The presidential election is a few months away, and American Muslim voters are weighing out their options for the next president.

Youssef Chouhoud, an associate professor of political science at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, studies trends involving American Muslim voters. He says this year many American Muslims are concerned about Gaza.

“Certainly one of if not the top, if not for some American Muslims, the only issue that they care about is the crisis in Gaza, and so that holds particularly heavy weight this election cycle,” Chouhoud said.

He says American Muslims are nestled within the American fabric, concerned about the economy, climate change, health care and immigration policies.

After 9/11, Chouhoud says, American Muslims were against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. He says after 2010, many focused on domestic issues.

But he says that changed after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel — during which Hamas killed 1,200 people — and the invasion of Gaza that followed, where the latest death toll stands at more than 40,000 Palestinians killed.

Chouhoud says many American Muslims view themselves as part of the extended Muslim nation, or the ummah.

“One of the beliefs in Islam is that anything that affects one part of the Muslim ummah affects you as well,” he said.

Chouhoud says many American Muslims also have close connections to Gaza.

“Everybody in the American Muslim context, is probably only one degree removed from somebody in Gaza,” he said.

Chouhoud says American Muslims are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to voting for the next president.

“They don’t, by and large, support a Trump presidency, for the reason that during the Trump administration, and you know, the explicit policies that Trump wanted to and has enacted have negatively affected American Muslims.”

He says many American Muslims say they do not feel like they belong to either Republican or Democratic parties.

“The sense of homelessness, I think, that American Muslims feel politically, is something that weighs heavy on them, and something that you know is going to probably continue from now until they go into the voting booth,” he said.

Chouhoud says things are likely to remain up in the air until the November elections.

Read more:

• DNC hosts first ever panel on Palestinian human rights
• Uncommitted delegates at DNC aim to put pressure on Harris’ Gaza policy
• ‘Uncommitted’ delegates hold DNC sit-in after refusal to allow Palestinian speaker at convention

Pro-Palestinian “uncommitted” delegates held a sit-in at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday, after party leadership refused their request to allow a Palestinian American speak.

Abbas Alawieh, a delegate from Michigan and co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, called the decision “shameful.”

“I’m deeply offended that this level of suppression would happen in today’s Democratic Party,” said Alawieh, who told WDET he participated in the sit-in protest all night.

Alawieh says a majority of Democrats want the U.S. to stop providing military aid to Israel, and that ignoring the plight of Palestinians will not stop protesters.

“We’re not going anywhere before November,” he said. “We’re people who mobilize people. We’re movement people. We’re not going anywhere in four years. We’re not going anywhere in eight years.”

“Today I watched my party say our tent can fit anti-choice Republicans, but it can’t fit an elected official like me.”

-Palestinian American Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman

Palestinian American and Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman said during the sit-in on Wednesday that the protest was not just about her being denied a chance to speak.

“It’s about the fact that today I watched my party say our tent can fit anti-choice Republicans, but it can’t fit an elected official like me,” Romman said. “I do not understand.”

The latest polling from Gallup says just 23% of Democrats approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza. The poll, conducted on June 3, 2023, showed 76% of Republicans and 34% of independents approve of the military action Israel has taken in Gaza. Americans’ public backing of Israel has increased slightly since Gallup’s prior reading in March. 

Party officials allowed the parents of a 23-year-old American taken hostage by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack in Israel to speak at the convention on Wednesday, calling for a ceasefire and for the release of all hostages that remain captive.

“This is a political convention. But needing our only son — and all of the cherished hostages — home is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” said Jon Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin lost part of his left arm and was kidnapped while attending the Supernova music festival in Israel.

Polin and his wife, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, were greeted with chants from the crowd to “bring him home.”

“Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you, stay strong, survive,” Rachel Polin-Goldberg said.

She and her husband wore stickers with the number 320, drawing attention to the number of days their son has been held.

The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict has leveled much of the Gaza Strip and killed tens of thousands of people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish in its death count between militants and civilians.

While leaders of the uncommitted movement were granted a panel discussion on Palestinian human rights at the convention on Monday, the decision to exclude Romman from the convention stage was a “crushing” blow to the 36 uncommitted delegates representing the movement — as well as the thousands of pro-Palestinian and anti-war protesters in Chicago this week.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among those who called on convention organizers to make space for a Palestinian speaker.

“Just as we must honor the humanity of hostages, so too must we center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment,” the New York lawmaker wrote on the X platform. “To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians.”

Multiple pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested on Tuesday after clashing with police during a protest that began outside the Israeli consulate and spilled out onto the surrounding streets.

Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday as the United States presses Israel and Hamas to agree to a “bridging proposal” that could lead to a ceasefire in the war in Gaza.

Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper contributed to this report.

Read more:

• DNC hosts first ever panel on Palestinian human rights
• ‘Uncommitted’ delegates at DNC aim to put pressure on Harris’ Gaza policy
• Assessing the impact of the ‘uncommitted’ vote in Michigan

Organizers behind the national “uncommitted” movement are commending a decision to host an official panel discussion on Palestinian rights Monday at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The movement began as the “Listen to Michigan” campaign to get 10,000 uncommitted votes in the state’s Democratic presidential primary in February, in protest of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The uncommitted campaign wildly exceeded expectations in Michigan, picking up more than 13% of the votes in the Democratic race, or roughly 101,000 votes.

“The Muslim community, not just in Michigan, but in nearly every state, is more active, more involved than ever before,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellsion told WDET before participating in Monday’s panel discussion. “Not just as candidates, but as people who are doing fundraising; people who are doing communications; I mean, Bernie Sanders campaign manager was a Muslim, right? So the Muslim community has stronger political muscles than ever before, and is making itself heard.”

Others on the panel, like pediatric intensive care surgeon Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan — who recently returned from serving in Gaza — say the Harris-Walz ticket needs to hear the cries of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed during the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

“We feel like the only way to protect and preserve human life is to put political pressure at this point.”

-Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, pediatric physician in Gaza and DNC panelist

“I was asked to be here to provide moral witness to the delegates of the Democratic National Convention, the civilian casualties that I myself witnessed while I was there, the entire families that were exterminated, health care workers, humanitarian workers, that have been killed in unprecedented numbers, child amputees, record numbers of child amputees, all the children who had survived and arrived injured at the hospital with no surviving family,” Haj-Hassan told WDET. “I myself treated several children who would fall into that category. And for these children, they would often die in our arms in the emergency department without any family around to comfort them, because their family were killed in the same attack, and without anybody to bury them once they were dead…it was honestly, completely, utterly devastating.

“So we feel like the only way to protect and preserve human life is to put political pressure at this point. The unconditional ongoing funding of the U.S. for this military campaign, it starkly contrasts with the documented realities on the ground, with the findings by the International Court of Justice — a plausible genocide — and with universal global condemnation from every human rights and humanitarian organization, saying ‘This has to stop.'”

Haj-Hassan says everyone in her immediate family and friends circle are “very afraid of a Trump presidency,” however, she says, “we have red lines for what we will support in a party that we’re going to vote for, and genocide is one of those lines.”

“If the Harris-Walz platform wants to win, then they’re going to need to start listening to all of these voters, and I hope they also start listening to their conscience, because I don’t know how you’d sleep at night knowing that you’re funding this,” she said.

In a statement from uncommitted movement co-founders Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, they called the panel “an important step toward recognizing the rightful place of human rights advocates for Palestinian rights within the Democratic Party.”

“Our focus remains on policy change,” the statement read. “Vice President Harris has an opportunity to unite the party against Trump this week by turning the page towards a human rights policy that saves lives and helps us re-engage key voters for whom Gaza is a top issue.”

Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators were gathered outside the DNC on Monday, with some breaking through a security fence near the convention site. However, the protests have been mostly peaceful.

Elabed and Alewieh say they have formally requested that Haj-Hassan and a Palestinian American be granted speaking time on the convention stage this week to share their plight.

BEIRUT (AP) — Hamas’ top political leader was killed Wednesday by a predawn airstrike in the Iranian capital, Iran and the militant group said, blaming Israel for a shock assassination that risked escalating into an all-out regional war. Iran’s supreme leader vowed revenge against Israel.

Israel, which kept silent about the strike, had pledged to kill Ismail Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. The strike came just after Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran — and hours after Israel targeted a top commander in Iran’s ally Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

The assassination was potentially explosive amid the region’s volatile, intertwined conflicts because of its target, its timing and the decision to carry it out in Tehran. Most dangerous was the potential to push Iran and Israel into direct confrontation if Iran retaliates. The U.S. and other nations scrambled to prevent a wider, deadlier conflict.

In a statement on his official website, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said revenge was “our duty” and that Israel had “prepared a harsh punishment for itself” by killing “a dear guest in our home.”

Bitter regional rivals, Israel and Iran risked plunging into war earlier this year when Israel hit Iran’s embassy in Damascus in April. Iran retaliated, and Israel countered in an unprecedented exchange of strikes on each other’s soil, but international efforts succeeded in containing that cycle before it spun out of control.

Haniyeh’s killing also could prompt Hamas to pull out of negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal in the 10-month-old war in Gaza, which U.S. mediators had said were making progress.

And it could inflame already rising tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which international diplomats were trying to contain after a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Israel carried out a rare strike Tuesday evening in the Lebanese capital that it said killed a top Hezbollah commander allegedly behind the rocket strike. Hezbollah, which denied any role in the Golan strike, said Wednesday it was searching for the body of Fouad Shukur in the rubble of the building that was hit in a Beirut suburb. The strike killed two women and two children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House to Haniyeh’s death. A key question was whether Israel told the U.S., its top ally, ahead of time.

Asked about Haniyeh’s killing, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “This is something we were not aware of or involved in.” Speaking to Channel News Asia, Blinken said he would not speculate about the impact on cease-fire efforts. “But I can tell you that the imperative of getting a cease-fire, the importance that that has for everyone, remains.”

A top Hamas official, Khalil al-Hayya, told journalists in Iran that whoever replaces Haniyeh will “follow the same vision” regarding negotiations to end the war — and continue in the same policy of resistance against Israel.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he still had hopes for a diplomatic solution on the Israeli-Lebanon border. “I don’t think that war is inevitable,” he said. “I think there’s always room and opportunity for diplomacy, and I’d like to see parties pursue those opportunities.”

But international diplomats trying to defuse tensions were alarmed. One Western diplomat, whose country has worked to prevent an Israeli-Hezbollah escalation, said the strikes in Beirut and Tehran have “almost killed” hopes for a Gaza cease-fire and could push the Middle East into a “devastating regional war.” The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation.

Spokespeople for Israel’s military and government declined to comment. Israel often refrains from commenting on assassinations carried out by its Mossad intelligence agency or strikes on other countries.

In a statement by his office, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel doesn’t want war after its strike on the Hezbollah commander in Beirut, “but we are preparing for all possibilities.” He did not mention the Haniyeh killing, and a U.S.-provided summary of his call with Austin did not mention it.

The killing of Haniyeh abroad comes as Israel has not had a clear success in killing Hamas’ top leadership in Gaza, who are believed to be primarily responsible for planning the Oct. 7 attack.

Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and had lived in exile in Qatar. Israel has targeted Hamas figures in Lebanon and Syria during the war, but going after Haniyeh in Iran was vastly more sensitive. Israel has operated there in the past: It is suspected of running a yearslong assassination campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists. In 2020, a top Iranian military nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun while traveling in a car outside Tehran.

During Haniyeh’s last hours in Iran, a close ally of Hamas, he was smiling and clapping at the inauguration ceremony of the new President Masoud Pezeshkian. Associated Press photos showed him seated alongside leaders from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group and Hezbollah, and Iranian media showed him and Pezeshkian hugging. Haniyeh had met earlier with Khamenei.

Hours later, the strike hit a residence Haniyeh uses in Tehran, killing him, Hamas said. One of his bodyguards was killed, Iranian officials said. Hamas official Al-Hayya later said on Iranian state television that Haniyeh was killed by a missile.

Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard warned Israel will face a “harsh and painful response” from Iran and its allies around the region. An influential Iranian parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy was to hold an emergency meeting on the strike later Wednesday.

Hamas’ military wing said in a statement that Haniyeh’s assassination “takes the battle to new dimensions and will have major repercussions on the entire region.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will continue its devastating campaign in Gaza until Hamas is eliminated. Israel’s bombardment and offensives in Gaza have killed more than 39,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 90,900, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

After months of pounding, Hamas has shown its fighters can still operate in Gaza and fire volleys of rockets into Israel. But it is unclear if it has the capacity to step up attacks in retaliation over Haniyeh’s killing.

Instead, the impact may be regional. Besides a direct retaliation on Israel, Iran could work to increase attacks through its allies, a coalition of Iranian-backed groups known as the “Axis of Resistance,” including Hezbollah, Hamas, mainly Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria and the Houthi rebels who control much of Yemen.

As a show of support for Hamas, Hezbollah has been exchanging fire almost daily with Israel across the Israeli-Lebanese border in a simmering but deadly conflict that has repeatedly threatened to escalate into all-out war. The Houthis and Iraqi and Syrian militias have also fired rockets and drones at Israel and at American bases in the region, though most have been intercepted.

A strike Tuesday night southwest of the Iraqi capital Baghdad killed four members of one Iranian-backed militia, Kataib Hezbollah, which has targeted U.S. bases previously, according to Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, a militia coalition. It accused the U.S. of being behind the strike.

A U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with regulations, said American forces had carried out a “defensive airstrike” against combatants who, “based on recent attacks in Iraq and Syria … posed a threat to U.S. and coalition forces.”

Story by Abby Sewell, Associated Press. Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat, David Rising and Jon Gambrell contributed to this report.