and freedom.
She spoke about Lebanon too, saying that she and Joe Biden would “continue to work on a diplomatic resolution across the Israel-Lebanon border to protect civilians and provide lasting stability.” And after that, she went straight back into her usual, familiar speech.
But that event in Michigan was the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time, the issue remained in the background. (I stood through the full 95 minutes of Donald Trump’s rally in the small town of Salem, Virginia: he did not mention Israel or Gaza or Hamas or Lebanon once.)
And, in a way, that was reflected when the results came in. Lots of people had predicted that the Middle East would have a huge impact on the contest in the Mid-West, that Gaza could be the thing that determined who took the state of Michigan. But when Edison Research published an exit poll talking to voters in the state, guess what it found: 29% of voters said US support for Israel had been too strong, 27% said it had not been strong enough and 38% said it had been about right. In other words, any impact on one side seemed to have been cancelled out on the other.
As it turned out, the contest in Michigan was not that close, by the standards of that state: Trump won it by more than 80,000 votes. So even though Arab Americans, concentrated around the city of Dearborn, defected from the Democrats to Trump, few would say that’s what determined the final outcome.
In the same way, American Jews overall seemed to have voted the same way they always do. One exit poll showed 79% of US Jews opting for Harris, 21% for Trump, the same pattern of heavy Jewish support for Democrats that has held for decades.
But the detail was more complicated. In New York, the breakdown among Jews was 56% to 43% in Harris’s favour. In other words, a closer contest and more support for Trump. Could that have been a response to the Gaza protests at Columbia University? Did those push New Yorkers to the right?
There will be more data for analysts to pore over in the weeks and months ahead. But my impression after watching the campaign close up was that other, bigger factors determined the 2024 election. Important though the Israel-Hamas war has been, it did not – as some feared it might – loom that large in America’s eventual decision.
- Sam Freedland is a student of American Studies at the University of Sussex.
