“I think the mayor is great, and he’s given us his total endorsement,” Donald Trump said this week of Amer Ghalib, an Arab American who was elected America’s first Muslim mayor in Hamtramck, Mich., in 2021. “He’s somebody [who has] got a lot of future in this country.”
“He’s not for men playing in women’s sports. He’s not for transgender operations — the transformation, or the transition into, you know, a male into a female. He’s not into that,” Trump continued. “I think for the most part, the Arab world isn’t into that, and I’m not into that either. But the radical left is totally into it.”
Trump’s promising mayor is staunchly anti-Israel. Ghalib’s city council voted unanimously in May to approve a resolution divesting from “Israeli apartheid,” a measure Ghalib said meant, “For now, the city will do its best to refrain from buying, investing or contracting with companies that support the Israeli genocide.” Hamtramck’s all-male and all-Muslim city council was one of the few in America to pass a divestment proposal. Ghalib said after the vote to divest that Palestine is “fighting for a good cause. Some people call them ‘terrorists,’ which doesn’t make no sense.” The only “ethical exit” for Israel “is to declare defeat and give it up and accept the exchange of prisoners and leave the people to live in their land,” Ghalib said in June, according to local media.
In September, Ghalib met with Trump before a town hall in Warren, Mich. He posted to Facebook a photo of himself with Trump, and said in the caption that “before taking this picture, [Trump] said: let me take a good picture with the greatest mayor in the whole world.”
Ghalib has accused President Joe Biden of perpetuating claims that Palestinian terrorists beheaded babies and raped Israeli women — claims Ghalib denies. “You fueled . . . Islamophobia by spreading false information and lies (e.g. beheaded babies and raped women),” Ghalib said. “You make us feel unsafe by trying to justify your support for the criminal and unethical attack on the civilians of Gaza using lies and made up stories. Be a man and apologize for your moral and historic downfall, otherwise the blood of thousands of children and innocent people will be a curse that will follow you to your grave.” Multiple autopsy reports, survivor testimonies, and photographic evidence prove that Hamas terrorists did behead, rape, assault, and maim Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
The mayor also pressed the city council to push a resolution renaming a town street to “Palestine Avenue,” as a “gesture of solidarity.” City councillors were deadlocked over the resolution, which Ghalib cast the tie-breaking vote to pass. Also, when city council candidate Nasr Hussain posted a disturbing message on Facebook — “Was the Holocaust God’s advance punishment of the ‘Chosen People’ for the savagery they’re committing today against the innocent Palestinians children and civilians? A heinous act proving that they’re as savage and cruel as the Nazis themselves, or even worse.” — Ghalib would not condemn the statement. “You can ask Nasr about that,” Ghalib said instead. “What do I have to do with his posts! I don’t have to comment on every resident’s opinion, otherwise I would have commented on some posts that insult Islam and other religions, which are posted frequently by some residents on that same Facebook group.”
Few women are involved in local Hamtramck politics. On his election night, the BBC reported:
Mr Ghalib, the mayor-elect, was surrounded by a jubilant Yemeni-American crowd in a post-election party serving baklava and kebabs. More than 100 supporters were there, all of them men.
Women participated in his campaign, Mr Ghalib said, but segregation of the sexes remains traditional, even as it is being challenged by younger generations who have become more “Americanised”, he said.
Some Muslim communities in Michigan have turned their backs on the Democratic ticket, because, they say, Biden has been too supportive of Israel. Trump, though, is a “man of principles” who doesn’t want war, Ghalib said — a compliment Trump is eager to tout.