Mohammed is staying home – and Kamala is going home!

I’ll get straight to the point, tachles, because time is running out and things are looking bleak for Kamala Harris and the Democrats.

In my spare time, I drive for the ridesharing companies Uber and Lyft – enjoying random conversations with people. As an adjunct professor of Hebrew, I discuss with my passengers languages and cultures, often sharing Hebrew language insights and showing the striking similarities between Hebrew and Arabic.

Recently, I gave a ride in Virginia to Arab-American Mohammed and his wife and two children. I asked him, “lamin bit’sawet?” or “who are you voting for?” His response shocked me. He and his wife are staying home this election. He hates Trump and what he stands for. He agrees that Trump is extremely dangerous for American democracy, but he cannot bring himself to vote for Harris. It’s  because of the atrocities that Biden/Harris funded and greenlighted in Gaza. “But by doing so, you’re helping elect Trump,” I countered. It doesn’t matter, he told me, I cannot vote for Democrats after they gave—and continue to give—the weapons and money with which Israel killed tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

Then, I heard the same sentiment from my son Niv who is campaigning in Pennsylvania and witnessed similar responses from residents of that crucial swing state.  Remember that there are between 150,000 and 200,000 Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans living in Pennsylvania. Even if only a quarter of them share this sentiment – Kamala Harris is likely going to lose the elections and Trump will march into the White House.

The situation is even more bleak in swing-state Michigan – where a New York Times article “Will It All Come Down to Michigan” brings direct quotes from Arab-American leaders who say they are sitting out this election, and are encouraging tens of thousands of their community members to do the same—until Kamala Harris announces a weapons embargo to force a ceasefire and end the atrocities.

Unless a ceasefire is achieved, Kamala Harris is on course to lose the elections she should have easily won. Pennsylvania and Michigan are crucial states she needs to win – and now her coalition is falling apart. Mohammed—and so many others—are staying home, and Kamala is going home.  

Biden and Harris could have ended the murderous onslaught on Gaza, and now on Lebanon, months ago. They had the power to enforce a ceasefire that would have brought more than a hundred Israeli hostages (including Jewish-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin z”l) home alive. Thousands of lives could have been saved.

All they needed to do was issue the threat of a weapons embargo. Biden/Harris made a catastrophic mistake by refusing to threaten an embargo, and now all of us will pay for it with a Trump presidency. Instead of reining in the war-loving, annexationist  Israeli government, Biden/Harris only begged Netanyahu, who made a mockery of their pathetic begging- not only refusing the ceasefire offer but starting another wholesale attack with daily massacres in Lebanon.

It is now obvious – Netanyahu wants a Trump victory. He outplayed Biden/Harris in order to cause her to lose a crucial segment of her winning coalition, and send her home. Netanyahu the warmonger is sure he will have the last laugh, while we—decent citizens here, in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, the Middle East—will cry.

But all is not lost.

If she announces dramatically this week a ceasefire proposal brokered by the US, one that Israel must abide by or else the US enforces a weapons embargo, she can save us from the nightmare of a Hitler-loving Trump.

She must portray this bold step as doing it not just to protect the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. But also to end the suffering of Israelis and bring the remaining hostages home. Too many of them have already been killed, either by Hamas brutality or by Israel’s brutality of carpet-bombing entire neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and residential structures. Israel cannot continue to bomb, shell, starve and besiege even one more day with an American embargo. Having lived most of my life in Israel, I am certain that just the threat of it will bring about an immediate ceasefire.

Biden, Harris and the Democrats must now ask themselves:  Are they going to continue their cowardice and watch as Trump retakes the While House and, together with his Republican henchmen, starts shredding our democracy? Or are they going to muster the courage and do the only thing that can prevent this hellish scenario– issue the threat of weapons embargo resulting in an immediate ceasefire in both Gaza and Lebanon?