Pirate's Cove

Did they actually expect Trump to take the side of the Islamists, try and shut Israel down?

Trump promised peace in the Middle East. In Dearborn, Michigan, it feels farther away

Eighteen months after the nation’s largest Arab American community helped propel Donald Trump to a second term as president, the prayers have not stopped.

In Dearborn, just outside of Detroit, families wait restlessly for word from relatives abroad, hoping they are safe, and mourning those already lost.

What began as anguish over the war in Gaza has widened. In a city with a large Lebanese American population, the expanding conflict in Lebanon has made the crisis even more personal. That anxiety is colliding with pressures at home, including heightened immigration enforcement, a strained economy and rising tensions after a recent attack on a synagogue.

“The community now sees that it could have got worse — and it did get worse,” said Nabih Ayad, founder of the Arab American Civil Rights League. “But the community was just so desperate.”

It is all so simple: leave Israel alone. These same people tended to support Hamas and Hezbollah, what did they think was going to happen? The October 7th attack was the final straw. These same people tend to support the unhinged Islamist 12th Imam regime in Iran

The national spotlight that once fixed on Dearborn during the 2024 election has faded. The mass protests have quieted. But inside mosques, at vigils and around family tables, conversations reveal a city still reeling, and one beginning to reckon with what comes next.

Those “protests” were pro-terrorist groups and anti-Israel/Jews. If they don’t like it here they can go back to their nation of origin. Or the UK, since the government at all levels tends to support Islamists.

Last week, Ayad joined other Arab American leaders for a meeting with The Associated Press. Many of them had been deeply involved in conversations with both Democrat Kamala Harris’ and Trump’s campaigns as each courted their vote during the last presidential race.

“We get this all the time by media, okay? It’s basically, ‘How’d that decision go? How’d that work out for you?’” Ayad said.

Among the nearly dozen leaders — ranging from county commissioner to state lawmakers to business owners — there was wide agreement that life had not improved since Trump was sworn into office.

But there was little regret. Many said Democrats did not offer a viable alternative because Harris, the vice president at the time, did not distance herself enough from President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

Did they think Trump was going to not support Israel? The guy who finally followed a law passed by Congress and moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem?

On a Friday in Dearborn Heights, over a hundred worshippers packed into a mosque from the afternoon’s prayer. An imam opened by talking about the conflict in the Middle East and deriding Trump’s comments that a “whole civilization will die” if Iran did not agree to his terms.

“Political leaders are supposed to build the bridges, not promote scorched earth policies,” the imam said.

Interesting, since all those terrorist groups and Iran specifically talk about wiping Israel from the map and killing all the Jews.

“What we have witnessed is not just another headline. It is not distant. It is not abstract,” Suehaila Amen, a Lebanese American, said at the vigil.

“We are a community in mourning,” she said, “and we have been mourning for a long, long time.”

Why did they think Trump would take their side? Do they think Trump cares about their Islamist views? Trump would deport them in a heartbeat if he could. Do they think Republicans would support their Islamist side? Do they think Republicans want their votes? Why the hell was the US government bringing these people in post-9/11?