Dr. Tamer Almassri, the Palestinian ambassador to Zimbabwe, has praised Zimbabwe for their morally righteous stand of sympathy with the Palestinian people during the just concluded Olympic games.
This is due to the fact that athletes competing in the Olympics did not engage in athletic competitions that required them to connect with Israeli competitors or have formal bilateral meetings with the Israeli team.
Ambassador Almassri stated, “The state of Palestine welcomes this gesture especially at a time apartheid Israel is committing genocide in Gaza which has killed 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.”
In other news, Standing outside his local mosque in suburban Chicago, Robhi Gharallah said Israel’s war in Gaza is on everyone’s mind in his neighbourhood.
“We’re praying. We’re protesting. We’re raising funds. We’re doing all we can for Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera after Friday prayer.
But Gharallah said there is one action he and his neighbours are uncertain about — and that is how to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
Gharallah lives in Bridgeview, Illinois, an area informally known as Chicago’s Little Palestine. It sits in Cook County, home to an estimated 22,518 Palestinian Americans — one of the largest Palestinian communities in the United States.
Sporting a cap with the colours of the Palestinian flag — red, white, green and black — Gharallah underscored that the Palestinian diaspora is a prominent presence in Chicago’s cultural and business sectors.
But he said Palestinian Americans are facing a dilemma in the next election, with both the Republican candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris showing staunch support for Israel.
“There is no good in Ammar nor Amira,” Gharallah said, using male and female names in Arabic to represent Trump and Harris.
“We are American citizens, and we want to vote, but we don’t know for whom. Whether you vote for this one or this one, it’s 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.
