Palestinians in the United States: The War Between Israel and Hamas During the October 7 Onsite Mass Detention at the Grand Synagogue
The project’s mission is to give Palestinians a chance to tell their own stories without relying on Western gatekeepers or foreign intermediaries. Pam Bailey and Mr. Alnaouq founded the project to allow Palestinians to decide what stories are told by their mentors in the US and Europe.
It was difficult to hear a Palestinian perspective on the conflict in the United States. While Israelis have an embassy in Washington and a host of well-known groups dedicated to communicating with the American public — and scrutinizing what journalists write — Palestinians have not had the same public relations capacity. Ordinary people with family members killed by the Israeli military have posted heartbreaking social media posts.
A lot of Israelis and Americans are upset about the recent criticism of Israel at protest marches, which comes in the wake of the devastating Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians. At times, pro-Palestinian protesters have veered into blatant antisemitism or worse. Indeed some critics have called We Are Not Numbers an anti-Israeli organization. The number of outlets being accused of bias in the recent weeks has diminished the impact of such criticism.
Mr. Alnaouq was able to leave Gaza in order to attend journalism school. He lives in London now and helps manage the project from afar. He told me he “wholeheartedly believes in peace and is very, very anti-violence”— a worldview he said he developed as a journalist and human rights defender. He said he rejects the killing of any civilians, including the Oct. 7 attacks. He made it clear that peaceful co-existence could only happen if Israelis are aware of the injustice Palestinians have to endure.
The suburbs of Detroit hosted a series of events to honor the victims of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The following night, in the majority Arab American enclave of Dearborn, at a memorial for Palestinian casualties of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, speakers denounced the censure of Ms. Tlaib in Congress for her statements on the conflict.
At a gathering in solidarity with Israeli hostages last week at Adat Shalom synagogue, Jeremy Moss, a Democratic state senator from Southfield, a suburb with a large Jewish population in Ms. Tlaib’s district, spoke with concerned constituents. He said that many people came up to him and said they don’t feel represented.
Khalid Turaani, a Palestinian-American activist, compared Ms. Tlaib’s censure to that of Joshua Reed Giddings, a congressman and abolitionist who was censured by his House colleagues in 1842 for introducing resolutions opposing the slave trade.
The redrawn congressional districts have allowed her to represent one of the largest Arab American communities in the country and the Detroit area’s largest Jewish community. The war has put her in a very difficult position, with her views of the conflict both deeply personal and difficult to reconcile.
The divide would pose a formidable challenge for any politician. But for Ms. Tlaib, who has staked out a position that alienates many of those constituents, it could be unbridgeable.
On Tuesday, 22 of Ms. Tlaib’s Democratic colleagues joined House Republicans in passing a resolution to censure her and accusing her of “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.” Democratic Majority for Israel, a group led by the Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, is running television ads in the Detroit area criticizing Ms. Tlaib.
On Nov. 3, she uploaded a video on social media accusing President Biden of supporting the “genocide” of the Palestinian people and also featuring footage of protesters chanting “from the river to the sea.”
Ms. Tlaib said she saw the call as being for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate. In a statement released after the censure vote, she vowed to “continue to work for a just and lasting peace that upholds the human rights and dignity of all people, centers peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and ensures that no person, no child has to suffer or live in fear of violence.”
Ms Tlaib defended the slogan, causing condemnation from the Biden administration, as well as criticism from the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel.
“I think Congresswoman Tlaib is radically out of step with her colleagues in Congress, radically out of step with the Democratic Party, and radically out of step with Democrats in Michigan,” Mr. Mellman said. “We hope she will change her views, and if not, perhaps somebody might be interested in running against her.”