African Americans may be more supportive of U.S. backing for Israel than we are hearing about, at least according to a recent Fox News Poll — but you wouldn’t know it from the attention-seeking antics of some of their most prominent political and cultural “leaders.”
Last week Barack Obama was in Northern Ireland, where — in between saluting his own regional peace-making accomplishments — the former president accused Israel of “taking” Palestine from Palestinians during the Jewish nation’s founding back in 1948, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.
Just a few days earlier, failed presidential candidate former Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at a conference in Korea, where she blasted both the current administration and her onetime boss, President Biden, for their “failure to use our leverage to curtail the Israeli government’s horrific conduct in the war in Gaza.”
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And let’s not forget grievance and grift-master Ta-Nehisi Coates, who appeared on a recent Vanity Fair podcast where the writer partially blamed Harris’ 2024 defeat on her unwillingness to speak out more forcefully against America’s engagement in Gaza — or being someone, as he described, who “did not have the courage of [her] convictions.”
All three missives come, uncoincidentally, at the tail end of a midterm election cycle in which Black voters have unexpectedly emerged as potential king-makers in the Democrats’ scramble to retake Congress.
The most consequential campaign right now is in Michigan — but Obama, Harris and especially Coates are clearly projecting onto the presidential contest in 2028. In Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is running a must-win race against his Republican challenger, former Congressman Mike Rogers.
The key obstacle for El-Sayed is not Blacks — but Jews, who could very likely abandon Michigan Democrats owing to the Egyptian-American physician’s impossible-to-ignore antisemitic outbursts and alignment with Islamists. Michigan’s Jewish vote totals around 130,000, but in this Ozempic-thin race, every ballot will matter.
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And so enter Harris and Obama. There are far more Blacks in Michigan than Jews, but the former, like the latter, are beginning to tilt rightward. Black support for El-Sayed is far lower than it needs to be, with African Americans complaining they feel both overlooked by his campaign, as well as turned off by his over-emphasis on Israel, Gaza and Palestinian issues. As one Black Michigander summed up in a recent clever Rogers ad, “El-Sayed cares more about the West Bank than West Detroit.”
Harris was in Michigan in late September to campaign with El-Sayed and rally Black support. At least that was the plan. Instead, both Democrats devolved into displays of characteristic Kamala “word salad” that clearly did more harm than good. Now Obama will parachute into Detroit this weekend to mop up Harris’ mess, just as new ties emerge between El-Sayed’s family and Egypt’s extremist Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama may think he’s smart to drop Israel and Palestine into this already combustive mix, but the #gazamaxxing — by him, Harris and Coates — reveals more about their intractable out-of-touchness than actual Black concern for the Middle East.
Indeed, according to the Fox News poll, African Americans were the racial group most likely to say the U.S. isn’t supportive enough of Israel when asked the question along with White and Hispanic voters. That number was 25% compared with 19% for Hispanic voters and 15% for White voters.
African American voters were also the least likely of the three groups to agree that America was too supportive of Israel, with 40% disagreeing as compared to White voters at 44% and Hispanic voters at 56%.
The stat stands sharply against the ubiquitous notion that African Americans — owing to supposed shared experiences of injustice and oppression — organically align with the Palestinian experience. Take it from someone who’s both African American and Jewish American, such “intersectional” overreach is little more than a myth — Blacks and Palestinians have nothing in common.
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Our Civil Rights struggle — the one my own father fought to help desegregate his South Texas school — succeeded precisely because of its commitment to nonviolence. As for the Palestinians, violence — whether in Gaza, Israel, the streets of New York and now most spectacularly, along the grand boulevards of Paris — is the only thing their “liberation” movement has ever known. Such statements are not Islamophobic — they’re simply facts.
Obama and Harris know this — El-Sayed probably does too. But no matter identity and entitlement are what the Dems have always done best and none are more entitled than Harris, Obama and Coates.
This is why all three chose to lean into Israel well beyond the critical eyes of the actual African-Americans they claim to care so much about — Obama and Harris, respectively, in Europe and Asia; the irrationally Israel-obsessed Coates fielding sycophantic, softball prompts from a fawning white host in New York.
Masters at manipulating racial anxiety and white guilt, the trio were performing for white audiences too fearful of being canceled or called racist to offer any meaningful pushback. This is why their anti-Zionist screeds passed with scant consequence or criticism — because they landed, as intended, so far from Black ears.
Ultimately, Kamala, Obama and Coates could have easily attacked Israel at a church or community event or in leading Black media outlets. But then they would have been jolted by the reality that African-Americans — now contending with outsized homicide numbers and roughly twice the unemployment figures of their white counterparts — have far more crucial concerns than chanting for a “Free Palestine.”