DEARBORN, Mich. – The mayor of Dearborn, a city with the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the U.S., issued a statement calling out the Biden administration and other federal and state lawmakers after a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds of Palestinians on Tuesday.
Abdullah Hammoud, elected as Dearborn’s first Arab American mayor in 2021, said his “constituents are watching in shock and horror as our federal and statewide leaders remain silently complicit in some of the most horrific war crimes our eyes have witnessed, funded by our tax dollars. Emboldened by a green light from the Biden administration, the Israeli military has decimated Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza.”
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---> What we know about the deadly blast at a Gaza City hospital
Hammoud continued: “The leaders of our government, both Republican and Democrat alike, have yet to find the courage to condemn the Israeli government’s deliberate starvation of 2 million Palestinians, cutting off of water, and killing of journalists documenting atrocities.
So many in our Dearborn community carry the scars of war in our memories and our bodies. Countless community members, including members of my own family, know the horrors of Israeli military brutality firsthand, and watching that brutality unfold has revived traumas that never left. Still, nothing could have prepared us for the complete erasure of our voices and radio silence from those whom we elected to protect and represent us.
Our family members trapped in Gaza have been ignored, our calls for a ceasefire drowned out by the drums of war and racist media coverage that dismisses the massacre of entire Palestinian families as collateral damage. In Michigan, every one of our Federal and statewide officials must immediately call for a ceasefire to save lives, and they must demand justice for the Palestinian people. Failure to do so will never be forgotten.”
The Hamas militant group blamed the blast on an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli military blamed a rocket misfired by members of another Palestinian militant group.
President Joe Biden was in Israel on an urgent mission to keep the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a broader regional conflict and to encourage the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.
The war that began Oct. 7 has become the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday that 3,478 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,000 injured in the past 11 days.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, and at least 199 others, including children, were captured by Hamas and taken into Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.