Role reversal: Trump stumps for Arab votes, Bill Clinton speaks truth to state with large Arab pop.

Even in a US election campaign full of surprises – remember President Joe Biden bowing out mid-campaign in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris – last week’s role reversals in Michigan had some observers scratching their heads.

One of those head-scratching moments was when former president Donald Trump showed up on Friday for a campaign stop in Dearborn, Michigan, the largest Arab-majority city in America in a state with an estimated 200,000 Arab voters.

Why was this a head-scratching moment? It is one thing for Trump to go to the grave of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as he did in October, and make a play for Jewish voters, even though he knows that historically, Jewish voters have favored his opponents by wide margins and vote heavily for Democrats. 

But there was still a certain logic to it: after all, he is unapologetically pro-Israel, and when he was president, he took a number of extremely significant steps that helped Israel.

So even though there is little chance to win over the majority of Jewish voters, there is logic in Trump trying to win over a certain percentage in certain key states – like Pennsylvania and Georgia – to make a difference in a close election.

But Arab voters? Muslims? Voters who said they won’t vote for Kamala Harris because the Biden administration has been too pro-Israel? Those folks are now going to vote for Trump, a man who, when president, banned immigration from several majority-Muslim countries, said he would bar entry to refugees from Gaza, and has criticized Biden for not being supportive enough of Israel?

Apparently, judging from that Dearborn stop, Trump thinks so, and he has enlisted his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Lebanese American businessman Massad Boulos, to help make it so. That explains why, in the waning days of the election, he found time to go to Dearborn to try to win over some of those votes.

Michigan is a critical swing state, one that Trump won by 10,000 votes in 2016 but lost by 150,000 votes to Biden four years later. The Arab and Muslim vote is critical in the state, but so is the Jewish vote, with the Jewish Electorate Institute saying there are 160,000 eligible Jewish voters in the state.

What was as surprising for some as Trump’s whistle-stop in Dearborn was a speech former president Bill Clinton, a Kamala Harris surrogate, gave two days earlier at a church in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, a three-hour drive away. 

What was surprising, or rather, counterintuitive, was that in the heart of Michigan, with both candidates chasing after the Arab and Muslim vote, Clinton gave a vigorous defense of Israel’s war in Gaza.

What was striking about Bill Clinton's speech?

Two things were striking about Clinton’s nine-minute discussion about Israel in the speech that went viral among Jews and pro-Israel supporters and triggered angry blowback by anti-Israel activists and pro-Palestinian organizations.

The first was Clinton’s honesty. He stood up and essentially put to lie the narrative of Palestinian victimhood popular among some progressive and pro-Palestinian supporters in Michigan.

Clinton said that when he was president, Yasser Arafat was offered a state on 96% of the West Bank and Gaza, could choose from inside Israel where he wanted to take the remaining four percent, and was offered a capital in east Jerusalem, including control of two of the four quarters in the Old City.

“And they said no,” the former president declared.

Part of the reason, Clinton said, was that “Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians; they wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable. Well, I got news for them: They [the Jews] were there first before their [the Muslims’] faith existed. They were there in the times of King David, and the southernmost tribes had Judea and Samaria.”

This wasn’t Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reciting this history. It wasn’t a speaker for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It was Clinton, a respected elder in the Democratic Party whom Harris wanted on the stump for her, and who was there when Arafat said “no.” He wasn’t a spectator to the events he described but a central participant. He knows.

The second striking aspect of Clinton’s speech – which included defending Israel’s war in Gaza and asking, “What would you do if it was your family… and one day they come for you and slaughter the people in your village?” – was the outpouring of appreciation his words elicited from Jews and pro-Israel supporters on social media.

Clinton’s direct words about Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, which he described as “united in thinking the only thing we have to do is run every Jew out of Israel,” resonated deeply. As did his statement: “And I’m sorry, I am not for that. I think that is wrong and violates everything we’ve stood for.”

Judging from social media reactions, what was striking here was not only Clinton’s defense of Israel but his straightforwardness in simply telling the truth.

Clinton deserves praise for doing that and doing it in Michigan on the eve of an election. But it is a sad commentary on the times – and an indication of how many Jews and Israelis feel so isolated – that the simple act of telling the truth about Israel and the conflict unleashes a flood of appreciation.

This phenomenon has appeared a number of times since October 7: enormous Jewish gratitude for non-Jewish personalities standing up for Israel, personalities like UK author Douglas Murray, Australian Sky News journalist Erin Molan, and US urban warfare expert John Spencer.

These people, unknown to most within the Jewish community before October 7, have emerged as heroes in the eyes of many Jews ever since for simply doing what Clinton did: speaking the truth.

It is wonderful to hear these voices. It is unfortunate that they are so rare that when they do emerge, the excitement they generate is tremendous.