Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a Democrat who served two terms in the state house, was an enthusiastic supporter of President Biden for most of his first term.
Then the bombs began dropping in Gaza, killing more than 28,000 people since October.
Like many of his Muslim and Arab-American neighbors, many of whom voted for Biden in 2020, Hammoud urged the president to demand a ceasefire.
But Biden didn’t listen, even though Michigan Muslims and Arab Americans were integral to his victory over Donald Trump in 2020. Biden won Michigan by 2.8% of the vote in 2020. Arab Americans account for 5% of the vote, according to the Arab American Institute.
Hammoud and many of his constituents have had enough. They’re heartbroken and feel powerless, Hammoud said in a powerful op-ed in The New York Times.
“Dearborn does not sleep. We have not slept,” Hammoud, the city’s first Arab American and Muslim mayor, wrote. “Our entire city is haunted by the images, videos and stories streaming out of Gaza. Life seems heavily veiled in a haze of shared grief, fear, helplessness and even guilt as we try to understand how our tax dollars could be used by those we elected to slaughter our relatives overseas. Many of us lived it.”
Hammoud is joining many other Democrats in Michigan who are pledging to vote “uncommitted” in the presidential primary election on Feb. 27.
A campaign called “Listen to Michigan” is urging voters who disapprove of the Biden administration’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza to select “uncommitted” on the ballot. Launched by local Democratic party leaders, including those in Dearborn, the campaign aims to use the primary to call for a ceasefire and end funding of the attacks on Gaza.
(Metro Times endorsed the movement.)
“In doing so, I am choosing hope,” Hammoud wrote of joining the "uncommitted" campaign.
“The hope that Mr. Biden will listen. The hope that he and those in Democratic leadership will choose the salvation of our democracy over aiding and abetting Mr. (Benjamin) Netanyahu’s war crimes. The hope that our families in Gaza will have food in their bellies, clean water to drink, access to health care and the internet and above all else, a just state in which they have the right to determine their own future.”
Few American cities are as directly impacted by the war than Dearborn, home to the largest Muslim population in the U.S.
In November, a Dearborn resident told the city council that his family buried at least 80 relatives killed in Israel’s bombing campaign in October, Hammoud said.
Residents feel abandoned and unrepresented.
“President Biden is proving many of our worst fears about our government true: that regardless of how loud your voice may be, how many calls to government officials you may make, how many peaceful protests you organize and attend, nothing will change,” the mayor wrote.
Dearborn is far from alone in their support for a ceasefire. A poll from last fall found that 66% of Americans and 80% of Democrats want a ceasefire.
“Too often, it feels as if our president and members of Congress have turned their backs on us. In many ways, the Democratic Party has turned its back on us, too,” Hammoud wrote.
“I, like many of my fellow Americans, cannot in good conscience support the continuation of a genocide. This has weighed heavy on my heart, particularly as the presidential primary election in Michigan has drawn near.”
Dearborn wants to sleep again, Hammoud wrote.
“In my sleepless nights, I have often questioned what kind of America my daughters will grow up in: one that makes excuses for the killing of innocent men, women and children, or one that chooses to reclaim hope,” Hammoud wrote. “What still lies between betrayal and hope is the power of accountability. It is my prayer — as a father, the son of immigrants, and as a public servant in the greatest city in the greatest nation in the world — that my fellow Michiganders will harness this power and lend their voice to this hope by holding the president accountable.”
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