On an afternoon this week in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge, Zein Rimawi sat alone in the back of a community center he established for the neighborhood’s Palestinian community. As the board chair of the Arab American Federation and founder of several local institutions, Rimawi has a reputation in the area.
His desk is decorated with a tissue box covered with a knitted Palestinian flag, a bejeweled camel, and a journal with the landscape of Jerusalem on the cover. Behind him is a framed Quranic verse about refuge called “Surah Al-Falaq”.
The sprawling Arabic translates to: “I seek refuge with the Lord of the daybreak / From the evil of that which He created / And from the evil of darkness when it is intense / And from the evil of those who practice secret arts / And from the evil of the envier when he envies.”
Hanging on the door of the building’s exterior is a red and green poster that reads “Gaza”, identical to several others on the same block.
A local resident walks in to pick up a check and tells Rimawi she can’t stop thinking about “everything that’s going on”.
“How do you support the occupier? We are fighting the occupier. Russia and Israel are the same – they’re the occupier,” Rimawi said.
It’s all anyone here can talk about, it seems.
The two spoke about the violence unleashed on the Gaza strip by Israel after Hamas’s attack on 7 October that killed more than 1,400 people. The shockwaves from the Israeli government’s retaliation, which has killed more than 3,000 Palestinians, were felt throughout the world – in Bay Ridge, especially.
“This area – we call it ‘Mecca’ because most of it is Muslims and Arabs,” Rimawi said.
The previous day, a vigil was held for six year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Palestinian American boy who was killed in his Illinois home after being stabbed 27 times in an alleged hate crime.
Rimawi said Al-Fayoume and his mother, who was also stabbed but survived, “paid the price” for the current climate of rising Islamophobia that he felt was reminiscent of the years immediately following the 9/11 September attacks more than 20 years ago.
Many, including Rimawi, expressed huge anger and upset over a strike on the Al-Ahli hospital, which left hundreds dead, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Conflicting narratives of whether Israel or a Hamas rocket misfire was to blame added to the community’s frustrations about how news media have covered events in the conflict so far.
Across the street is the Bay Ridge Islamic Center, which Rimawi also co-founded. Police patrolled the sidewalk outside the mosque after Rimawi requested security from the New York police department out of concern for hate crimes directed at Muslims and Arabs in the area.
Several people in and around the center declined to be interviewed. Mahmoud Kasem, 36, who runs the Al-Aqsa Bakery and Restaurant has family in Gaza. He told the barrage of press coming in and out of his restaurant: “If I’m fighting for something wrong, I will be the first person to close my store and take all these flags down, but there are rights. There’s human beings [who] want to live,” he said.
Bay Ridge is a mixed neighborhood, still predominantly Italian and Irish, but in recent decades it has attracted an influx of Muslims, especially Palestinians, and about 11% of its residents are now of Arab descent. Its streets sport Arabic shops and restaurants that have made it something of a destination for foodie New Yorkers – as well as being a more affordable place to live for people pushed out of high rent areas closer to Manhattan.
At Balady, a popular Arab grocery store further down on 72nd St and 5th Ave, Essa Massoud was vocal about what he believes is US and western media’s warped coverage of events.
“It’s one-sided. Narrow-minded,” Massoud, 44, said. “We understand that each media platform has their own interests, investments. But on a large scale situation like this, which is affecting the world and actual innocent civilians are dying, you would expect maybe some type of conscious behavior on behalf of the media.”
Joe Biden’s “rock-solid and unwavering” support for Israel has left a bad taste in Massoud’s mouth and the most recent crisis in Gaza has left him jaded with US politics.
“Besides [Biden] supporting Israel to the extent of just kind of writing a blank check no matter what, I’m not going to vote for him because he’s not fit to be a president,” he said.
Speculating about Biden’s chances for a second presidential term in light of his response to the crisis, Massoud said he’d sooner vote for Trump. It didn’t matter who gets the vote when it comes to support for Palestine because the US would never go against Israel, he said.
“I know [Trump] has done things that are not favored among Muslims. But what US president hasn’t? We have to pick and choose qualities and I think Trump is more fit,” he said. “What candidate will say ‘I will not support Israel?’ I haven’t heard it.”
Later that evening, several streets in an entirely different part of the city were packed with protesters demanding a Palestine free from Israeli occupation.
Among the crowd was Esraa Elzin, 29, a Bay Ridge resident who traveled roughly an hour and a half to a demonstration in Astoria, Queens, that packed several blocks. Though not Palestinian herself, she said she felt she had to show up.
“The only connection I have to Palestine is my friends and that alone is enough for me to want to come out and support them,” Elzin said. “And it’s also our fight because we’re all Muslims at the end of the day.”
Dozens of police officers enforced metal barricades that prevented protesters from spilling from the sidewalks onto the streets and helicopters swarmed overhead. News crew vans and cameras lined up in front of Al-Iman Mosque, the towering pink building that served as the center of the event.
Elzin called the news coverage she’s seen of the region “hypocritical” and credited social media for providing a fuller picture.
She said: “What brings me out is all the videos I’ve been seeing on the internet, all the injustice that I’ve been seeing, how quiet our government has been, and how quiet our media has been.”
Elzin said she planned to attend a similar protest back in Bay Ridge on Saturday.
“I’m just hopeful that people are finally starting to see the actual truth.”
