Photos courtesy of The Great Ride of Return MKE

The Great Ride of Return – Milwaukee’s inaugural ride in April 2024 included a stop at the Sunburst statue on Wisconsin Ave.

In early 2024, something popped up in southside Milwaukee resident Eric Kleppe-Montenegro’s social media about the Gaza Sunbirds, a para-cycling team from Gaza, and the global solidarity movement supporting them.

The Gaza Sunbirds, a team of amputee athletes in the Gaza Strip, formed in 2020 to create a pathway for Palestinian athletes with disabilities to participate in sports. Some Sunbirds were able to leave Gaza and represent Palestine on the world stage; others continue to live through Israel’s war on Gaza.

“People in the UK, Ireland and other places organize mass bike rides to show their support, raise the Palestinian flag in the streets, and take it in front of the cycling and sports communities,” Kleppe-Montenegro told the Wisconsin Muslim Journal Wednesday. “I saw the strength and perseverance and spirit of the Gaza Sunbirds. They are cyclists like me but had a leg blown off and continued cycling. I was really moved.”

He reached out to the team and spoke with team manager Karim Ali. “I got the go-ahead to start organizing in Milwaukee. With their permission and recognition, I organized our first ride in April 2024. 

“Over time, we developed a strong coalition of organizations here, including Milwaukee for Palestine, Party for Socialism and Liberation, and others. The community around the bike rides keeps getting bigger, stronger and more organized.” 

In 2025, Great Ride of Return – Milwaukee initiated its Milwaukee-to-Madison long-distance ride. Its second Milwaukee-to-Madison ride takes place Saturday, Oct. 17.

They have organized a dozen rides so far, with 25 to 60 people participating, Kleppe-Montenegro said. On its first Milwaukee-to-Madison ride in 2025, many people participated in sections of the ride; six cyclists completed the full 80 miles.

The Milwaukee chapter of Great Ride of Return hosts two rides in October.

• Big Ride for Palestine, Sunday, Oct. 11

The “slow-roll” solidarity ride, an about 8-kilometer ride designed to include riders of all levels, begins at Urban Park Green Space (near Discovery World) in Milwaukee at 1 p.m. No fee or registration is required. 

• Great Ride of Return, Vol. 2, Saturday, Oct. 17

A long-distance, advanced ride from Milwaukee to Madison for the Gaza Sunbirds, meeting at the Mitchell Park Domes at 10 a.m. No fee. Registration is required. 

Cyclists in both rides and their supporters are asked to contribute to the Gaza Sunbirds. Links for donations and registration for Oct. 17 are available on the Great Ride of Return-MKE Instagram page. Volunteers are also welcome.

An interview with founder of Great Ride of Return-Milwaukee 

WMJ interviewed Eric Kleppe-Montenegro, 35, of Milwaukee, founder of the Milwaukee Chapter of the Great Ride of Return, an international solidarity movement to support the Gaza Sunbirds. Kleppe-Montenegro spoke with us while pushing his son in a stroller for an evening walk. Here are the highlights.

Tell us about yourself.

I’ve been an organizer around issues like immigrant rights and state violence since 2008, when I was in college. I was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Louisville. Palestine was the issue where I got my first experiences in community organizing. I moved to Milwaukee in 2014.

You are not Palestinian. What drew you to the Palestinian cause?

Palestine is the cause of humanity in our lifetime, and even in the generations before us. Now more than ever, to fight for Palestine is to fight for all humanity. A genocide is a crime against all humanity.

Those responsible for this violence are doing it with our tax dollars and with our political institutions. They make us complicit in this violence. Unless we take a bold stance and put our body on the gear, so to speak, we’re responsible for the machine turning and have the blood on our hands as well.

There is also the fact that we’re not in their shoes only by matters of circumstance and geography. When it comes to the military-industrial complex and technological development, they treat Palestine as a testing ground for those weapons which they later may apply across the world, in particular in the Global South. The surveillance techniques they pioneered in Palestine are used right here in the United States. 

Why did you join this international movement?

We decided to turn our informal rides into a formalized chapter of the Great Ride of Return, an international campaign to support the Gaza Sunbirds. That allows us to better coordinate and be more impactful. It’s not just a protest for the sake of being seen. We want to make a bigger, bolder, more serious impact. That’s why we integrated into the global movement and started organizing under that banner.

You may recognize the reference to “The Great March of Return.” The co-founder and captain of the Gaza Sunbirds, Alaa Al-Dali, lost his leg after being shot by an Israeli sniper during the Great March of Return protests in 2018.

[The Great March of Return was a series of mass demonstrations held by Palestinians along the Gaza-Israeli border from March 30, 2018, to Dec. 27, 2019, to demand that Palestinian refugees and their descendants be allowed to return to their ancestral lands and home they were displaced from in 1948. They also protested the land, air and sea blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt in June 2007. It continues to this day.]

Two Sunbirds have lost their lives in recent Israeli military attacks in Gaza, Ahmed al-Dali  and Saed Qadoum.

Eric Kleppe-Montenegro pumps his fist during a September 2025 ride on Milwaukee’s North Side.

What goals do you have for the rides?

It’s multifaceted. We want to make an ideological change and also a material change. The Gaza Sunbirds represent Palestine on the international sporting stage. They represent Team Palestine in competitions of the International Cycling Federation (UCI). They represent Team Palestine at the Paralympics, like right now at the Asian Olympics. And, in 2028, they’ll be here in the United States at the Olympics in Los Angeles. 

It is very contested. Some people want to deny the very existence of Palestine. So, when the Palestinian flag is up at the Olympics, it shows that Palestine will not be erased, despite the genocide. It’s another political front where they struggle to maintain their presence. 

On the material side, fundraising supports the Gaza Sunbirds themselves and their aid operations in Gaza, where they prepare and distribute food, hold film screenings for children in the camps and other activities you can see on their Instagram.

We did a local fundraiser that goes directly to the international organization earlier this year. We raised 1,132 British pounds (about $1,500), most of it at film screenings at the Cactus Club and an iftar in collaboration with Milwaukee for Palestine.

What impacts have surprised you?

There have been a lot of cool, unintended consequences, like promoting cycling as a whole. We’re pulling people from Milwaukee’s social justice communities, which means a lot more people are getting their bikes out for the first time in a long time or they’re renting Bubbler bikes or they’re buying a new bike. So, we are promoting cycling.

We’re also putting Palestine on the table in the cycling community, which often likes to act apolitical, unless it’s about funding trails or bike lanes or traffic laws. We are showing them it is ok to be political. Sometimes we get a little pushback, saying, ‘This is divisive.’ Well, I don’t think standing against genocide and crimes against humanity is divisive at all. 

“This is a cycling-centric event supporting a para-cycling team. If they were in the United States, no one would call it political. These cyclists are just like us. They deserve the right to live first and foremost. They deserve the right to freedom of movement like we enjoy. They deserve to have roads and bikes. They deserve the same human rights as us. There is nothing controversial about that.”

Six cyclists completed the 2025 Milwaukee-to-Madison Great Ride of Return, supporting the Gaza Sunbirds, a team of paracyclists from Gaza.

Palestinian children attend classes at tent school in Rafah, April 30, 2024. (Photo: Ahmed Ibrahim/APA Images)

When I left Gaza in 2024, after six months of living through genocide, I wanted one thing above all else: to spare my only child a life spent permanently at war. I did not want him to grow up believing that the whole world looked like Gaza.

But I left more than fifteen nieces and nephews behind. Many were still too young to understand the world they had been born into. They were learning what a home was, what a school was, what it meant to be alive, at the very moment those things were being destroyed around them.

I spent the next year and a half in Cairo. It took me a long time to learn how to inhabit ordinary life again. Whenever I saw a garden, a playground, a school, or children playing freely and safely in the street, I could not simply enjoy the sight. Gaza was always there, beneath it.

Children amid displacement tents in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, March 11, 2026. (Photo: Ramzi Abu Amer/APA Images)

The change reaches older children, too. My nieces, Amira and Heba, respectively 12 and 10, remember life before. Yet I can hear their expectations for ordinary life shrinking.

They no longer ask for much from a school. They hope it might be something more than tents pressed against one another: perhaps a wooden structure with a roof of corrugated steel sheets.

During one call with my brother, Amira sat beside him as we discussed my son starting school.

“Are your schools tents, or are they wooden?” she asked. Those were the possibilities she offered me. I asked what she liked about her own school.

“We leave our cramped tent and go to a bigger one,” she said. “We can play more freely. There is a little space where we can play.”

Her answer stayed with me. Even that small difference — being able to move from one cramped space to another slightly less cramped one — mattered.

Then I asked what she wished her school could have.

“The school is very hot in summer, and in winter the rain gets in,” she told me. “I wish there were a fan in summer and a heater in winter.”

She did not ask to return to a school like the one she had attended before the genocide. She asked for something that might make the tent more bearable.

I cannot know what she has forgotten, or what she has pushed aside because remembering it hurts. But I can hear what has disappeared from the wishes she shares with me.

The genocide has reached into children’s sense of what is possible. The tent remains, and the dream becomes to make it cooler. The rain comes through; the dream is for it to be a little warmer.

What frightens me is how familiar these conditions have become. Children have learned to move through them, to make room for play wherever they can, to ask for improvements within them. Their ability to adapt helps them get through the day. It also reveals the depth of what they have been forced to endure.

A child should not have to learn to dream in terms of a tent.

Displaced Palestinian children play on the first day of Eid al-Adha among tents and destroyed buildings, Khan Younis, May 27, 2026. (Photo: Tariq Mohammad/APA Images)

Three years without a toy

Arwa Jundiya, 23, has given birth to two daughters during the genocide. One is three years old. The other is one.

Her older daughter is growing up without knowing what it means to live in a house. She has never known the family home that shaped the childhoods of so many of us in Gaza: grandparents, parents, uncles, and their families living on different floors of the same building, sharing their days across one extended household.

Jundiya speaks of that life as something no longer available to her children. “The house was more than a shelter — it held the people among whom a child grew up.”

But there is another deprivation she returns to, something so small that its absence becomes almost impossible to comprehend. “My three-year-old daughter has never held a toy,” she said.

Poverty leaves little room for such purchases, Jundiya explains. “Toys are no longer readily available for parents to buy,” she explained. “My husband spends most of his time trying to secure food for them. The work of keeping them fed consumes what might once have gone toward making them happy.”

Jundiya tells me that her children spend their days lying inside the tent, with little to do and nowhere to go. There are precious few ways of breaking the monotony, and the stones and sand beside the tent are the only things they have to play with.

“Maybe in five years, my children will ask me about their lives,” she says. “I don’t know what I will tell them. I don’t know whether I will say that the whole world is like Gaza, or that Gaza is the only place where children face this fate.”

Palestinian children play volleyball on a court set up among the ruins of buildings destroyed in the war in Gaza City on September 16, 2026. (Photo: Bilal Osama/APA Images)

Her question returns me to the fear that made me leave.

Her children have little connection to the world outside. There is no internet available to them, no television inside the tent. They cannot see the places their mother might compare their lives to. Gaza is the world they know.

I think of my son, and of the life I wanted him to discover beyond war. Then I think of the children I left behind: Elaf falling asleep to bombs, Muhammad trying to fit my sofa inside a tent, Amira wishing for a fan, Arwa’s daughter reaching the age of three without ever holding a toy.

These are some of the ways the genocide continues inside childhood. It takes away the places where children live and learn, then narrows their understanding of what a home or a school can be. It deprives them of ordinary pleasures until those pleasures become things they have never known to ask for.

But the children are still curious. They still want to play. They still ask questions about the world. Yet the world they have been given offers them tents, hunger, and rubble as answers.

When Muhammad asked how my tent could fit a sofa, I heard a child trying to make sense of what he could see. I also heard how far we had allowed his expectations to fall.

There is a tremendous amount of information available to the person who knows how to be quiet.

Sometimes, if you remain silent long enough, a person will tell you everything you never even thought to ask.

They will tell you what they value.

They will tell you what they fear.

They will tell you how they treat people.

They will tell you what they think about their friends when those friends are absent.

They may reveal their prejudices, insecurities, ambitions, loyalties, grudges, and weaknesses.

You did not interrogate them.

You simply listened.

There is something about silence that makes some people uncomfortable. They rush to fill it. And once they become intoxicated by the sound of their own voice, they may begin saying things they never intended to reveal.

The Muslim should understand the value of listening, and avoiding the pitfalls of talking too much.

Allah says in the Noble Qur’an:

“Those who listen to the Word and follow the best thereof… those are (the ones) whom Allah has guided and those are men of understanding.” Surah Az-Zumar 39:18 

There is an important sequence here.

They listen.

They consider what they have heard.

Then they follow what is best.

Listening is not intellectual weakness. Sometimes it is evidence of intellectual maturity.

You Cannot Learn While You Are Performing.  There is another danger in constantly needing to speak.  Eventually, we can begin believing that we are the smartest person in every room.  We become accustomed to explaining.

Correcting.

Teaching.

Interrupting.

Giving our opinion.

Having the final word.

And slowly, without realizing it, conversation stops becoming an exchange of knowledge and becomes a performance.

But wisdom should make us desire something different.  At a minimum, we should want to be surrounded by peers with whom we can exchange beneficial information.  Even better, we should deliberately seek the company of people who exceed us in knowledge, experience, wisdom, and understanding.

Because then we can grow.

There is no shame in entering a room and discovering that someone knows more than you.

That is an opportunity.

The problem is entering that room and talking so much that you leave knowing exactly what you knew when you entered.

If you are always talking, how are you consuming information?

If you are always the loudest person in the room, how can you hear and absorb the world around you?

Knowledge Requires Humility.  The Islamic tradition was not built by people who believed becoming knowledgeable meant they no longer needed teachers.  Scholars traveled enormous distances to sit with other scholars.

A person knowledgeable in one field sought someone stronger in another.

Students listened.

Questions were asked.

Answers were considered.

Knowledge was transmitted because someone understood that there was something another person possessed that they did not.

That requires humility.

Perhaps one of the most dangerous consequences of excessive talking, therefore, is not merely that we might say something wrong.  It is that excessive speech can convince us that we already know enough.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

“Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day should speak good or remain silent.” Sahih al-Bukhari 6018; Sahih Muslim 47

This does not mean that speech itself is undesirable.

Good speech is beneficial.  Teaching is beneficial.  Giving sincere advice is beneficial.  Asking questions is beneficial.  Defending truth is beneficial.

The issue is developing the belief that everything occurring inside our minds deserves an audience.  It does not.

Allah reminds us:

“Not a word does he (or she) utter, but there is a watcher by him ready (to record it).” Surah Qaf 50:18 

That alone should make the believer more deliberate.

Silence Also Reveals Character.  There is another benefit to listening that is rarely discussed.

People reveal themselves when you give them room to speak.

You may discover someone’s character by observing how they speak about someone who cannot hear them.

You may learn how trustworthy someone is by noticing how freely they reveal another person’s private affairs.

You may recognize arrogance by listening to how often someone needs to remind others of their accomplishments.

You may discover envy when every mention of another person’s success requires criticism.

And sometimes you will discover goodness.  This is the action

• Someone will praise another person when there is nothing to gain from it.
• Someone will protect an absent Muslim’s honor.
• Someone will admit, “I don’t know.”
• Someone will listen carefully before answering.
• Someone will allow another person to finish speaking.
• Silence gives you the opportunity to notice these things.

You do not have to investigate people or hunt for their faults. You simply learn to observe what people voluntarily place before you.

• And while observing others, family or friends – you should be observing yourself.
• Do I listen to understand, or merely wait for my opportunity to respond?
• Can someone teach me something without me immediately trying to demonstrate what I know?
• Can I sit among people more knowledgeable than myself without feeling threatened?
• Can I hear correction without preparing a rebuttal before the person has finished speaking?

Those are questions of humility.

Sometimes the Wisest Person Is Listening

Being quiet does not automatically make someone wise any more than being talkative automatically makes someone foolish.  The issue is knowing when speech is beneficial and when silence is more beneficial.  There will always be times when we should speak.

But we should never become so enamored with our own voices that we forget that Allah gave us ears as well as tongues.

Every conversation does not require our expertise.

Every silence does not need to be filled.

Every opinion does not need to be expressed.

Sometimes there is knowledge sitting across from us.

Sometimes there is wisdom speaking quietly.

Sometimes someone is unintentionally showing us exactly who they are.

And sometimes the greatest obstacle preventing us from receiving any of it is our determination to keep talking.

There are things people will teach you intentionally, and there are things they will teach you without ever realizing they taught you anything.

But you can miss both lessons if you are only waiting for your turn to speak.

So every once in a while, be comfortable not being the loudest person in the room.

Listen.

Observe.

Learn.

To paraphrase:  if you are always talking, when are you learning?

“I belong here,” Salah Sarsour, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, told Americans for Justice in Palestine, who gathered Sept. 22 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

An immigration judge ruled one week ago that Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, is “deportable.” The next day, Mr. Sarsour, a 33-year Milwaukee resident and green card holder, and his attorney Munjed Ahmad participated in a fireside chat at the ISM Community Center, hosted by the ISM and the Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance.

In an exclusive interview with the Wisconsin Muslim Journal yesterday, Sarsour and his oldest son Kareem Sarsour spoke about the emotional rollercoaster the Sarsour family has been on since the morning of March 30, when a dozen Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surrounded Sarsour and whisked him away, first to Chicago and then to an Indiana jail. The father and son said Allah, the Milwaukee community, and people of all backgrounds and faiths who love justice give them hope.

“I’m very lucky to be able to surround myself with beautiful people,” Salah Sarsour told WMJ. “I feel we’re a huge family. I love them all because they represent the best values. They care about the future of the community, supporting justice, and the future of our children and grandchildren.

“I honestly feel very happy and want to thank everyone who stood with me, who wrote (affidavits) for me, who said good things about me, those who stand with justice, who stand with Palestine, who stand with Gaza, who stand with victims all over the world. I really appreciate that.”

Updating the community

More than 100 people packed into a meeting room at the ISM Community Center Wednesday for a “fireside chat” the day after Judge Jayme Salinardi released his decision that Sarsour is deportable on foreign policy grounds, a decision reported in newspapers from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to Al Jazeera, and more. (WMJ provided a detailed explanation of the case from a post-hearing press conference.)

Photo by Sandra Whitehead

Salah Sarsour met with members of the Milwaukee Muslim and Greater Milwaukee communities Sept. 30, the day after an immigration judge ruled he is deportable. His attorneys said they will seek relief from deportation from the immigration court.

Salinardi rejected two of the government’s allegations: that Sarsour lied on his green card application and that Sarsour had falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen in order to vote. His decision that Sarsour is deportable rested solely on a little-used law and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s June 2025 memo that said Sarsour’s presence in the U.S. could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

Many Milwaukee-area Muslims and others from Greater Milwaukee, including peace and justice advocates from Jewish Voice for Peace and other organizations, came to learn what the immigration court decision means for Milwaukee’s Muslim community and where the case goes from here. 

“I want to begin by saying … We stand with him as he stands, uncompromising, for the rights of oppressed people, particularly the Palestinians,” ISM director Othman Atta told the crowd. “Salah continues to advocate every day. Just the other day, there was an advocacy day by the Council on American Islamic Relations in D.C. He went and met with many of our elected representatives because he’s not afraid of the consequences. He’s not afraid to stand up for truth and justice.

“Salah’s fight is our fight. This is not a fight just for Salah Sarsour. This is a fight for anyone who wants to advocate for Palestine or for any justice in this world.”

Photo by Ihsan Atta

More than 100 people filled an ISM Community Center meeting room Sept. 30 to learn what’s next for ISM President Salah Sarsour.

“I am so honored and appreciative that Allah chose me to serve this great community,” Sarsour said. “We should all be proud we belong to this community. We are doing great here by supporting our children, building a future for this community and building bridges with other faiths.” Sarsour thanked Jewish Voice for Peace and other Jewish organizations, who collaborated to create an interfaith vigil outside the Cook County Jail in Brazil, Indiana, where he was held in ICE detention.

“It’s important to remind ourselves of who we are and what our mission is,” he continued. “We want to make sure we have the facilities, all kinds of support and access for our children, to make sure our sons and daughters are strong and that they integrate into this society in the best way.”

Explaining a key point about the ruling, attorney Munjed Ahmad said, “What the judge did was indicate that Salah is ‘deportable.’ That means it’s possible for him to be deported, not that he is going to be deported. 

“This was only the first phase of the immigration court. We still have the second phase in the immigration court in which we’ll file our applications for relief from deportation,” he said.

Ahmad described future possible rounds of appeals and noted he did not expect Sarsour to be detained again during this process.

“Anybody on my social media knows I never post anything. Today was the first time I posted in a very, very long time,” Ahmad said. “And what I said is what I really feel—the decision of the court motivates me. It does not deter me. It motivates Salah. It does not deter Salah. And it motivates our entire legal team … the fight continues.”

Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance executive director Fauzia Qureshi spoke to the crowd about the importance of voting and engaging in the civic process. “Engaging in voting is monumental and critical, especially now,” Qureshi said. “I want to make sure everyone knows the importance of Nov. 3 for getting folks into office who really speak for us and are aligned with our values.”

A family in the midst of the battle

In an exclusive interview yesterday with Salah and Kareem Sarsour, WMJ asked questions many in Greater Milwaukee want to know: How are they doing? What have the past six months been like for Salah Sarsour and his family? Here are the highlights.

Photo by Fauzia Qureshi

Islamic Society of Milwaukee board president Salah Sarsour, his sister Fawzia Sarsour (center) and daughter-in-law Seema Oweisi joined the celebration of the Wisconsin Muslim community’s new home for civic activity. Sarsour, held by ICE for 81 days on charges his lawyers and supporters called false, credited God and the Milwaukee Muslim community and its allies with his June 18th release, when the community gathered at ISM-Main to welcome him home.

What were you feeling the day you were taken away by ICE agents?

“I will never forget that day, March 30th. Mm-hmm. I was arrested from the street, as if I have no address, no place to be identified with. Being active in the community as a business owner and elected for the second time as ISM president, the last thing I expected was to be trapped in the street by ICE agents with guns, none of them wearing uniforms. It was scary.

“I heard one of them saying on the phone, ‘We got him.’ I asked, ‘Am I wanted?’ It sounded like something you’d say about someone who is running away, trying not to be arrested, not someone who is active and visible in the community.

“I was in the car with two agents. My hands were cuffed and my feet. I told them I was supposed to take my mom to the doctor, that my brothers relied on me to take her. She had been in the hospital 10 days earlier for a heart problem. ‘I want to make sure someone knows I’m not going to take my mom,’ I said. They refused to let me call. I told them, ‘Listen, if something happens to my mom, you will be responsible. My mom is 85 years old and has dementia and can’t be by herself all day.’ They called a supervisor who told them not to let me make the call, but to make the call on my behalf.

“They contacted my wife and told her, ‘He’s arrested. He’s with us, and he wants someone to take care of his mom.’ That’s all they said.”

Photo courtesy of Kareem Sarsour

The Sarsour family gathered last year for the “aqiqa” to celebrate the birth Aisha, daughter of Salah and Fatina’s son, Obada.  An “aqiqa” is an Islamic tradition of sacrificing an animal and sharing the meat with the poor to give thanks for a baby’s birth.

Kareem, what did you and the family experience that day?

“The day they took him is going to be a core memory. When you get a call from a family member saying your dad was kidnapped, you start running, trying to understand what’s going on. The main focus for me, my siblings and the family was to try to see where they took him. 

“We contacted law enforcement to help in this situation, where a family member is kidnapped. We reached out to our local law enforcement in Franklin and to cities nearby. We learned he had been taken by ICE and they’ll contact us. Then we got a phone call from our family attorney saying he was in Chicago.

“We didn’t think it was ICE. My dad has always been outspoken, especially for the case of Palestine. There are many people out there who don’t like that. We thought someone did something bad to him.”

When you realized your father was being held by ICE, what did you think?

“You always hear in the news about family members being taken away by ICE. Mm-hmm. And you feel with them. It’s heartbreak. 

“When it happens to you, you live in a nightmare every single day, not knowing what’s going to happen the next day. We had hope something good would happen but with each day, my mother, grandmother, sisters, my wife, our family in general, grew depressed. We worried about his health and wondered if he was ok.

“When we talked with him, it was worse. He has diabetes and we were concerned about his medication, what he was eating, where he was sleeping, that he was unable to sleep, that he had problems doing his prayers and how they were treating him. All of that added to our worries.”

Photo courtesy of Kareem Sarsour

Salah Sarsour and his wife Fatina held their new grandson shortly after his birth. Kareem’s son Yahya was born 10 days ago.

Salah, how could you stay hopeful during 81 days in detention?

I’m a strong believer, honestly. This is how I was raised. I was raised as someone who believes in God and that God will make things easy. Also, I have relied on my community for 30 years. I’ve been very active in my community since I was 20 years old. They have never let me down. As a community, we never let anyone down. 

“All people who believe in justice for our cause are part of this community, Muslims and people from different faiths. They will continue the fight. They will not stand by and watch this administration step on the Constitution and the First Amendment. I have a strong belief that justice will win in the end. I saw part of it when a judge ordered me released from detention.”

Photo courtesy of Kareem Sarsour

Fatina and Salah Sarsour attended the 4th annual Festival for Palestine in Bridgeview, Illinois, last weekend.

Salah, how could you stay hopeful during 81 days in detention?

I’m a strong believer, honestly. This is how I was raised. I was raised as someone who believes in God and that God will make things easy. Mm-hmm. Also, I have relied on my community for 30 years. I’ve been very active in my community since I was 20 years old. They have never let me down. As a community, we never let anyone down. 

“All the people who believe in justice of our cause are part of this community, Muslims and people from different faiths. They will continue the fight. They will not stand by and watch this administration step on the Constitution and the First Amendment. I have a strong belief that justice will win in the end. I saw part of it when a judge ordered me released from detention.”

Kareem, how are you and your family doing now?

“The day we picked my dad up from Brazil, Indiana, wasn’t just for the family. We’ve always felt the community to be our bigger family. And not just the Muslim community, also the different faith groups brought together by this. We felt unity in the community. The level of joy we all felt was enormous.

“Our biggest joy will be when this whole issue is behind us. Right now, the fight continues. We want to make sure my dad actually wins his case.

“We never thought my dad would be taken away. He came to this country legally. He built his family. All his kids are American citizens. All his kids graduated college. He has now 10 grandchildren. He’s president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. He has lived the American dream. 

“The day they took him, they showed us that anything can happen in this country, like something that happens in third-world countries, not in the United States.”

Photo by Yaseen Najeeb

Salah Sarsour held his grandson Hothifa for the first time on March 30, when he returned to Milwaukee from ICE detention in Indiana. Hothifa is the son of Sarsour’s daughter Sundos.

Since you were arrested, your audience has grown. You are invited to speak in many places. How has that changed your life?

I am an organizer more than a speaker. All my life, I have loved to plan, to work with others to structure things and build for the community, for the future for our children, to support others who deserve support. Now making speeches has been added to my plate, though I’m not a polished speaker. 

“I believe in saying the truth. That’s the most important thing. I believe what they did to me and others, like Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Leqaa Kordia, Rumeysa Ozturk and others, is wrong. They want to distract us from the goal, the main work, which is supporting justice, supporting the victims and stopping the genocide, standing for all who are suffering, standing up for our rights and for the future of our children.

“I am not afraid because I feel a big shift happening. Americans, including public officials, community members and organizations are refusing to accept this treatment. I am surrounding myself with this circle—people of justice, people of faith, people of activism. They make me feel strong.

“Last week, I went to meet with our representatives, including senators and congressional representatives. I did not go to beg. I went to wake them up. 

“I told them, ‘It’s time to stop sending bombs to Israel to kill people. It’s time to stop sending death to Gaza. It’s time to send love, to send life, to send medicine, food, shelter, and to open borders, rebuild hospitals and schools.

“That’s our message.”

Five years ago, Salah Sarsour’s family celebrated the 80th birthday of his mother (center right). Today, Sarsour is her caretaker as she faces dementia and heart problems, he said.

Rapper Macklemore performs in Paris in July 2025. Kristy Sparow/Getty Images

If the goal was to silence rapper Macklemore by preventing him from touring with singer Ed Sheeran, it clearly backfired.

Macklemore delivered a monologue in support of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and performed his pro-Palestinian protest song “Hind’s Hall” during a Sept. 4, 2026, concert at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where he was an opening act for Sheeran.

Ten days later, Macklemore was dropped from the tour after Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium – a future stop on Sheeran’s “Loop” tour – thought the 43-year-old rapper had crossed a line.

In a Sept. 14 Instagram post, Macklemore detailed how Kraft had pressured Sheeran to drop Macklemore from the tour and had convinced other stadium owners to prevent him from performing at their venues.

Yet the ensuing media coverage sent the rapper’s profile soaring. There was little to no interest in Macklemore’s Sept. 4 speech the day after he delivered it, yet searches for that speech shot up. His Instagram follower count ballooned by over 1.6 million in the days after he was dropped. Streams of his songs skyrocketed. In an act of solidarity, all of Sheeran’s other opening acts withdrew from the tour, and at least one radio network pulled Sheeran’s music from its rotation.

There was initially little interest in Macklemore’s Sept. 4, 2026, pro-Palestine monologue. Only 10 days later, after the rapper was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour, did Google searches for the monologue spike.

This pattern has a name: the Streisand effect.

In 2003, singer Barbra Streisand tried to remove aerial photos of her home from the internet. But her efforts to take down the images only drove more people to seek them out.

Two decades later, the Streisand effect has become a kind of internet maxim: Trying to bury something often ends up amplifying it. Working with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University and George Mason University, I wanted to explore how this phenomenon plays out – and whether it’s simply internet folk wisdom or something that can be backed up with data.

Be careful what you wish for

To do so, we focused on one of the more contentious censorship trends of the past few years: book bans.

Since 2021, attempts to ban books in U.S. public schools and libraries have risen sharply, and they have most often targeted books dealing with issues like race and gender. Organizations like the American Library Association have diligently kept track of banning efforts. In 2021, the library association reported 729 unique attempts to ban books. The following year, that number grew to 1,269.

Using a large-scale dataset of library circulation records spanning 18 months, from January 2021 to June 2022, across 38 U.S. states, we analyzed what happened to monthly circulation counts for titles once they were targeted with bans.

We found that on average, circulation rose by 12% in the six-month period following the ban compared with nonbanned books with similar pre-ban monthly circulations.

This increase was not evenly distributed across all the banned books. The effect was actually concentrated almost entirely among books written by lesser-known authors. And the more times a book was banned, the larger the circulation increase, with each additional school district’s removal of the same book adding roughly 2% to circulation, on average.

The increase wasn’t confined to the places where these bans originate. Even in states with no ban on the books, circulation rose by about 11%, nearly as much as in the states where the bans actually happened. Whatever the proponents of a ban were trying to accomplish at a local school district level, its effect on demand often traveled well beyond the district where the books were challenged.

Local bans get national attention

Book bans are not a new phenomenon in the U.S. Many books considered classics today have been banned on and off for decades.

But the response to the current crop of bans has been different.

Earlier bans were usually covered by local newspapers and then eventually forgotten. In our study, we were able to show how these more recent bans attracted a measurable spike in local news coverage. National outlets picked up on these local stories, and news of these bans then fanned out through social media on platforms like X, reaching millions.

We argue that this heightened awareness directly translated to the boosts in circulation. Books that generated significant discussion on social media, like “Gender Queer” and “Lawn Boy,” saw large circulation increases, while banned titles that did not receive much social media attention essentially experienced no bump.

Taken together, the results point to a simple dynamic: Book bans can draw attention to obscure titles, and that attention can, in turn, lead to discovery. Consider the scale of the competition each book faces in getting discovered. More than 4 million books were published in the U.S. in 2025 alone. In a marketplace that crowded, the hardest problem most books face isn’t censorship – it’s obscurity.

A ban, paradoxically, solves that problem. It lifts a single title out of the millions and puts a spotlight on it, often reaching an audience that had no idea it existed.

In the attention economy, trying to bury a book, performer and song can just as easily give them a second wind. And whatever the intent behind removing Macklemore from Ed Sheeran’s tour, his message has reached far more people than that opening set at MetLife Stadium ever did – the same way several banned books made their way on to the bestseller list.

Debkat al zamr (Dabke on the Flute) is one of the first titles that catches my eye as I browse the Syrian Cassette Archives website.

Released in 2007, the cassette is a compilation of high-energy regional dabke and shaabi folk-pop, recorded live at wedding celebrations across Syria, characterised by a mix of traditional woodwind instrumentation and fast, celebratory electronic keyboard arrangements.

It features performances by shaabi singers including Hameed Al Furati, Adnan Jabbouri, Hamza Khalil and Abu Al Foz, and it’s the kind of recording that might once have sat forgotten on a market stall shelf or gathered dust in a family home.

Instead, it has found a second life online as part of the Syrian Cassette Archives (SCA), a project dedicated to preserving the country’s rich cassette culture, which flourished from the 1970s through to the early 2000s.

The recording is just one of hundreds that have been digitised and catalogued by the archive.

Archive origins

Behind the initiative is founder Mark Gergis, an Iraqi-American artist, producer and archivist, and co-founder Yamen Mekdad, a Syrian music researcher, archivist and filmmaker, who have spent years rescuing a musical world that risked disappearing altogether.

The story dates back to the 1990s and early 2000s, when Mark went on regular trips to Syria to collect local music cassettes from shops and kiosks.

“I come from an experimental music background where I got interested in diaspora music while living in California. I got into this music just by attending weddings in Michigan. It was the seventies, and the dabke and shaabi [music] were orchestrated with violin, qanun and synthesisers,” Mark tells The New Arab.

“There was also a deep Iraqi Chobi that I got into that I couldn’t find in the States. It was not being selected for cultural export. I would buy it at the Detroit diaspora shops. This led me to travel, eventually with music as a background engine to buy tapes in Syria,” he adds.

Mark was collecting these cassettes out of curiosity and his love for Arabic, especially Syrian, music. But as he watched events unfold in Syria after 2011, he felt a sense of responsibility towards his collection and the Syrian cassette archive more generally.

“A lot of musician friends of mine had been displaced or were seeking refugee status in other countries. People stopped recording, and the studios and cassette shops were destroyed. I started thinking about these cassettes. Most of this music had ever only existed on cassette, and it was at risk of disappearing entirely,” Mark explains. 

In addition to safeguarding these tapes, there was an urgent need to “try and document those networks, thinking about the stories behind these cassettes.”

Having moved to London from California in 2018, Mark first set about relocating his entire cassette collection, then comprising around 700 cassettes, from the US to London.

It was here that he received an interview request from Yamen, who wanted to discuss Mark’s 2004 audio document, I Remember Syria.

The two met, and before long, they were thinking of ways to turn the archive into a real project.

The founders hope to document the stories behind the cassettes [Syrian Cassette Archives]

As the Syrian civil war unfolded, the need to archive the material became even more important  
[Syrian Cassette Archives]

Digital revival

As he probed deeper into Mark’s collection, Yamen realised that he was connecting with Syria “on a sonic and geographical level.”

“Because when you find the cassette, you zoom in to the village where it came from, and then you start thinking about the diversity it holds,” Yamen tells The New Arab. 

The collection offered a refreshing insight into a side of Syria different from the one appearing in his news feed, especially at a time when the Syrian revolution was losing much of its momentum.

Once the cassettes were digitised, Mark and Yamen brainstormed ways they could showcase this growing archive and “present the cassettes in an engaging way where people can learn about the ecosystem of the cassette era,” Mark explains.

They launched the SCA website in late 2021, with the digitised collection comprising music from Syria’s different communities, including Syrian Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds, and Armenians, as well as music from Iraq.  

The tapes also span a wide range of musical genres — some are recordings of live concerts; others are studio albums. There are also children’s music albums, and users can navigate the archive in English or Arabic and can select their preferred genre and/or decade.

Once the cassettes were digitised, Mark and Yamen brainstormed ways they could showcase this growing archive [Syrian Cassette Archives]

The tapes span a wide range of musical genres [Syrian Cassette Archives]

Building the archive

With the support of a growing network of collaborators, the collective soon began conducting interviews with artists, producers, musicians, and designers involved in Syria’s cassette era.  

Together, SCA’s digitised tapes and written content reveal an ambition that goes beyond preservation alone. They suggest an interest in celebrating the overlooked and largely unrecognised musicians of Syria’s rich cassette era — the shaabi singers who performed at weddings and other festivities and were outside the mainstream.

“They were immediate tapes and were made with the purpose of putting the artist’s name out there. There was a calling card because these were wedding singers. They needed their name and their face on those cassette racks every year, maybe [releasing] ten tapes or more a year,” Mark shares with The New Arab about the shaabi singer albums.

“Those weren’t seen as important to document. But I think there’s value in those tapes. And I think those were the tapes that we had in mind; those are the ones that were endangered,” he adds.

For Yamen, the fact that the shaabi singers remained on the periphery resulted from the lack of an institutionalised music industry in Syria.

“There was no industry for musicians to become popular, as in Lebanon or in Egypt,” Yamen tells The New Arab, adding that this absence was a legacy of Hafez al-Assad’s Baathist regime.

So while singers like George Wassuf, Mayada Hinawi, Asala Nasri, and Sabah Fakhri achieved regional recognition, many other singers remained unknown.

“From Qamishli to the Assyrian villages along the Khabur River to Hauran to the urban cities, these musicians didn’t have the opportunity to reach a popular level [or be supported by] an industry that would promote their work and get them to places,” Yamen asserts.

Hidden voices

Over the years, SCA has built an avid community of followers, with supporters continuing to bring their personal collections to the archive.

In addition, the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024 has allowed the team to return to Syria in search of more tapes.

Beyond collecting tapes, the collective delivered a training workshop in music archiving and digitisation, as well as roundtable discussions and listening sessions.

In fact, a significant part of the collective’s activity revolves around organising events and engaging with the public.

“We hold lecture performances where we sit in an open forum, listen together to excerpts from the archive, and talk about these artists. We also do DJ-style sets. I think those are a great way to bring the archive to life for people and to keep it interactive,” Mark explains.

For Mark and Yamen, SCA is an unending vocation — their vision for the archive includes expanding their existing collection and continuing to explore new ways to interact with it.

“The archives are here today and gone tomorrow. So it’s important to document these [cassettes] and to learn about them, not in the Western sense of archiving and preservation, not necessarily in that way,” says Mark.

Syrian Cassette Archives will be presenting an event at Ibraaz in London on Saturday 27 June, featuring a screening of Salamiyah, Lady of the Land (2026), a documentary reportage co-directed by Omar Malas and Yamen Mekdad that explores the sonic heritage of the city of Salamiyah. The screening will be followed by a live performance of selections drawn from the SCA archive.

“Seeds for Liberation” explores Palestinian resistance through emotional and impactful interviews with historians, activists, legal scholars and experts and screens on 10/3 at 4 p.m. and includes post–screening talkback. Purchase tickets  

The 11th annual Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival features Seeds for Liberation Saturday, a new documentary that connects the Palestinian struggle to Black and Chicano liberation through shared anti-imperialist histories, systemic state violence and decades of international solidarity. It considers what “Free Palestine” means and how it can be achieved.

In a live talkback following the screening, an expert panel that includes an activist, a historian and a legal expert/community leader will discuss the impactful topics raised in the documentary, including the 77-year occupation of Palestine by Israeli forces, the role social media plays in mobilizing global support and the path to collective liberation. 

The panel includes Angela Lang, founder and co-executive director of Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC); Rachel Ida Buff, Ph.D., an author, organizer, historian and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor; and Othman Atta, director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.

MMFF presents Seeds of Liberation and talkback Saturday at 4 p.m., at the Oriental Theatre, 2230 N. Farwell Ave., Milwaukee. Buy tickets here.

The Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival is America’s longest-running Muslim film festival in the United States. Established in 2015 by the Muslim Women’s Coalition, it serves as a platform to dismantle stereotypes, foster interfaith dialogue and present nuanced, complex narratives of Muslim experiences from around the world. It runs Oct. 1-4 at the historic Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee. See the full schedule of screenings, talkbacks, film synopses and links to purchase here.

Filmmaker discovers new perspective

Seeds for Liberation director Matthew Solomon, a documentary filmmaker, conflict resolution facilitator and university instructor from Los Angeles, told podcaster Gabe Dunn that, as a Jew, he “was raised with all the Zionist propaganda.” He had learned “the whole world gave us this piece of land that nobody was using, but the Arabs surrounding Israel hated us so much that they all attacked us.” 

The shift in his own mindset was gradual, he told Dunn. Learning that other countries, in addition to Arab states, as well as some Jews, opposed the establishment of the state of Israel led him to question the perspectives he was raised with. Upon hearing Israel is a strategic military position for a Western stronghold in the Middle East, “I was like, oh, it isn’t all kumbaya,” he said.

Solomon read Angela Davis’ book Freedom is a Constant Struggle that specifically talks about Palestine. He said he learned to recognize systems of oppression and that “terrorist” is a political term people in power put on freedom fighters. 

He learned about the Nakba, the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel. It reminded him of what his grandparents went through in the holocaust.

Then Oct. 7 happened. Solomon’s classmate and “dear friend” from Gaza lost 30 relatives within the next two weeks. That’s when Solomon went into what he called a warp-speed process of de-radicalization—questioning everything he grew up with. In the process, he became a vocal activist for Palestinian liberation. 

Seeds for Liberation examines the themes Solomon explored: the intersectionality of liberation struggles and finding community with people who share a commitment to human rights and liberation.

Expert panel brings local perspective

Wisconsin Muslim Journal interviewed two of the panelists, Lang and Buff, to ask about the connections they see between liberation movements.

“I didn’t know about Palestine for a long time,” Lang said. “I think a lot of folks didn’t. But in 2014, when Mike Brown was murdered in Ferguson (Missouri) and there were protests, I saw on Twitter Palestinian folks giving tips on how to deal with gas canisters and tear gas. I realized it was because they had already experienced them in Palestine.

“If you study folks like Angela Davis and Malcom X, you see they talked about this international struggle of our communities, this commonality of just wanting the right to self-determination and freedom from state-sanctioned violence.

“Here in Milwaukee, we’ve seen our own police chief on a trip to Israel (for training),” Lang said. “Why would our police chief travel to a country that is actively committing genocide and war crimes unless you want to learn some terrible things, and try to bring that back and afflict it on largely Black Americans?” 

Solidarity is important “because oppressed people are not free until everyone is free,” she said. “A lot of us recognize our paths to liberation are tied to one another. That’s the reason people come together, not just because there are intersections, but also understanding that if it can happen to one group of people, it can happen to anyone.

“I’m a firm believer, especially as a lifetime Milwaukeean, that you have to come together with other marginalized folks,” Lang added. “We live in an incredibly segregated city. The only way to true liberation for us all is to make sure we stand in solidarity. Solidarity is the only way to collective liberation.”

Historian Rachel Buff noted, “This is the history the ruling elite and the industrial military complex don’t want us to know—the really important history of transnational solidarity and transnational consciousness.”

Buff was teaching a course at UWM last year on the United States as a global power. Students were very interested in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, so Buff “did a deep dive.”

“I was fascinated to learn about camps sponsored by the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), the Sandinistas and the Cuban government for various groups fighting for freedom. A lot of Iranian students (we’re not talking yet about the religious fundamentalists) went to these camps to learn from folks who were facing similar issues, like being starved and blockaded by the United States. What does it mean that there is international education and political collaboration opposing Zionism and capitalism?

“It gives context for thinking about Marco Rubio and his war on people like Salah Sarsour and Mahmoud Khalil,” she continued. “What was upheld in Salah’s deportation case is that he is getting in the way of U.S. foreign policy, which is absurd on the face of it. But Rubio represents several generations of Miami Cubans trying to overturn the Cuban Revolution.

“Rubio intuits that Salah Sarsour and others (calling for a free Palestine) are just like those who wanted to keep Cuba free. I’ve read Marco Rubio’s speeches about how the left will ruin everything. He’s still talking about the Red Brigade in Italy in the 1970s. He’s still fighting those wars. We are still fighting those wars, whether we know it or not.

A mural in Israel targets the directors of the NAZA documentary [Getty]

Award-winning documentary NAZA will stream online for free following its worldwide release in November, giving audiences around the world access to the film about Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

NAZA, directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, will be released in cinemas in more than 50 countries before streaming on the website of British newspaper The Guardian in November.

Announcing the decision on X on Thursday, Abraham said the documentary would be made available for free because of its “interest and public importance”.

“…I and Rachel decided together with The Guardian that the film NAZA would be accessible online for free, without any time limit, so that every person can watch it and the soldiers’ testimonies,” Abraham wrote on X.

The Guardian said the film would be streamed “as part of the news organisation’s commitment to the dissemination of independent journalism”.

The film, shot on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, centres on Israel’s use of AI in its genocidal war on Gaza, featuring testimony from 24 members of the Israeli military and intelligence services who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Its title comes from an Israeli military term used to refer to the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike.

The soldiers and intelligence personnel interviewed describe systems used to identify targets in Gaza and how strikes were approved despite the anticipated deaths of civilians, including children.

The documentary received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September and went on to win the Special Jury Prize.

But the film’s reception in Israel was markedly different, triggering a fierce campaign against Abraham and Szor from senior Israeli politicians, military figures and far-right activists.

Much of the backlash centred on the film’s use of testimony from serving and former Israeli military and intelligence personnel to expose the systems behind attacks that have killed Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Israeli officials accused the filmmakers of portraying Israeli soldiers as war criminals, while Culture Minister Miki Zohar accused them of “treason against the state”. Israeli military chief Eyal Zamir threatened to use “every tool at our disposal” against it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to pass legislation that would allow authorities to strip citizenship from Israelis who “smear” soldiers or “defame” the state.

The campaign soon extended beyond the filmmakers themselves to their families.

Dozens of far-right activists gathered outside the homes of the directors’ families, including the home of Szor’s parents, after messages circulated calling on activists to demonstrate there.

“A Beautiful Patience: A Memoir of Marriage, Motherhood, and a Mission to Gaza” by Samaiya Mushtaq is available for check out at the Islamic Resource Center library.

A Beautiful Patience: A Memoir of Marriage, Motherhood, and a Mission to Gaza (2026) is a heart-warming memoir about two physicians; Samaiya and her husband Mahmoud, and their time apart while Mahmoud joins a medical mission to occupied Gaza. Like many good people who feel compelled to help in any way they can, Mahmoud joins a cohort of other skilled physicians who feel called to use their valuable professional skills to help alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people.  

Meanwhile, Samaiya must remain at home working and caring for the couple’s two young children while agonizing over her fears – what if the unthinkable happens and Mahmoud is killed? 

On one level, this is a well-written and engaging love story about a young couple enduring and coping with tragedies and hardship while nurturing their relationship and maintaining their mental health. It is also an examination of the tremendous strength ordinary people gain from their relationship with Allah, from their families, and from close friends and how good people can share that strength for the benefit of others. 

This true story details the beauty of faith and humanity and contrasts it with the ugliness of people who prioritize self-interest and only seem to be capable of hate, degradation, and murder. 

Mahmoud, and his fellow volunteers, are called to serve because of their faith and desire to protect and connect with all whom Allah has created. Their humility, courage, and perseverance in the face of danger despite the overwhelming hopelessness is a lesson for all readers. 

At the same time, Samaiya also serves by being a loving and patient mother for her young children and Mahmoud’s emotional rock as they communicate frequently via text and calls. Both roles are important and are done faithfully by the pair.  This story is a glowing reminder of the importance of faith, love, and acceptance of Allah’s plan for us, no matter what form it takes.

Photos by Cherrie Hanson

Milwaukee Public School teacher Kellie Krawczyk spent Saturday morning learning about Islam and Milwaukee’s Muslim community at the Islamic Resource Center in Greenfield during Open Doors Milwaukee. IRC volunteers Ro-Soreha Hafiz and Fatima Sharid taught her about the hijab.

Historic Milwaukee’s Doors Open Milwaukee, an annual opportunity for the public to explore Greater Milwaukee locations, includes a stop at the Muslim Women’s Coalition’s Islamic Resource Center, 5235 S. 27th St., Greenfield. Saturday, “the genuinely curious” stopped in. 

“Outreach and education have always been part of the MWC’s mission, and this was a wonderful opportunity for people who are genuinely interested in learning to visit us,” said Janan Najeeb, the founder and executive director of the Muslim Women’s Coalition. “They toured the facility, interacted with staff, board members and volunteers, and asked any questions they wanted.”

Saturday, a dozen IRC volunteers answered questions and offered sweets and refreshments, lessons in Arabic writing and ways to wear the hijab, a scarf worn by Muslim women as a commitment to their faith. A henna artist painted beautiful designs on visitors’ hands. 

MWC staff members Hadiyyah Clark and Ro-Suhana Hafiz welcomed guests Megan Kennedy and Carrie Yanko, educators from Milwaukee, to the Islamic Resource Center.

“We want people to visit and learn about our organization and all the amazing things we do,” said Jenny Wegener, IRC librarian, who organized the open house. “When they do, they look very happy. They stay for quite a while—mingling, tasting snacks, trying on a hijab. We just had a teacher who stayed for at least an hour and a half, asking questions and learning things, and she got a library card.” 

Visitors’ perspectives

Wisconsin Muslim Journal was there Saturday to ask guests about their impressions. Here’s what we heard.

Resources for teachers

Kellie Krawczyk, a teacher at Milwaukee Public School’s Fernwood Montessori School, had a mission. “I came here purposefully because I wanted to find resources I could use in my classroom with my 3, 4, and 5-year-old kindergartners. I think it’s very important to expose our young students to all different cultures so when they come across people who are different, they don’t have any fear, and they’re warm and welcoming. I want them to enjoy meeting new people from all different backgrounds.”

Krawczyk got a library card. “I’ve already checked out three books!” she said. “I will use this resource and share it with my colleagues. I also want to have people from MWC come and speak at our school.”

During her visit, Krawczyk “learned a little more about Ramadan and the lunar calendar. I met some of the loveliest women I’ve met in a long time. Everyone was so welcoming.

The IRC is now Krawczyk’s favorite stop in Open Doors Milwaukee, she confessed.

Opportunities for families

When Jean Frioui’s college-aged daughter Sophia suggested they visit the IRC during Doors Open Milwaukee, she jumped at the chance.

“It was a no-brainer,” said Frioui, the longtime Milwaukee resident. “My daughter identifies as Muslim. Being Catholic, I’m interested in learning more about the religion of Islam. I want to learn and embrace what matters to my daughter.”

Sophia had heard a lot about the Muslim Women’s Coalition and its IRC through social media, but had never had the chance to visit. When she saw it listed as a stop on Doors Open, “I said, ‘Let’s just go!’

“I’m happy just knowing this place exists,” Jean said. “It’s a great resource for my daughter as well as myself. We can always come here, hang out and be with other people.”

Sophia and Jean Frioui of Milwaukee visited the Islamic Resource Center  n Greenfield for the first time Saturday. The mother-daughter duo found the IRC welcoming and interesting, they said.

A place for learning

Longtime travel buddies Megan Kennedy and Carrie Yanko, both educators from Milwaukee, have seen much of the world. Still, Saturday marked their first visit to Salam School and the Islamic Resource Center on Milwaukee’s Southside.

“We travel quite a bit and have been to many diverse places,” Yanko said. “We do a big trip every year. One of the big reasons we travel is to learn about different communities.”

“We both don’t know a lot about Islam,” said Kennedy. “We wanted to know more about this community and these organizations.”

“Everyone is incredibly friendly,” she said. “They seemed very excited to have visitors and were extremely welcoming. They have a lot of pride in their culture and what they are doing as an organization. That’s the sense I got.” 

The volunteers “are very knowledgeable,” Yanko added.

“There are so many things they do I wasn’t aware of, like the Muslim Film Festival,” Kennedy said. “They had information about restaurants and places to go in the city. It will be nice to expand our experiences.”

The friends also want their students to know it’s available. “If high school students have an assignment, they can come here to find books and people to interview. I think it’s important they know it’s for everyone,” Kennedy said.

Parisa Meymand, Ph.D., of Kenosha tries a hijab as her friend and colleague Monica Rausch Camacho of Wauwatosa looks on.

An open, welcoming atmosphere

Monica Rausch Camacho of Wauwatosa and Parisa Meymand, Ph.D., of Kenosha, both staff members at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, visited the IRC for the first time Saturday.

“I’d never been here before and I thought it looked interesting,” said Camacho. “I’m always wanting to learn more about Islam. It was nice to be able to try the henna and learn more about the hijab. It was nice to be able to talk about it and try it on, and not feel like it’s something we can’t talk about.

“Everyone was really welcoming and friendly,” she continued. “It had good energy.”

A unique stop

Katarina Repinski of Shorewood has been the visitor services and social media coordinator for Historic Milwaukee for more than four years, but this is the first time she has been able to visit Doors Open. Historic Milwaukee is the non-profit organization that works to protect and share Milwaukee’s history. It leads volunteer-led walking, boat and indoor tours of historic sights and neighborhoods. It also puts on Doors Open Milwaukee.

“I’m usually working Saturdays and Sundays,” she said. “This is literally the first time I’ve ever been able to experience Doors Open as a visitor.”

“There are lots of churches on the tour. I wanted to try something unique,” she said. “I learned this is one of the largest—one of the only—Islamic lending libraries in the state. I love the center. Everyone’s very welcoming and sweet. More people should come out here and experience it.”

A chance to learn about Islam

When Stephanie Hendricks looked at the almost 200 destinations she could visit during Doors Open Milwaukee, the Islamic Resource Center caught her eye. 

“I thought it would be really interesting to stop in the center because I have an interest in learning about Islam. “I took a world religions course in college and Islam is one of the main religions. I thought it would be interesting to learn more about it.”

During her visit at the IRC, Hendricks learned that Muslims hold many of the same beliefs she does, “like Jesus and Mary. I thought that was just in Christianity.”

She enjoyed seeing the art work and displays at the IRC.  

During her visit to the Islamic Resource Center Saturday, Stephanie Hendricks, a Christian, learned that Muslims hold many of the same beliefs she does.

Birds and animals, like us, experience similar biological processes. There is hardly a difference between a human being and other animals.

They are born, we are born
They eat and drink, so do we
They grow up, we grow up
They become sick, so do we
They have children, we have children
They die, we die

In some ways, animals are better than us because they do exactly what God Almighty expects them out to do. There are no “disbelieving” animals or hypocrites. They are all true Muslims submitting to God Almighty, worshiping Him, although Allah has told us that we don’t understand their form of worship.

Unlike animals, though, human beings are given the choice to select their way of life. God has shown us the right path and the wrong path. The right path is good for this world and the only way to succeed in earning the everlasting life in Paradise. Allah has also clearly told us the consequences of choosing the wrong path, which is bad for us in this world and leads to a horrific end in the Hellfire.

The right path requires us to live a mission-oriented life to be successful.

Abu Bakr was one of the closest companions of the Prophet Muhammad and became the first leader of the Muslim community after he passed away, God’s blessings be upon him. Once, Abu Bakr looked up and saw a bird resting on a tree branch and sighed, wishing he could live with no accountability for his life the way that bird seemed to, Allah be pleased with him. He said something close to this: how lucky you are, little bird. You eat, you fly away, and no one will ever call you to account for what you did with your life. I wish I were like you.

He knew something that most of us try to forget. Every human being will face that accountability one day. A bird will not. A human will.

That is the real difference between an animal and a person. Animals live inside the limits that Allah set for them. They do not choose their own path. We do. Allah gave us a mind, a will, and the freedom to pick a direction for our lives. That is a gift, and it is also a weight. We are the only creatures God will ask, “What did you do with your life?”

Why You Need a Mission

God sent one Prophet after another, from Adam to Abraham, from Moses to Jesus, and finally to Muhammad, to call people to the same purpose, God’s blessings be upon him. Each one taught people to rise above animal life and to live for something bigger than food, comfort, and survival. The Quran describes their shared mission in plain terms:

لَقَدْ أَرْسَلْنَا رُسُلَنَا بِالْبَيِّنَاتِ وَأَنْزَلْنَا مَعَهُمُ الْكِتَابَ وَالْمِيزَانَ لِيَقُومَ النَّاسُ بِالْقِسْطِ وَأَنْزَلْنَا الْحَدِيدَ فِيهِ بَأْسٌ شَدِيدٌ وَمَنَافِعُ لِلنَّاسِ وَلِيَعْلَمَ اللَّهُ مَنْ يَنْصُرُهُ وَرُسُلَهُ بِالْغَيْبِ إِنَّ اللَّهَ قَوِيٌّ عَزِيزٌ

“Indeed, We sent Our messengers with clear proofs, and with them We sent down the Scripture and the balance (of justice) so that people may administer justice. And We sent down iron with its great might, benefits for humanity, and means for Allah to prove who (is willing to) stand up for Him and His messengers without seeing Him. Surely Allah is All-Powerful, Almighty” (Quran 57:25).

At his last sermon on Mount Arafat, the Prophet Muhammad asked the crowd gathered there a simple question: had he completed the mission Allah gave him, God’s blessings be upon him? The answer was a resounding yes. He then asked Allah three times to be his witness, and told the people to carry that mission to those who were not there that day, since some of them might understand it even better than the ones standing in front of him. That mission did not stop with the Prophets. Allah has handed it to every one of us.

So ask yourself a simple question: what has God put you on this earth to build, fix, protect, or improve? That question is not extra credit. It is the real work of a Muslim life.

Start By Thinking

You cannot build a mission based on a rushed, distracted life. Allah tells us plainly in the Quran to slow down and think:

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَلْتَنْظُرْ نَفْسٌ مَا قَدَّمَتْ لِغَدٍ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ إِنَّ اللَّهَ خَبِيرٌ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ

“O believers! Be mindful of Allah and let every soul look to what (deeds) it has sent forth for tomorrow. And fear Allah, (for) certainly Allah is All-Aware of what you do” (Quran 59:18).

Read that command again. It is not asking you to think about tomorrow’s schedule. It is asking you to think about what you are sending ahead to the next life. Give yourself real time for this, even a single quiet hour with no phone, before you write a single goal down. An annual plan built without that hour of honest thinking usually falls apart by February.

Turn the Dua Into a Plan

Once you have done that thinking, you need an actual plan, and Allah has already handed us the outline for one. Muslims repeat a version of this dua, or supplication, in nearly every prayer:

وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ يَقُولُ رَبَّنَا آتِنَا فِي الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةً وَفِي الْآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً وَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ

“Our Lord! Grant us the good of this world and the Hereafter, and protect us from the torment of the Fire” (Quran 2:201).

That one sentence splits a Muslim’s whole life into three parts. Each part can become a section of your own plan.

This is not only a matter of faith. Researchers who study human behavior have found close to the same pattern. Dr. Edwin Locke and Dr. Gary Latham looked at more than 400 studies on goal-setting and found that people with a clear, specific goal outperformed people who were simply told to “do their best” in about 90 percent of those studies (Locke & Latham, 2002). A separate study at Dominican University of California followed 267 people working toward a wide range of goals. Those who only thought about their goal, without writing it down, reached it about 35 percent of the time. Those who wrote the goal down, made a real plan, and sent a weekly update to another person reached it more than 70 percent of the time (Matthews, 2015). Writing the plan down and answering to someone roughly doubled the odds of success.

The first part is success in this world, what Islam calls dunya, or this life. Set real goals here, the kind you would set for a job. Make them specific and realistic, and give each one a deadline. Decide how many hours each week go to your family, your work, your community, your health, and just resting. Write an honest budget too: how much you plan to earn, save, and give away.

The second part is success in the next life, what Islam calls akhira. This is where the mission from the first section actually lives. Set aside real time for the Quran, not just listening to it but understanding it. Aim to pray some of your five daily prayers in congregation. Try fasting a day or two beyond Ramadan if you are able, and consider a portion of the night for extra prayer. Plan how you will share Islam with the people around you, since that duty falls on every believer, not only on imams.

The third part is freedom from the Fire. This one takes courage, because it means naming the specific things you are struggling with and building a real plan to leave them behind. Some people keep this list private and use code words that only make sense to them. That is fine. The Prophet Muhammad discouraged people from announcing their own sins in public, God’s blessings be upon him. What matters is that the list exists and that you are actually working to address it.

Make It a Daily Routine

A plan that lives only in a notebook will not survive the first busy week. It has to turn into a daily to-do list, something you check every single morning. Pick one time of day, right after Fajr, the dawn prayer, or right after breakfast, and use it to write down what today needs from you: which prayer will you try to pray in a group, when will you open the Quran, when will you call your parents, or when will you sit with your children.

The Prophet gave us a strong reminder about time, God’s blessings be upon him: “Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your sickness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before your busyness, and your life before your death” (Bayhaqi).

None of those five things wait around for us. A daily routine is simply how you catch them before they slip away.

Naming the exact time and place matters more than it sounds like it should. Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer studied what happens when people decide in advance exactly when and where they will act, instead of just meaning to “do it sometime.” In one study, only 32 percent of students who simply intended to finish a report actually finished it. Among students who had written down exactly when and where they would sit down to do it, 71 percent finished (Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997). Picking Fajr or right after breakfast, and sticking to it, is not a small detail. It may be the reason the rest of the plan survives the week.

Check Yourself Every Day

Build one more habit into that routine: a daily accounting of yourself. Some people do this right after Fajr. Others do it at night, right before sleep. Either time works, as long as you actually do it.

Go over your day and be honest with yourself. Say Alhamdulillah, praise be to God, for what you managed to do well. Say Subhanallah, glory be to God, for what you meant to do but forgot or ran out of time for. Ask forgiveness for anything you did that you should not have. Then let it go and sleep. You can also pause for one minute before each of the five prayers and ask a quick question: have I done anything since the last prayer that Allah would not be pleased with? A minute, five times a day, adds up to real self-awareness over a year.

Watch Out for Shaitan

Your plan needs one more piece: a defense. Shaitan, or Satan, is not a passive threat sitting somewhere in the distance. He works on people constantly, in their waking hours and even in their dreams, always looking for the moment their guard drops. The Quran does not tell us to simply hope he leaves us alone. It tells us to push back with zikr, the remembrance of Allah.

Do not let your mind sit idle. An idle mind is exactly where Shaitan moves in. Fill the small gaps in your day with something: Subhanallah سُبْحَانَ ٱللَّٰهِ  while you wait in line, Alhamdulillah ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ  while you drive, a short dua while you wash the dishes. When you notice a bad thought arriving, say Aoothu billahi minash shaitan ir rajeem أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ which means I seek refuge in Allah from Shaitan the accursed, and mean it. Guard your eyes and your ears too. If something is haram to do, treat it as haram to watch or listen to as well.

This is not a one-time fix. It is a daily habit, the same as the rest of the plan.

Where the Reward Really Is

Build all of this, and you will still not control everything. Some goals will not go the way you planned, no matter how hard you worked or how good the plan was. That is not proof that you failed.

وَأَنْ لَيْسَ لِلْإِنْسَانِ إِلَّا مَا سَعَى

“And that each person will only have what they endeavored towards” (Quran 53:39).

Your reward is tied to the striving itself, not to whether the outcome landed exactly where you hoped. Two people can put in the same honest effort, and Allah can give the result to one and withhold it from the other, for reasons only He knows. Both are still rewarded for the effort. Neither one controls the result.

So plan carefully, work hard, and check yourself daily, the way this guide has laid out. Then hand the outcome to Allah and mean it. The struggle is yours. The result was always His.

None of this has to happen perfectly on the first try. Know your mission. Take time to think. Write the plan in three parts: this life, the next life, and freedom from the Fire. Develop a routine. Turn it into a daily to do list. Check yourself every night. Keep zikr close by during the day. That is the whole guide. The rest is practice, one day at a time, for the sake of Allah.

This guide draws on and expands two earlier pieces published at SoundVision.com: “What Is Your Mission In Life?” and “A Guide To Develop A Personal Plan.” Here is a Sound Vision page about planning. 

References

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717.

Matthews, G. (2015). The impact of commitment, accountability, and written goals on goal achievement. Dominican University of California.

Gollwitzer, P. M., & Brandstätter, V. (1997). Implementation intentions and effective goal pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(1), 186–199.

Workers put the finishing touches on the stage at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Conference in Washington in March 2015. (Photo: Pete Marovich/European Pressphoto Agency)

ISRAEL’S LOBBY
American in the Grip of a Foreign Power
By Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick
304 pps. Simon & Schuster, $29.00

Book-length treatments of the Israel Lobby’s deleterious impact on US foreign policy have a long pedigree, stretching back at least to the first Palestinian intifada during the 1980s. 

Journalists, former Members of Congress, former high-ranking State Department officials, political scientists, and diplomatic historians have all produced valuable contributions to this body of literature that explains the mechanics through which the Israel Lobby leverages pressure to produce what–up until this historical point–has been a virtually unconditional US policy supporting Israel’s nearly 80-year apartheid rule over the Palestinian people.

Some of the books in this first-generation of literature include journalist Edward Tivnan’s The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy (1987); former Republican Congressman Paul Findley’s They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby (1985), who was famously defeated for re-election by challenger Dick Durbin in large measure due to his engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization, drawing the ire of AIPAC; and former Kennedy and Johnson administration Under Secretary of State George Ball and Douglas Ball’s The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (1992).           

Newer additions to this body of literature from a more academic perspective include John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007), an important contribution from two of the leading theoreticians of realism in international relations, and Walter Hixson’s Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (2019), a diplomatic historian’s look into the rise of the Israel Lobby from the establishment of Israel to the 1967 war.

Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick provide an important addition to this body of literature in Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power.

Clifton and Lustick are exceptionally well-positioned to articulate this updated, devastating critique of how the Israel Lobby subverts democracy at home while ensuring US support for Israeli aggression, apartheid, and genocide abroad.

Clifton, a long-time investigative journalist who specializes on reporting on the nexus between money in politics and US foreign policy, and Lustick, a prolific professor of political science whose previous books have focused attention on the inequality faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Israeli settler movement, and the impracticability of the two-state resolution, combine the best of journalistic scoops with rigorous historical analysis in a powerful one-two punch.

Clifton and Lustick do not mince their words: “Israel’s Lobby has become an out-of-control foreign influence operation, largely unrecognized as such, that channels some of the most extreme impulses of contemporary Israeli politics into the offices, corridors, and counsels of American leaders, imperiling both the lives and interests of their constituents and of the United States as whole.”  

Yet Israel’s Lobby is no jeremiad. It is a meticulously researched and documented investigation into how AIPAC and others fund blatantly racist and Islamophobic pundits and sketchy think tanks to spew virulently anti-Palestinian rhetoric; how pro-Israel megadonors exploit openings in recent Supreme Court decisions on campaign financing to funnel hard-to-trace “dark money” to impact electoral races; and how, in the face of unprecedented American public opinion support for Palestinian rights, the ADL and others have manufactured a largely faux “antisemitism” scare (where most of the incidents recorded can be chalked up to legitimate political discourse criticizing Israeli governmental policies) to work hand-in-glove with the Trump administration to dismantle freedom of speech on college campuses.

Clifton and Lustick–by transcribing videos of Israel Lobby events, unearthing misfiled tax returns inadvertently exposing pro-Israel donor connections, and by digging deep into the ADL’s methodology–have done the hard work so you don’t have to to understand what the Israel Lobby aims to achieve and the methods through which they seek to achieve it.

Among some of the many eye-popping anecdotes and statistics that make Israel’s Lobby a compelling read are the ways in which the Israel Lobby discusses its power so blatantly, and, in at least one case, unselfconsciously leans heavily on antisemitic and conspiratorial tropes. 

“The masters of the universe are Jews!” former Republican Senator and current chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Norm Coleman exuberantly told a gathering of the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) in Jerusalem in 2025. Citing the prominence of four Jewish individuals in the tech world–Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI; Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta; Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google; and Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp–Coleman argued that “we have to figure out a way to win the digital battle…And when we do that the future of Israel will be stronger because a majority of all Americans will support Israel. We’ll make that happen.”

What exquisite hypocrisy! If Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens said Jews control social media for the purpose of convincing Americans to support Israel, holy hell would break loose and Coleman would be likely to be in the front ranks of the pitchfork-wielding mob. 

But perhaps this braggadocio is not misplaced. Clifton and Lustick also meticulously document how just nine pro-Israel megadonors have funneled an astronomical $1.7 billion in political donations disclosed to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) since 2012. Yes, you read that right. “B” as in billion. And that amount doesn’t even include undoubtedly substantial “dark money” contributions made anonymously by these same donors to 501(c)(4) and other types of organizations influencing elections.

The numbers are staggering: $700 million from Sheldon and Miriam Adelson; $400 million from Michael Bloomberg; $100 million each from Jeff Yass and Paul Singer; and between $30-$70 million each from Bernie Marcus, Reid Hoffman, Larry Ellison, Haim and Cheryl Saban, and the aforementioned Jan Koum.

“These donors form the backbone of an Israel-first movement that crosses party lines and shares a uniform goal of supporting politicians, outside organizations, and think tanks that provide research and analysis for members of Congress and the president,” Clifton and Lustick write.

This dynamic produces a closed loop effect, they persuasively argue. These megadonors “are funding both the election of politicans as well as the research institutions shaping the worldview of these same elected officials, creating an echo chamber of pro-Israel talking points and policy recommendations for politicians already indebted to pro-Israel donors.”       

As Clifton and Lustick make clear throughout the book, this is not your father’s AIPAC, to borrow a line from a GM commercial. Gone are the days when AIPAC attempted to cultivate a bipartisan consensus for Israel on Capitol Hill, eschewing overt interference in electoral contests while quietly and unofficially bundling money behind the scenes. 

Instead, today’s AIPAC is a super-charged juggernaut, a leviathan dumping seemingly endless reserves of largely GOP megadonor cash into Democratic primaries to stymie increasingly bold Congressional voices advocating for Palestinian rights. Clifton and Lustick are correct to point out the outsized role played by the more than $23 million that AIPAC’s affiliated Super PAC United Democracy Project (UDP) plowed in to help defeat Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush–two of the most outspoken Congressional voices against Israel’s genocide–in the 2024 elections.

And yet…after finishing Clifton and Lustick’s book as the primary season for the 2026 midterm election nears its conclusion, one is left wondering whether the AIPAC of the past, as analyzed in Israel’s Lobby, can ensure its continued dominance into the future?

I don’t think that it can. The ever-increasing amounts of electoral money dumped into campaigns by AIPAC are not translating into victories and, in some respects, can be seen as markers of desperation–a retrograde lobby swimming against what seems to be an inexorable tide of public opinion away from sympathy for Israel and in support of Palestinian rights.

A July 2026 Data for Progress poll found that 58 percent of all Americans support ending taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel–the continued provision of which is AIPAC’s reason for existence–while only 35 want to keep the weapons flowing. While poll after poll over the previous three years of Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has repeatedly shown that a majority of Democrats support this position, this poll was notable as the first time a majority of all Republicans also agreed. 

While Republicans–with the lone exception of Rep. Thomas Massie–continue to support giving US taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel, revealing the growing gaps between the base of the GOP and its elected officials, Democrats are belatedly catching up with and responding to their base.

This newfound Democratic willingness to challenge pro-Israel orthodoxy has been revealed through several important developments in the current Congress. For example, 85 percent of Democratic Senators voted to block the delivery of bombs and bulldozers to Israel in April, and more than 100 Democratic Representatives voted for Rep. Massie’s amendment to slash $3.3 billion in weapons to Israel in July.

These are once unthinkable developments and may suggest the power of Israel lobby has wielded in the past, as expertly explicated by Clifton and Lustick, will be much less effective even in the near future.