Why are pro-Palestinian activists suddenly so quiet?

The pro-Palestinian groups that came to be known as the Uncommitted movement have been uncharacteristically quiet since President Donald Trump won re-election — even as the new president threatens to "take over" Gaza.

Now this nascent coalition faces a stark choice. Either fade into obscurity after a peak moment of influence, or regroup around a new and riskier goal: fighting to stop Trump from snatching their homeland.

Throughout the election, the movement, born out of Michigan's large Arab-American population, pressured President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for a ceasefire and an end to US arms sales to Israel. They virtually ignored Trump, figuring he wasn't in office and they had little sway with him or his voters. It's a lesson in shortsightedness that Uncommitted and other protest movements would do well to absorb.

Failing to make their case against Trump proved a grave miscalculation. By remaining silent, they left many in their communities vulnerable to the siren song of a master manipulator. As the death and destruction tolls rose in Gaza throughout the election, and antipathy toward Biden and Harris escalated, Trump spied an opportunity.

The same man who enacted the Muslim travel ban, who cozied up to Israeli leaders in his first term, whose history of anti-Muslim animus was evident, started moving into Arab-American strongholds in Michigan and elsewhere to make his pitch.

When I visited Michigan during the primaries, the signs of vulnerability were already there. Too few saw a difference between a president they had already started calling "Genocide Joe" and a candidate who once again was threatening Muslims. One restaurateur I spoke to said at the time that so many of his relatives in Gaza had already died in the war that he thought Trump could hardly do worse.

He was wrong.

Trump hit Michigan like a tornado, courting imams in Detroit, working the crowds at Middle Eastern restaurants and sitting with Arab-American leaders in Dearborn. (Harris declined to visit Dearborn.) He showcased Muslim leaders onstage in a late-season rally. He won support from some imams. The mayors of Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, both heavily Muslim Michigan cities, endorsed him.

Trump won Dearborn, the state's Arab-American hub, by roughly 17,000 votes and Michigan, a critical swing state, by 80,000. Both had gone solidly to Biden in 2020.

But his new Arab-American supporters soon learned that Trump's commitments can be fleeting.

Trump is fundamentally transactional — and he needed Arab-American voters. So he told them he would bring peace. But he left out the critical part: The price for peace would be Gaza's capitulation.

Trump reverted to type after winning the November election. He courted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and eventually offered a vision for Gaza that didn't include Palestinians. He planned instead to remake it as the "Riviera of the Middle East," with Palestinians exiled.
Where has that left Uncommitted?

Imam Mika'il Stewart Saadiq, whom I met in Michigan during the primaries and who was one of the organizers of Uncommitted, said the majority of Muslims were aware of Trump's history and did not want him to win.

"It was never supposed to be about defeating Biden or Harris," he said. "Our mission was to get a ceasefire. To stop the arms sales."

Now, he told me, "There is so much embarrassment in our community. The silence since the election has been deafening. People are grimacing, trying to save face. They are in shock that this happened. They are frightened."

One abashed Michigan group key to Trump's voter outreach changed its name from "Arab Americans for Trump" to "Arab Americans for Peace." But gestures like that are largely symbolic.

Some remain defiant. Michigander Layla Elabed , a co-chair of the Uncommitted movement, still declines to take the blame for Harris' defeat. While she told NBC that feels "sad, angry and scared for our communities," she maintains that Democrats had a chance to persuade voters "and they blew it."

Wherever the movement goes from here, it has learned that once the forces of protest and hatred are unleashed, they don't stay in a neat little box. They spill out in every direction and have consequences. And the consequences for Gaza and its future are particularly bleak.

The Uncommitted movement meant to send a message during the election. But they let their anger with Biden and Harris blind them to a greater threat to their own self-interest: Trump.

Patricia Lopez/ Bloomberg Columnist

Patricia Lopez is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. She is a former member of the editorial board at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she also worked as a senior political editor and reporter.

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg and is published by a special syndication arrangement.