When Dearborn resident Ted Barham raised concerns about renaming Warren Avenue after a local Arab American leader at a city council meeting last week, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud unleashed his fury.
“It seems very provocative to have those signs up there,” Barham said, pointing to prior remarks from Osama Siblani, editor of the Arab American News. “It’s almost like having maybe a street that’s Hezbollah Street or Hamas Street. Hezbollah bombed the embassy in Beirut, including many Americans, so I just feel like it’s quite inappropriate.”
Hammoud didn’t hesitate in attacking Barham, blasting his constituent as an “Islamophobe,” WJBK reports.
“Although you live here, I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here,” Hammoud said. “The day you move out of the city will be the day I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city.”
Siblani, a close confidant to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who recently accompanied her on an overseas mission to the United Arab Emirates, established The Arab American News in 1984, and was recognized last week with honorary street signs along Warren Avenue at intersections with Chase and Shaefer during a ceremony attended by many public officials.
The signs, approved by Wayne County, were unveiled in a ceremony designed to honor his contributions to the Arab community since immigrating to the U.S. in 1976, The Arab American News reports.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, “Siblani’s radical track record in Dearborn—a heavily Muslim community known for being a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment—includes numerous public appearances in which he praised Palestinian jihadi groups as ‘heroes,’ lauded the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and threatened to send Israeli Jews ‘back to Poland.’
“During a September 2024 rally in Dearborn, when Israel was locked in a fierce fight against Hezbollah terrorists on its northern border, Siblani told a crowd chanting ‘death to Israel’ that the terror group will ‘take care of the job’ by eradicating the Jewish state, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which monitors radical activity.
“Siblani later told the crowd: ‘To [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who wants to bring [evacuated Israeli civilians back] to the north: We are going to take you back to Poland.’
“At a 2022 ‘Nakba Day rally’ meant to honor the ‘catastrophe’ of Israel’s creation, Siblani said the Dearborn Muslim community will ‘lift Palestinians all the way to victory’ and encouraged his supporters to ‘fight.'”
(Continue)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário