Dearborn mayor slams Israel for 'genocide' in address to Arab American convention

Speaking at a national convention of Arab Americans, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud ripped into Israel for promoting what he called "apartheid" and "genocide," saying that many in his city have lived experiences of being oppressed by the country's military forces.

Hammoud, who leads the city with the highest percentage of Arab Americans, linked the struggle for economic and environmental justice in the U.S. to the fight for Palestinians in an address on the first full day of ArabCon, the annual convention of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the largest Arab American civil rights group. It was one of Hammoud's more intense speeches delivered over the past year.

"In Dearborn, our values and our morals are universal, where we care about the policy fueling the genocide in Gaza as much as we care about bringing forward universal health care, where we care about Lebanon as much as we care about ensuring a green future for our children and our grandchildren, where we care about what's unfolding in Yemen as much as we care about centering worker and union rights," Hammoud said Friday morning in the Lincoln Ballroom in the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center, the city's civic center. "That is Dearborn, where our values and our morals are universal."

Hammoud spoke about how many Arab Americans in Dearborn, or their family members, have dealt with living under Israeli occupation or faced strikes by Israeli military forces. Israel has been in increased conflict with Palestinians, Lebanon and Yemen since Hamas' attack on Oct. 7.

"When people ask, 'Why? Why do we care in this regard? Why do we care so much?,' the answer is simple: because for the residents of this city, we never have to we never have to wonder what it is like to live under occupation or apartheid ... we bear the scars, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually," he said.

Hammoud has ancestral roots in southern Lebanon, which has been in battles with Israel for decades, including over the past year. The 34-year-old leader took office in 2022, the first mayor of Arab descent in the city's history. His remarks reflect a movement among some on the left to incorporate justice for Palestinians with other social movements.

"We know what it is like to have IDF (Israel Defense Forces) boots stomped on our faces," Hammoud said. "We know what it's like to have to have pull our grandmothers from under the rubble of apartment buildings bombed by IDF fighter jets. We know what it is like. And we still have the booklets in which IDF soldiers had to stamp granting us the freedom to move about freely in our own ancestral villages. Dearborn never wonders what it is like overseas, because for many of us, we were able to escape those realities, and now we watch in horror and direct conversation and communication with our family and friends overseas as they suffer each and every single day. This is why this community is still strongly united in the pursuit of justice, be it locally or globally. This is why in Dearborn, as we have shown the world most recently, this is where the place where community comes first and where the people have the gall and the backbone to say: people over party, and damn it, people over president."

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Hammoud is a Democrat, but has not endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he met with last month. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee, spoke Thursday night at a reception for the convention at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, where Hammoud spoke. Stein also spoke at a rally in Detroit Wednesday and met in Dearborn with a Muslim group. Cornel West, another presidential candidate, is expected to speak at the convention, which continues until Sunday with various panels and other events that include scholars, activists and politicians. A survey released on July 29 of ADC's members showed that 45% of them support Stein, 27.5% support Harris, 18% are undecided and 2% support Trump.

Hammoud did not tell the crowd who to vote for, but urged people to register and cast ballots. He also called for respecting differences of opinion at the convention.

"We have to be certain that regardless of how we vote, we must be certain that we do advocate for the vote," Hammoud said. "We have a responsibility, not only upon ourselves, but upon our families, upon this country, to ensure that we register our votes and make sure that those voices are heard."

Hammoud did not mention Harris or Trump during his remarks, but he did appear to criticize Trump for using the word "Palestinian" as a slur during his speeches in recent months. Trump has often accused U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, who is Jewish, of acting like a Palestinian.

"At this convention in this city, we know that when someone says, quote, 'you're like a Palestinian', we know that it's not a slur, rather it's an indication of your resilience," Hammoud said.

Abed Ayoub, a Dearborn native and attorney who's the national executive director of ADC, also addressed the crowd.

"We know this is happening with the backdrop of an ongoing genocide and an election," Ayoub said. "And we as an American community, want our voice heard. And we're at a critical moment where ... you have two parties that are not really doing all they can to stop the genocide. ... So the decisions need to be made, the conversations need to be had, and the organizing needs to be done. How do we move forward? What is our role when it comes to elections? What's our role after November? How do we mobilize? How do we strategize, and how do we continue to come together? And we're not going to agree on every single issue throughout the weekend. There's going to be some disagreements, but ... we all have the same goal ... an end to the genocide and the empowerment of our community."

Jewish and pro-Israel groups have criticized using words like "genocide" and "apartheid" to describe Israel's actions. The largest Jewish civil rights group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has said that "genocide is a legal term, and in no way do Israeli policies and actions meet this legal threshold.  Rather, the sensationalist use of the term genocide in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only inaccurate and misleading, but it serves to demonize the State of Israel and to diminish recognized acts of genocide."

Hammoud and Ayoub said they're hoping the ADC will hold their convention in Dearborn again next year. In previous years, ADC has held its annual conventions in Washington D.C. or nearby suburbs.

Also speaking Friday morning was Prof. Khaled Beydoun, a metro Detroit native who teaches law at Arizona State University with a wide following on social media sites. He criticized both conservatives and liberals, warning that Democrats are also often hostile to Palestinians. Beydoun criticized Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for charging 11 pro-Palestinian protesters, echoing the views of U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, and other Arab Americans. Nessel is seen as a "progressive elected Democrat," but her charges are a type of "fascism," Beydoun said.

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The convention is being held less than two months before a presidential election in which Michigan, which has the highest percentage of Middle Eastern residents among all states, is seen as a swing state.

Prof. Rabab Abdulhadi, founding director/senior scholar of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program at San Francisco State University who was previously the founding director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said she has been active in Arab American organizing since the 1980s, recalling her support of the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis in the 1980s.

She and other speakers expressed optimism that there will be progress in coming years as more politicians support Palestinians.

Contact Niraj Warikoo:[email protected] or X @nwarikoo

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dearborn mayor alleges Israel promotes genocide, apartheid at ArabCon