One man's journey from an Israeli prison to founding the Abandon Harris movement
Hassan Abdel Salam is a newcomer to grassroots American politics.
With a PhD in sociology and a career focused on exploring human rights within the realm of Islamic law, Salam was living the life of a typical Muslim scholar in American academia before the 2024 US presidential election cycle.
The 49-year-old Egyptian American was teaching at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and was a welcome presence among students who described him as one of the "nicest and kind-hearted people I have ever been taught by".
But with outrage over US support for the war on Gaza creating a huge rift between Muslim voters and the Democratic Party, Abdel Salam has found himself at the helm of a political campaign that could potentially cost Vice President Kamala Harris the presidency, because she has not agreed to an unconditional ceasefire to Israel's war on Gaza or an arms embargo.
As one of the co-founders of the Abandon Harris campaign, which recently endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president, Abdel Salam has spent the last several months travelling from state to state trying to convince Muslim voters and other Americans enraged with the war on Gaza to both protest against the Biden-Harris administration's support for Israel and chart a new political path outside of the two-party structure.
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"We need to begin to look like independents that can swing either way, so that both parties bid for our approval, such that we begin the process of making the two parties move towards Muslim Americans," he told MEE.
Salam never saw himself as an activist at the forefront of a pivotal moment in a US election, but a stint in Israeli detention thrust him into a struggle to stop American military support for Israel.
Israel's Moscobiyeh prison
In 2022, Salam's research on the strategies Palestinian youth activists were utilising to peacefully protest against the Israeli occupation of Palestine brought him to Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
He began working with activists, organising a peaceful protest inspired by the 2018 Great March of Return protests in Gaza and the 2011 Tahrir Square protests in Egypt which spurred President Hosni Mubarak's resignation.
As soon as he stepped foot in Jerusalem and attempted to enter the site of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Abdel Salam said he witnessed first-hand the reality of the Israeli occupation and how it had affected the morale of Palestinians living there.
In the neighbourhood of Silwan, he saw Israeli forces demolish a Palestinian home as residents on the streets watched helplessly. He spoke to young Palestinians whose fathers were in Israeli prisons, and who say they had seen Israeli forces beat their mothers at military checkpoints.
"They're often feeling a lot of contradictory emotions because they see the disaster all around them, and they want to do something, but they're constantly being made impotent because they're met by detention, attack, the possibility of injury," Abdel Salam told MEE.
"Their homes are being demolished, which I saw with my own two eyes."
The plan was to launch a protest at a single site in the Palestinian territories where Palestinians and peace activists could gather to call for the "liberation of Palestine", as international media covered the demonstrations for a global audience.
That plan, however, soon fell apart. On 1 December 2022, Abdel Salam's research assistant was arrested while travelling into the occupied West Bank from Jordan.
That day, when Abdel Salam went to Al-Aqsa to pray, he said he was immediately handcuffed, stripped of his clothes and taken into detention.
"There was one guy who really hated me. I'd seen him many times before. As I was approaching the gate around a little bit after 6pm, he really excitedly came at me while tripping over himself - sort of thrilled now - and he started scrolling down his phone," Abdel Salam said.
"I could see there was a photo of me on it, and the intelligence or the government of Israel was calling for the capture of me and my research assistant. I hadn't known by then that my research assistant was already captured."
The American professor was detained and sent to Moscobiyeh prison in West Jerusalem, which according to the prisoners' rights organisation, Addameer, is known for torturing detainees.
'They blindfolded me in a claustrophobic experience and guided me as I humbly tiptoed to my dungeon cell'
- Hassan Abdel Salam
"They blindfolded me in a claustrophobic experience and guided me as I humbly tiptoed to my dungeon cell - a poorly lit, windowless cell where I spent 23 days behind two metallic doors.
"My company was this toilet hole, which was disgusting, and I engaged in 12 days of hunger strike."
He was eventually released and deported to the United States, a common Israeli punishment for American peace activists. Abdel Salam now faces a permanent travel ban to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
"They were pleased to get rid of me, although they kept threatening that I would stay for my whole life."
His imprisonment also helped shed light on how the US government treats Israel's detention of Americans.
"The United States was fully aware that I was imprisoned, fully aware that my company was a toilet hole with its dense interrogations again and again, the torture, the 12 days of hunger strike, they did nothing," he said.
"The United States did nothing, and that's exactly symbolic of how they approach the state of Israel."
MEE reached out to the State Department for comment on Abdel Salam's detention but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Launch of Abandon Biden
A few months after Abdel Salam returned to teaching in Minnesota, Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023 after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.
Israel immediately began a devastating aerial bombing campaign of Gaza, targeting civilian residences, schools, hospitals, mosques, and UN shelters. So far, the official death toll is over 43,000 Palestinians. However, with Gaza's health infrastructure having been left incapacitated due to Israeli bombing, the number of Palestinians killed by Israel is likely to be far higher.
Abdel Salam immediately began calling community leaders, including Jaylani Hussein, who became the Abandon Harris co-founder alongside him. He said the Muslim community needed to do something and felt the steps had to be drastic.
"I was making plans and then we began linking up with different Muslim communities of bringing them into different WhatsApp groups and meeting up with them on a constant basis with a tremendous focus on the swing states," Abdel Salam said.
Within several weeks, Abdel Salam worked with other leaders in the Muslim community to form the Abandon Biden campaign, the predecessor to Abandon Harris.
"I told some community leaders that the only real way in which pressure can take place is through the president, and the only real way to pressure the president is to pledge not to vote and to take it to the highest level of escalation," he said.
The movement has since grown, with co-chairs spread across 18 states with Abdel Salam as the national director and Hussein, its other co-founder, working as co-chair for Minnesota.
The movement was formed "for people of conscience to punish Kamala Harris at the ballot box and then take the 'blame'- or claim the credit - for her electoral defeat," according to its mission statement.
It goes on to say that "punishing" the vice president for the genocide sends a clear signal that genocide is not politically viable.
"It would create a political earthquake, soliciting a reckoning in the political parties.”
'No such thing as the lesser of two evils'
Abdel Salam has since taken a sabbatical from academia, putting all his energy into Abandon Harris.
Middle East Eye has covered the Abandon Biden campaign since its inception and its conversion to Abandon Harris in August. The campaign is often left out of the news cycle of major American news outlets, which instead mostly have focused on other electoral campaigns like the Uncommitted movement.
Abandon Harris has vowed to do everything in its power to get voters to turn away from Harris and the Democratic Party for its continued support for the war on Gaza.
'We now know that we have no home period. And that there is no such thing as the lesser of two evils'
- Hassan Abdel Salam
In contrast, the Uncommitted movement has called for an arms embargo on Israel but is maintaining its support for the Democrats despite not winning any of the concessions it has asked for.
Nevertheless, Abdel Salam has continued travelling across the country to get the word out about the campaign, and now with a week left until the election, Abandon Harris feels confident that it has helped create a surge in Muslim voters protesting against the Democratic Party.
"This time, we're going to take a stand. We now realise that it's not that we have no home, therefore we run to the Democrats," he said.
"It's that we now know that we have no home period. And that there is no such thing as the lesser of two evils."
Several statements from Muslim community leaders and organisations, all of them first reported by MEE, have called for Muslims to either vote third-party or vote for a candidate that supports both a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel. Neither Harris nor Trump supports those positions.
Some media pundits have disparaged attempts to vote third-party, arguing those voters are paving the way for a Trump victory. But Abdel Salam said he's just as opposed to Trump, and sees things differently.
"Almost all Abandon Biden leaders find both Kamala Harris and Mr Trump to be despicable," he said.
"We're against Trump and we believe in looking at this in a scholarly and prudent way. We are looking for the best for America and the best for Muslims all across the planet, and for the protection of human rights."
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