Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, has a problem. The anti-Israel hostility that he and his allies have broadcast for years now foments violence against American Jews. Hammoud now tries to put the genie back into the bottle, taking to social media to condemn yesterday’s Islamist attack on a Jewish kindergarten at a synagogue in nearby West Bloomfield, Michigan.
Yesterday’s attack in West Bloomfield demonstrates that incessant demonization of Israel invariably foments violence against Jews. It needs to stop.
Hours after the failed massacre, attempted by a now-dead resident of Dearborn Heights named Ayman Ghazali, Hammoud took to X to declare, “There is absolutely no place for violence in our communities or houses of worship. I am praying for the safety of the West Bloomfield Jewish community and all Jewish communities across our state.” Hammoud added that “Dearborn will continue working closely with our houses of worship and law enforcement partners to ensure people of every faith can gather safely and without fear.”
It’s a laughable promise coming from a self-described “girl dad,” “Son of Immigrants,” and “policy nerd” who has falsely accused Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” and has joked about taking the name “Jihad.” Hammoud made the joke in response to an article in the Wall Street Journal that named the city he governs as the “Jihad Capital” of the United States. “The funny idea I had was to go and name everyone ‘Jihad,’” Hammoud told an interviewer. “‘Hi, my name is Jihad.’ And just put that in the video. ‘We are Jihad.’ I thought that would be funny.”
Shortly after the interview, the FBI arrested three Dearborn residents who had allegedly stockpiled weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition and had practiced shooting at gun ranges in preparation for a Halloween attack on LGBTQ bars in nearby Ferndale, Michigan.
Apparently, Ghazali, an immigrant from Lebanon, had similar plans for the children at the synagogue in West Bloomfield. “It looks like Ghazali tried to murder as many people in the synagogue as he possibly could as retribution for Israeli strikes that killed two of his family members in a town in Lebanon,” reports Anthony Deegan, a Dearborn resident who has monitored Islamist and leftist extremism in the city for years.
“This is entirely consistent with the talking points used daily in Dearborn, especially by leadership,” Deegan told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI). “They always mention families being bombed in Lebanon but never mention Hezbollah or Hamas firing rockets that prompted Israeli retaliatory strikes to begin with. The whole city paints Lebanon as innocent victims of Israeli aggression with no mention of Hezbollah.It was only a matter of time before this happened.”
Deegan isn’t exaggerating. Osama Siblani, the publisher of the anti-Israel publication Arab American News who had an intersection named after him—with Hammoud’s blessing—last September, serves as a case in point.
As documented previously in Focus on Western Islamism, Siblani has openly expressed sympathy for Hezbollah’s “resistance,” once declaring that if authorities prosecuted supporters of the group “they better bring a fleet of buses” because he would willingly go to jail.
He has proclaimed that Arabs would lift Palestinians “all the way to victory,” adding that some would fight “with stones,” others “with guns,” “drones,” or “rockets.” He has defended Hezbollah’s television network Al-Manar against U.S. terrorism designations, repeated anti-American narratives about U.S. policy in Syria, and criticized American leaders for defending freedom of expression when novelist after Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini called for Salman Rushdie’s murder. Siblani has also praised Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and joked about sending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “back to Poland.”
Taken together, these statements reveal a pattern of rhetoric that legitimizes violent “resistance,” vilifies Israel and the United States, and normalizes sympathy for groups responsible for terrorism against civilians.
This pattern was in display when Siblani gave a speech in front of Dearborn’s Henry Ford Centennial Library in September 2025 during which he demonized the Jewish state for the tragic death of a family in Lebanon.
Siblani ranted in Arabic about “treacherous, criminal Zionist Israelis” and accused the country of assassinating a family in Nabatieh. He asserted that “Israeli criminality…is repeated every day in Lebanon” and declared that he would “not be silent” and would “not submit” in opposing what he called Israeli crimes and American support for them. He also stated that “Israeli criminality has existed from 1948 until today.”
While referencing the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war, Siblani claimed that Israel had not “dared to kill even a donkey, mule, sheep or chicken” in Lebanon for years and concluded that “there must be a return to resisting them by all means of resistance.” He also stated that the bloodshed in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen was changing public opinion around the world and suggested that members of the U.S. Congress were “the finest politicians money can buy.”
Compare Siblani’s polemics with his paper’s coverage of yesterday’s attempted massacre. According to Arab American News—the modern-equivalent of Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent, which published the Protocols of the Elders of Ziyon—Ghazali’s coworkers at a local restaurant described Ghazali “as a kind person who never caused trouble.”
“Everyone was shocked,” an anonymous source told the paper.
No, they weren’t, not in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, municipalities that serve as home to numerous Shia mosques where imams regularly demonize Israel. A Shia Muslim from Iraq who spoke with Focus on Western Islamism in September 2025 stated that 90 percent of the 400‒500 people who worship at the Karbala Islamic Education Center support Hezbollah. The imam of this mosque, who previously expressed support for Hezbollah, refused to condemn the organization when given the opportunity.
At ArabCon, an event organized by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, one activist displayed slogans such as “Death to the IDF” and “Boom Boom Tel Aviv,” on his pickup truck parked next to the entrance. Speakers at this convention, held in September 2025 repeatedly accused Israel of genocide and refused to condemn the October 7 massacre carried out by Hamas.
Even the Arab American National Museum, a relatively staid institution supported with funds from Qatar, Chrysler, and General Motors, lionized anti-Israel activists such as Fahed Abu-Akel, the pastor who started the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s long march into anti-Zionist agitation, which culminated in a 2004 vote to single Israel out for boycott, divestment, and sanctions. The museum sells numerous trinkets, such as “Palestine Map Magnets” that indicate hostility toward Israel’s very existence, and $70 hats that valorize Palestinian terrorism.
The upshot is that Dearborn teems with Arab and Muslim hostility toward Israel that makes life unsafe for Jews for miles around. Dearborn’s leaders shamelessly contribute to that hate.
“Anyone who has paid any attention knows full well that the Jewish condition has deteriorated in the United States since October 7,” said Aaron Fruh, an evangelical pastor and founder of Israel Team Advocates, a group that struggles against antisemitism in American society. “Yesterday’s attack in West Bloomfield demonstrates that incessant demonization of Israel invariably foments violence against Jews. It needs to stop.”
