In keeping with the Toronto Star’s theme of the week of blaming the Kamala Harris election loss on her insufficiently anti-Israel stance, the newspaper published an opinion column on November 8 by Faisal Kutty, the self-described “Muslim lawyer” and habitual disseminator of anti-Israel diatribes.

In his column entitled: “Ignoring Gaza lost crucial votes for Kamala Harris,” Kutty claimed that Harris’ stance on Israel “likely cost her the presidency.” To make this claim on any singular issue seems ill-advised, but particularly such a marginal one to the average American voter as the Israel-Hamas war.

A paltry four percent of Americans placed foreign policy at the top of their priorities, according to an exit poll conducted by CNN. The other 96 percent were rating the candidates on their positions on democracy, the economy, and immigration, among other issues. The election results were not nearly close enough to make a credible claim that this 4 percent of voters, of which only a subset are even focused on the Israel-Hamas war, turned the tables in favour of Donald Trump. Of the seven states that were considered to be “swing states” in the election, Trump won all seven, defying attempts to paint his victory as related to only one issue.

Kutty turned his attention, as many commentators have, to the state of Michigan, one of those swing states, and home to a significant number of Arab-Americans. If there is any state where the issue of the Israel-Hamas war may loom large for voters, surely it would be Michigan.

Kutty claimed that the increase in votes for the Republican candidate versus previous presidential elections can be traced to the Israel-Hamas issue. He pointed out that at the Democratic National Convention where Harris was confirmed as presidential candidate, “that Harris’ campaign refused to allow Palestinian voices, … alienating a key group of voters and giving them an opening to go for Trump.” If the absence of Palestinian voices at the Republican National Convention was less conspicuous, it’s perhaps because their presence would surely have been the elephant in the room.

In voting for Donald Trump, a small subset of voters may, indeed, have been looking for a shift in direction from Biden’s approach to Israel. But the direction they chose is a political party that has been explicitly pro-Israel over the last number of decades, and has provided billions of dollars in military aid to Israel. Moreover, voters in Michigan re-elected Zionist Jewish Democrat Elissa Slotkin to the Senate, who is a vocal supporter of Israel and has called out Hamas terrorism as recently as last month in public statements in her capacity as Senator. On October 25, the New York Times predicted that her stance on Israel may threaten her Senate seat, but those votes that Kutty claimed are so numerous and important never materialized.

Kutty asserted that many voters found themselves unable to support the Democrats due to their support for Israel in the face of “what many see as a genocide.” Since Kutty left that group consisting of “many” undefined, some context may be helpful.

There are, indeed, some dozens of extremist protesters who march in the streets screaming genocide at the top of their lungs. In Michigan, Washington, Toronto, and other places, dwindling groups of protestors regularly gather to alert passersby of Israel’s alleged atrocities.

Those keffiyah-clad radicals, though they are experts at achieving extensive and widely sympathetic news coverage, do not in any sense represent the mainstream in either Canada or the United States.

In Canada’s largest city, attendance at rallies tells the whole story.

When the pro-Israel community came together in Toronto on October 7 to commemorate the atrocities committed and ongoing by Hamas against Israeli civilians, 20,000 came out to peacefully gather, including the premier of Ontario, and elected officials at all three levels of government. In contrast, the celebration of terrorism attended by anti-Israel supporters of terrorism, which bussed in protestors from across southern Ontario, and benefited from an extensive social media campaign to attract people, attracted barely a fraction of that number.

Kutty needs to reevaluate the relative popularity of his chosen cause, or at least be realistic when unpacking its impact on political outcomes. The anti-Israel horde is a marginal group, no matter how feverishly their numbers are embellished by Kutty. The average voter is unswayed by their antics, and there is yet to be any evidence of them moving the political needle in their direction.