Bridgeview, Illinois – Speaking outside his local mosque in a Chicago suburb, Robhi Gharallah said Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip was on everyone’s lips.
“We pray. We protest. We raise funds. We do everything we can for Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera after Friday prayers.
But Gharallah said there was one area of uncertainty among him and his neighbors: voting in the upcoming presidential election.
Gharallah lives in Bridgeview, Illinois, an area informally known as Chicago’s Little Palestine. It is located in Cook County, which is home to an estimated 22,518 Palestinian Americans – one of the largest Palestinian communities in the United States.
Wearing a cap in the colors of the Palestinian flag – red, white, green and black – Gharallah emphasized that the Palestinian diaspora is strongly represented in Chicago’s cultural and business sectors.
However, he said Palestinian Americans face a dilemma in the next election, with both Republican candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris showing their staunch support for Israel.
“There is nothing good about Ammar and Amira,” Gharallah said, using Arabic male and female names for Trump and Harris.
“We are American citizens and we want to vote, but we don’t know who to vote for. Whether you vote for this person or that person is the same thing. And if you don’t vote, it’s like you don’t exist (politically).”
Bridgeview was in the national spotlight this month as the Democratic National Convention arrived in Chicago.
Just a day before Gharallah spoke to Al Jazeera, Harris appeared on stage at the United Center in Chicago – just 15 miles from Bridgeview – to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.
In her acceptance speech, she promised to continue arming Israel.
For Palestinians in the Chicago area, who face devastating war in their homeland, the convention was an opportunity to draw attention to their cause.
But residents and community leaders told Al Jazeera that the incident was also a bitter reminder that Palestinian identity continues to be demonized and politically marginalized, including by Democrats who supposedly value inclusiveness.
They pointed to the Harris campaign’s refusal to send a Palestinian-American speaker to the convention’s main stage, an exclusion they said was an additional slap in the face given the size of Chicago’s Palestinian community.
“Not normal”
Jinan Chehade, 26, denounced “the moral apathy and detachment from reality” she witnessed as Democrats gathered to celebrate Harris while US bombs fell on Palestinian civilians.
“That is why it is so important for us to bring people together and remind them that this is not normal, that we will not be ignored or drowned out,” Chehade told Al Jazeera as she sat in front of a mural depicting the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem at a cafe in Bridgeview.
In Bridgeview, a town of 17,000, Palestinian symbols are almost always visible.
The cafe featured several paintings related to the war, including depictions of Palestinian victims such as Hind Rajab, the six-year-old girl who was trapped in her family’s car and shot down by Israeli tank fire before rescue workers could reach her.
At the reception desk, a map of historical Palestine drawn with coffee beans was placed above the word “Palestine” written in Arabic.
Chehade, a lawyer and protest organizer, said that while Palestinians in the Chicago area have always had a strong sense of identity, the community has experienced a “transformation” over the past 10 months and pro-Palestinian activism has reached new heights.
“The first thing you know about Palestinians is that they are Palestinians, especially here because everyone is very proud to represent Little Palestine,” she told Al Jazeera.
Little Palestine
Like many suburbs in the United States, Bridgeview is characterized by sprawling urban areas: low-rise buildings and rows of shops connected and separated by multi-lane roads.
But in the Little Palestine neighborhood of Bridgeview, many businesses – restaurants, cafes, barbershops, jewelers and fashion boutiques – are recognizable by Arabic signs and Palestinian flags in their windows.
During the Democratic National Convention, posters advertising the protests in front of the United Center were visible in some store windows.
“We will not give up,” reads a mural above a shop selling hijabs and abayas, next to a bakery that raised funds for Gaza by selling “Free Palestine” badges.
An electronic billboard in front of a barbecue area displayed several slides: one called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, another showed a Palestinian flag between job advertisements.
Motorists in particular display their Palestinian identity in their vehicles with flags, keffiyeh headrest covers, watermelon air fresheners and bumper stickers calling for an end to the occupation of Palestine.
For many of the residents who spoke to Al Jazeera, being Palestinian is not just about the keffiyeh and the goods.
They explained that this is an inherently political situation that requires them to constantly humanize and highlight the plight of Palestinians under occupation and bombardment in the Middle East.
Sereen Atieh, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American immigrant, said that although she feels at home in Little Palestine, she has struggled with deep grief since the Gaza war began.
So she devoted herself to activism on her college campus.
“All I can think about is my brothers and sisters in Palestine being killed,” Atieh, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, told Al Jazeera at a protest rally outside the Democratic National Convention.
“I have tried to do everything I can to make people understand that this is not just a conflict, but a genocide in which Israel is trying to eliminate Palestinian identity.”
“They want to live”
In Bridgeview, Mohammad Numan, who works in digital media and advertising, said people in the community were doing everything in their power to support their brothers in Palestine.
“These are people. They have dreams. They want to live. That’s why we are with them until the last moment,” Numan told Al Jazeera.
When asked about Harris’ support for Israel, Numan said Palestinian Americans would not support a politician who did not support Palestinian human rights.
“We are a strong community. We stand together every step of the way,” he told Al Jazeera.
Several others vowed not to vote for Harris, but Illinois remains a solidly Democratic state. That means the Palestinian diaspora in Chicago does not have the same influence on the election as their fellow Arab Americans in Michigan, a key swing state where even a small minority of voters can determine the outcome of the election.
But what they lack in influence in swing states, Chicago’s Palestinian Americans make up for in engagement and activism. Since the war began, locals have led weekly protests for Gaza and organized demonstrations on each day of the convention.
The Palestinian American community, while concentrated in Bridgeview, has a strong presence throughout the greater Chicago area. Chicago is home to leading Palestinian human rights organizations, including American Muslims for Palestine, the US Palestinian Community Network, and Palestine Legal.
Chicago is cosmopolitan and liberal, but the city has not been spared the hatred and violence that Palestinian Americans – and Arabs and Muslims more broadly – have experienced since the outbreak of the war.
In October, six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume was stabbed 26 times in an alleged hate crime in the Chicago area. The alleged perpetrator, a neighbor, shouted, “You Muslims must die” as he attacked Al-Fayoume, according to the boy’s mother.
His funeral took place at the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview.
Nouha Boundaoui, a 32-year-old local activist of Algerian descent, said she was afraid during the first weeks of the war, especially because she is a Muslim woman who wears a headscarf in public.
“I can’t speak for the whole community, but personally I think it has made me feel safer to be part of the protests, to organize them and to see how many people have been activated over the last 10 months,” she told Al Jazeera.
Other communities have expressed solidarity with Palestinian Americans in Chicago. Nader Ihmoud, editor in chief of Chicago-based Palestine in America, said Israeli atrocities in Gaza have led more Americans to show sympathy for the Palestinians and become more educated on the issue.
But despite the increasing political rhetoric ahead of the election, a sense of fear remains high in Chicago. Ihmoud says the city’s reputation as home to the Palestinian diaspora leaves it vulnerable to violence.
“The freaks come out at night,” Ihmoud told Al Jazeera. “And right now, for the next few months, I see them as political darkness.”
