The Patriot Post® · Team Biden Takes on Islamophobia

With Jews here in the U.S. and all around the world under unprecedented siege, the time for action by the American president couldn’t have been more apparent. And Joe Biden acted, alright — by protecting Muslims.

Yes, just a day after a poll showed that his support among Arab Americans was collapsing, Biden announced Wednesday that he and VP Kamala Harris are hard at work on a national strategy to defend against the non-issue of Islamophobia. It was a disgraceful attempt to pander to an identity group that has heretofore been a staunch supporter of the Democrat Party.

That poll, from John Zogby Strategies, was commissioned by the Arab American Institute, no doubt as a means to pressure the administration to reconsider its support for Israel in its war with the murderous cutthroats of Hamas. The poll found that Arab American support for Biden has fallen precipitously — from 59% in 2020 to just 17% today — and this is especially worrisome to a political party that cobbles itself together by playing identity politics. Arab Americans are a constituency that Gavin Newsom Joe Biden can ill afford to lose in next year’s presidential election, especially given that the 2020 result was decided by some 43,000 votes across the three battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. The Arab American population in each of those states dwarfs Biden’s margin of victory in 2020, just as it does in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

How bad is it for Biden? The poll “marks the first time since its inception in 1997 that a majority of Arab Americans did not identify as Democrats — 32% now identify as Republicans and 31% as independents. Forty percent of those polled said they would vote for former President Donald Trump, the likely Republican candidate in 2024, up 5 percentage points from 2020.”

What the poll doesn’t show is the growing rift within the Democrat Party itself — a rift between the establishment, which generally supports Israel, and the hard-left base, which hates Israel with a passion. National Review’s Jim Geraghty shows the, uh, evolution of Biden’s position from pro-Israel to ceasefire. And a mealy-mouthed statement from Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy illustrates the Democrats’ predicament: “It’s time for Israel’s friends to recognize that the current approach is causing an unacceptable level of civilian harm and does not appear likely to achieve the goal of ending the threat from Hamas. I urge Israel to immediately reconsider its approach.”

Democrat Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, though, who moonlights as a “Palestinian” propagandist, was rather less equivocal. She went so far as to threaten Biden and her fellow Democrats come next November. Demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, she said on a video posted to X: “Mr. President, the American people are not with you on this one. We will remember in 2024.”

Unfortunately for Biden, it isn’t just his administration’s support for Israel that repels Arab Americans; it’s also his party’s promotion of the cult of transgenderism. But the Islamophobia pander is especially noxious given what FBI Director Christopher Wray said recently before the Senate Homeland Security Committee: that despite Jews being just 2.4% of the American population, attacks on Jewish Americans now account for “something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.”

Indeed, if there’s one thing Democrats love, it’s a good “hate” crime. Not only do these hoaxes energize key parts of their base, but they often serve as a distraction from the very real problems plaguing certain communities.

“President Biden ran for office to restore the soul of our nation,” said a straight-faced Karine Jean-Pierre. “He is unequivocal: there is no place for hate in America against anyone. Period. Today, he and Vice President Harris are announcing that their Administration will develop the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia in the United States. We look forward to continuing our work with community leaders, advocates, members of Congress, and more to develop the strategy — which will be a joint effort led by the Domestic Policy Council and the National Security Council — and counter the scourge of Islamophobia and hate in all its forms. For too long, Muslims in America, and those perceived to be Muslim, such as Arabs and Sikhs, have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks and other discriminatory incidents.”

Disproportionate? Certainly not compared to what American Jews are enduring.

As for the lack of support here in the U.S. for the Palestinian cause, we suspect that gathering in mobs and defiling our nation’s historical monuments isn’t helping matters any.