Voters concerned with ending the war in Gaza would make a fatal mistake by abandoning the Democrats and voting for a third-party candidate or Donald Trump. Despite the Biden administration’s morally and strategically bankrupt Gaza policy, electing Kamala Harris is a lesser evil than ushering in a second Trump administration, whose policies would lead to even greater bloodshed. President Joe Biden’s administration is fully complicit in Israel’s massacre of 40,000 civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. The International Criminal Court and South Africa have ruled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies are “extermination and genocide,” but the Biden-Harris team has continued the flow of aid and diplomatic support to Israel. Arab and Muslim American voters, as well as some progressives, want to vote for a third party or sit out the election. Their anger at the Democrats is understandable, especially the anger of those who have lost many relatives in the slaughter. Harris could have secured these voters by distancing herself from Biden’s policy. Harris has insisted, however, that she will “stand by Israel.” She chose to appease pro-Israel mega-donors such as billionaire Haim Saban, not voters. This was especially a betrayal of Arab and Muslim American voters who arguably gave Biden his slim 2020 margin of victory in crucial states such as Michigan. The Democrats can blame only themselves if they lose the election. Their betrayal of voters has allowed Trump to pull off the impossible: He garnered the endorsement of several Muslim American leaders in the crucial precincts of greater Detroit. Trump, the architect of the 2017 Muslim travel ban, did so by painting Harris as an accomplice of the “anti-Muslim war criminal” Liz Cheney, with whom Harris has been campaigning extensively. Trump played the man of peace. Arab and Muslim Americans, as well as libertarians and traditional conservatives, should not be fooled by Trump’s promises to stop “endless wars.” These promises are as fraudulent as Trump’s political and business career. The former president is directly responsible for the latest Middle East carnage and will expand the crisis to include Netanyahu’s long-sought regime change in Iran. As president, Trump appointed son-in-law Jared Kusher as senior adviser and put him in charge of Middle East affairs, against the protests of the American intelligence community, which declared Kushner a security risk due to his close ties with Netanyahu. Kushner then drafted the Abraham Peace Accords with Netanyahu’s guidance. The peace plan tried to secure Arab recognition of Israel’s 1967 conquests, in exchange for more American aid and arms sales to the brutal Egyptian, Saudi and Emirati dictatorships. The accords failed to end Israel’s siege of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank. This radicalized Hamas, which saw the accords as a legalization of Israeli grabbing Palestinian land. Hamas claims this as a motivation for its bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israelis. Trump’s second major policy disaster was in relation to Iran. At Netanyahu’s urging, Trump pulled out of the U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement and ordered the assassination of Iran’s second-ranking leader, Gen. Qassim Soleimani. This was part of a broader regime change campaign that, by the end of Trump’s first term, could have led to war with Iran, said Gen. Mark Milley, who was Trump’s chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The policy of executing American wars on Israel’s behalf goes back almost three decades. In 1997, American neoconservatives wrote a policy paper called “A Clean Break” for the newly elected Netanyahu. Israel’s supporters urged him to abandon the Oslo Peace Accords and impose Israeli dominance on its Muslim opponents through regime change and the creation of a “Greater Israel.” This plan culminated in the disastrous 2003 Iraq war, as conservatives staffed every level of the Bush administration; they spun a mountain of lies, resulting in a vast loss of American and Iraqi lives and treasure. By pushing for a “Greater Israel,” Trump’s evangelical and pro-Israel supporters hope to start a “clash of civilizations” with the Muslim world culminating in the destruction of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and building of the Third Jewish Temple in its place. Messianic Zionists in Israel and Armageddon evangelicals in America believe this will incarnate their respective, and different, messiahs. These fantastic millenarian goals motivate Netanyahu’s most extreme allies, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, in their fervent desire to see Trump elected. Such end-of-time goals are shared by Netanyahu’s evangelical acolytes in Congress, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Their opposition to aid for Ukraine is geared not toward achieving peace but toward helping Israel pursue its aims. They want to cut a deal to give Ukraine to Russian President Vladimir Putin in exchange for a free hand to achieve regime change in Iran. James Bamford in The Nation claimed Netanyahu illegally helped Trump get elected in 2016 through intelligence leaks of Hillary Clinton’s emails, coordinated through Russia. Bamford wrote that that was followed by secret meetings — held two weeks before Trump’s inauguration — with the goal of making the deal with Putin. The allegation that America would renege on its 75-year commitment to NATO and leave the largely Catholic Baltics, Poland and western Ukraine open to Russian reconquest holds little value for Trump’s evangelical and Likudnik supporters. Choosing the lesser of two evils in this election may not be appetizing. But electing Trump would certainly lead to much more anguish and bloodshed. Mujeeb R. Khan is a widely published scholar on the politics and history of the modern Muslim world. His latest contribution is a chapter in “The Arab Spring: Past, Present, and Future” from TRT World Research Center. Caise D. Hassan is a Chicago resident and president of Granada Center for Human Rights. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].