'I Will Not Be Silent': Kamala Floods Dearborn With Facebook Ads

Vice President Kamala Harris is swarming Dearborn, Mich., a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment, with Facebook ads in the final stretch of her campaign, Facebook ad archives show.

According to a Washington Free Beacon analysis, Harris's campaign has aired 901 digital advertisements since Aug. 23 in zip codes for Dearborn, making the majority-Arab town one of the most heavily targeted ad markets for the Harris campaign on Facebook. While Facebook doesn't reveal which ads were aired in particular zip codes, it does indicate that ads aired exclusively in Michigan are broadcasting the message that Harris is sympathetic to Palestinians in Gaza.

"I will not be silent about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians," the ads, which started running on Sept. 13, depict her as saying. That quote was actually stitched together from two different lines of a speech Harris gave in July.

"Our common humanity compels us to act," she goes on to say, a line from a different speech.

Meanwhile, the Harris campaign appears not to have aired any Facebook advertisements—in Michigan or elsewhere—defending Israel in its war against Hamas and Hezbollah.

It's the latest example of Harris pushing pro-Palestinian views regarding the Israel-Hamas war as she courts voters in battleground Michigan, which has the highest percentage of Muslim and Arab voters in the country. Last month, Harris campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez went to Dearborn to meet community leader Osama Siblani, an Arab-American community leader who has called Hamas and Hezbollah "freedom fighters." Jewish groups condemned the Biden-Harris White House earlier this year for meeting with Siblani, given his history of anti-Israel and pro-terrorist remarks.

Harris's Arab-American outreach director, Brenda Abdelall, once accused "Zionists" of controlling American politics, the Free Beacon reported. And last month, the campaign tapped Nasrina Bargzie to lead outreach to Muslim voters. Bargzie has worked closely through the years with Students for Justice in Palestine, the group behind many of the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas campus protests across the country.

Harris, under pressure to show she is not hostile to Israel, has leaned heavily on her husband Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, to meet with Jewish groups. Last month, she tapped campaign adviser Ilan Goldenberg to serve as liaison to the Jewish community. That move has stirred criticism, however, because of Goldenberg's ties to the anti-Israel J Street super PAC and his past defense of the Iran nuclear deal.

The Harris campaign's Facebook ads mirror those airing on other social media platforms. According to NBC News, the campaign has targeted pro-Gaza ads to YouTube and Snapchat users in Dearborn. In the advertisements, Harris draws from a speech she gave on July 25, shortly after meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In that speech, Harris asserted she "will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself," though that portion of her remarks is not included in the ads running in Michigan.

Other Democrats have used the same controversial ad strategy to appeal to Michigan's Arab and Muslim voters. Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin, for example, has directed Facebook ads to fans of the pro-Hamas news outlet Al Jazeera while blocking the content from reaching users interested in "Jewish studies," the Free Beacon reported.

Harris's spending in Dearborn, which one Wall Street Journal op-ed dubbed "America's Jihad Capital," accounts for at least 7.2 percent of the campaign's Facebook ad spending since Aug. 23. The campaign has doled out more than $20 million on 23,610 ads, according to Facebook data. The campaign has aired as few as 7 advertisements in some zip codes to as many as 912 in areas of Ann Arbor, Mich.

While Dearborn's leaders have denounced criticism of the city as Islamophobic, many religious and community leaders there have espoused anti-Semitic and anti-Israel views while praising Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Siblani, who publishes the Arab American News, is a leading organizer of the "Vote Uncommitted" campaign, which has called on Michigan's Muslim and Arab voters to abstain from voting for Biden or Harris.

Imran Salha, the imam of the Islamic Society of Detroit, said the Hamas attack on Israel lit "fire in our hearts that will burn [Israel] until its demise." Rep. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), an anti-Israel Democrat whose district encompasses parts of Dearborn, recently appeared at an event with Salha. She spoke at a 2022 rally with Siblani in which the activist called on Arabs to fight Israel with "stones" and "guns."

The Islamic Institute of Knowledge, a prominent mosque in Dearborn, held a memorial service last week for a Hezbollah operative killed by an exploding pager. In April, a rally outside Dearborn's city hall broke out in chants of "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."

The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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