Muslim community supporters, front row from left, Imam Alaziz Eddebbarh, Nadia Harrara and Nicholas Klein attend a rally held to campaign against President Joe Bidens re-election at the Lloyd D George Courthouse, downtown, Monday, Dec. 18, 2023.
Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Imam Al Aziz Eddebbarh remembers the warm reception he got during a meeting with late U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.
It was Muslim voters, Eddebbarh said Reid told him, who were a key voting bloc that helped Reid secure his final Senate term in 2010. And to thank them, Reid invited Eddebbarh and several other national Muslim faith leaders for a meeting.
“He gave us the red carpet,” Eddebbarh said. “The Muslim community went out of their way to mobilize every single vote for him.”
That sense of being a cherished Democratic voter has all but completely vanished, Eddebbarh said Monday.
He led roughly a dozen pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse in downtown Las Vegas, calling on Muslim voters to abandon President Joe Biden and other pro-Israel politicians over U.S. support for Israel in its ongoing war with Hamas terrorists.
“Over the last two months, our eyes have borne witnesses to a relentless genocide unfolding in Palestine,” Eddebbarh said. “We, the American Muslims who rallied behind President Biden in the 2020 election, have tirelessly implored him to take a stand and call for a cease-fire and to halt the bloodshed.
“Regrettably, our plea has fallen on deaf ears.”
Genocide, according to the United Nations, is crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. The U.N. makes the designation using terms from the 1948 Genocide Convention, and it has only identified three cases in history — most recently in ISIS’s attack on Yazidis in the 2010s.
Terror attacks by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7 killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians. More than 240 others were taken hostage. Israeli operations in the ensuing war have killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians, 70% of whom are women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
“The ethical path for President Biden was made extremely clear: A timely call for a cease-fire. That call never materialized,” said Nadia Harrara, 21, a UNLV student. “As Americans, we cannot allow Biden to be rewarded for his unethical behavior that has taken the lives of thousands of individuals in Gaza.”
The movement illustrates some of the dissatisfaction felt by Arab and Muslim voters ahead of the 2024 election, in which Biden could face former President Donald Trump, the perceived Republican front-runner.
The dissatisfaction with Biden doesn’t equate to support for Trump, said Eddebbarh, who is a member of the Clark County and Nevada Democratic Central Committees. Eddebbarh added members of the coalition will also work to unseat incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, a former synagogue leader who has been among the loudest supporters of Israel in Congress.
“Right now, we’re concerned about accountability,” he said. “We cannot endorse a leader who remains oblivious to the agony of the Palestinians.”
Neither the campaigns for Biden nor Rosen returned comment in time for publication.
Muslim leaders from several other swing states — Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania — earlier this month gathered in Dearborn, Mich., to launch the national #AbandonBiden campaign, according to Politico.
Excluding Florida, Biden carried each of those states by an average margin of about 2.1 percentage points, and in Nevada, he bested the former president by 33,596 votes, or 2.4 percentage points.
Aside from Biden’s ouster and a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the demonstrators urged Nevada’s House delegation to help repeal a pair of resolutions that “rejects calls for Israel’s destruction and the elimination of the only Jewish State” and another stating that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism.
The group wants state lawmakers to reconsider Nevada’s so-called anti-boycott divestment and sanctions laws, as well as end what they call Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, and launch an investigation of alleged war crimes.
Support for Biden has plummeted among Arab voters, from 59% in 2020 to 17% as of Oct. 31, according to the Arab American Institute, which conducted a national poll of Arab voter sentiment following the start of the war. There are roughly 3.45 million Arab Americans, or about 1% of the total U.S. population, and about 7,400 living in Nevada, according to the voter data website WiseVoter.
“We’re not just numbers in American politics,” said Mahir Hussein, 26, of Las Vegas. “We are a force for change. This is a collective effort, where we’ve come together to amplify our shared voice and declare that we won’t accept leadership that falls short of democratic ideals.”
