The attempted massacre at a Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., on March 12, did not come out of nowhere. Months before a truck slammed into Temple Israel in what the Federal Bureau of Investigation called a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” a local pastor had warned that the political leadership in nearby Dearborn had normalized rhetoric that glorified violence against Israel.
Instead of taking the warning seriously, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud, who has ignored a request for comment, publicly attacked the pastor and told him that he was not welcome in the city.
During the meeting, Barham quoted Siblani declaring that Arabs would help Palestinians achieve victory “whether we are in Michigan or whether we are in Jenin,” adding that some would fight “with stones,” others “with guns,” “drones” or “rockets.”
Instead of addressing the concern, Hammoud, 35, lashed out.
Calling Barham “a bigot,” “a racist” and “an Islamophobe,” the mayor told him: “I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here. And the day you move out of the city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city because you are not somebody who believes in coexistence.”
The outburst drew criticism from residents who, at the Sept. 23 meeting of the Dearborn City Council, warned that the mayor’s rhetoric could encourage hostility against Barham and silence debate about extremism in the city. At one point during this meeting, an attendee asked city leaders to denounce Hamas and Hezbollah. The city councilors and the mayor said nothing in response.
Barham’s concerns were not theoretical. The publisher whom city leaders chose to honor had a long record of inflammatory rhetoric about Israel and the United States. Siblani once declared that if authorities prosecuted supporters of Hezbollah, “they better bring a fleet of buses” because he would willingly go to jail. He defended Hezbollah’s television network, Al-Manar, against U.S. terrorism designations, criticized American leaders for defending British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie after Iran’s rulers called for his murder, praised Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and joked about sending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “back to Poland.”
In late September, Siblani escalated further in a speech in Dearborn in which he denounced “treacherous, criminal Zionist Israelis,” blamed Israel for violence across the Middle East and called for “a return to resisting them by all means of resistance.”
The controversy unfolded amid other warning signs in the region. In November, Hammoud joked during a podcast interview that a humorous response to an article in The Wall Street Journal designating Dearborn as “America’s Jihad Capital” would be to film residents introducing themselves by saying, “Hi, my name is Jihad” and declaring “We are Jihad.”
The comment surfaced just days before the FBI arrested two Dearborn residents accused of plotting an ISIS-inspired attack on LGBTQ bars in nearby Ferndale. According to the FBI complaint, the suspects had stockpiled weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition and had conducted reconnaissance on potential targets.
Then came the attack Barham feared might happen.
On March 12, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a Lebanese-born U.S. citizen from Dearborn Heights, rammed a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield. He reportedly waited in the synagogue parking lot for more than two hours before driving into the building and down a hallway, where security guards exchanged gunfire with him. His vehicle, packed with fireworks and containers of flammable liquid, caught fire during the confrontation. Ghazali died at the scene after shooting himself in the head, providing a metaphorical lens for the self-destructive impulse of Arab and Muslim Jew-hatred that is all too prevalent in places like Gaza—and Dearborn.
A security guard was injured, dozens of responding officers were treated for smoke inhalation, and 140 young children attending school in the building escaped unharmed thanks to security training and rapid response.
CBS News noted that Ghazali, 41, had reportedly lost two brothers in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon roughly 10 days earlier. As it turns out, the brothers were members of a Hezbollah rocket unit.
For Barham, the attack confirmed the danger he had warned about months earlier.
“What did you expect?” he said in a video posted on Facebook the day after Ghazali’s attack. Speaking at the intersection in Wayne County named after Siblani, Barham urged Dearborn residents to reject rhetoric glorifying violent movements in the Middle East. “People in Dearborn, please cut ties with Hezbollah and cut ties with Iran and cut ties with this type of thinking that encourages violence and glorifies violence,” he said.
This is exactly the type of message that Hammoud should have been offering all along.
Barham is not alone in his concerns over the rhetoric coming out of Dearborn. Tim Orr, a research associate with the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture’s Congregations and Polarization Project at Indiana University, warned that “intense anti-Israel rhetoric can contribute to hostility toward Jews when it moves beyond criticizing particular Israeli policies and instead questions the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself.” When Israel is portrayed as uniquely illegitimate, Orr stated that “the line between political critique and hostility toward Jews can start to blur.” This describes Siblani’s rhetoric to a “T.”
A.J. Nolte, associate professor of government and director of the Israel Institute at Regent University, said the surge in hostility toward Jews since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, reflects rhetoric circulating across multiple ideological movements. “I think it’s undeniable that the post-10-7 rhetoric we’ve seen from woke left, alt-right and Islamic supremacist sources has contributed to social hostility and outright violence against Jewish communities across America,” he said.
This brings us back to when Barham offered his first warning about lionizing Siblani back in September. When Barham raised concerns about honoring a Siblani, a Shia Muslim who praised Hezbollah and encouraged “resistance,” Dearborn’s mayor could have responded, recognized the problem and condemned terrorist groups. He could have acknowledged the danger of rhetoric glorifying violence. He could have apologized for his outburst and set an example of good governance for other Muslims to follow in the West.
Instead, Hammoud doubled down, protected his crony Siblani from accountability and contributed to chaos in the city he governs.
