Mayor Amer Ghalib of Hamtramck, Michigan, on Nov. 4, 2024. Photo by Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh March 10, 2025

President Donald Trump has nominated a Michigan mayor who played a key role in helping him win Arab American votes in the swing state to be U.S. ambassador to Kuwait. Amer Ghalib, mayor of the Muslim-majority city of Hamtramck, ​​has been a vocal critic of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

“Amer worked hard to help us secure a Historic Victory in Michigan,” Trump wrote Friday on his Truth Social platform. Ghalib, 45, endorsed Trump in September as Muslim and Arab American voters grew increasingly angry over the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel.

A Yemeni immigrant, Ghalib has a history of promoting antisemitic ideas online since becoming the municipality’s first Arab American and Muslim mayor. And under his leadership, Hamtramck became the first city in the nation to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, which some critics see as an assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish state’s existence.

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A few years ago, the mayor liked a Facebook comment that called Jews “monkeys.” During the 2020 presidential primaries, Ghalib, who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders, suggested that Americans will rage about the Jewish candidate’s popularity among Muslim and Arab American voters and back his Democratic rival Joe Biden “just to spite Muslims and Arabs.”

In 2023, he refused to take disciplinary action against an appointee and supporter who suggested the Holocaust was “God’s advance punishment” for the Israeli war in Gaza, which started with the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, and called Jews “as cruel or even worse” than the Nazis. “I don’t have to comment on every resident’s opinion,” Ghalib said when asked about it.

Ghalib also invited Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and ally with a history of antisemitic rhetoric, to meet with residents and activists.

Last year, Ghalib backed the renaming of a major thoroughfare in the city to “Palestine Avenue” as an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, and supported a council resolution “to refrain from purchasing goods and services from any vendor that is the target of a BDS campaign.” The measure also defends “students on college campuses who have the right to ask for divestment.”

Before endorsing Trump, Ghalib supported the Uncommitted movement, which recruited more than 700,000 voters who cast a protest ballot against Biden in the Democratic primaries and demonstrated against the party’s establishment for denying a Palestinian voice during the summer convention. Explaining his support for Trump, Ghalib said the Republican nominee was  “taking our concerns into consideration” and showing “respect” to his community.

Trump appointed Massad Boulos, the Lebanese-American father-in-law of Tiffany Trump who served as a key emissary to Arab American voters during the presidential campaign, as senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.

Ghalib’s nomination requires Senate confirmation. The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether it considered these views a factor in qualifying for the position.

Kuwait does not have diplomatic relations with Israel and has historically supported the Palestinian cause. In 2020, it refused to engage on normalizing ties with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and then senior adviser who spearheaded the effort, told Reuters that Kuwait was “out there taking a very radical view on the conflict to date in favor of the Palestinians.”

But the Gulf state maintains strong relations with the U.S., which played a crucial role in liberating the country from Iraqi occupation during the 1991 Gulf War.

JTA contributed to this report. 

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