Suleiman, Imam Dr. Omar
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Suleiman frames his reaction to October 7th and its aftermath as unsurprising given what he describes as decades of escalating, under-reported conditions in Gaza and the West Bank: settlement expansion (citing a 2023 plan for roughly 13,000 new settler units, which he calls the largest in the occupation's history), the 2022 killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, recurring violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque including the "Flag March," and prior human-rights determinations (Human Rights Watch's 2021 "Threshold Reached" report and Amnesty International's 2022 report) describing Israeli policy toward Palestinians as apartheid. He argues American mainstream media coverage is asymmetric and tightly managed — citing what he says is a documented practice of Israeli review of press footage before publication — such that October 8th onward, and what he calls a hundred-plus days of resulting deaths, receive far less coverage than October 7th itself or the Israeli hostages. He rejects a Gaza-only framing of the conflict, insisting it cannot be separated from the West Bank, Jerusalem, or the broader Palestinian people, and criticizes normalization agreements like the Abraham Accords for proceeding, in his view, without Palestinian self-determination or consent.
He describes the Palestinian diaspora's experience as one of collective trauma and helplessness — every Palestinian, he says, personally knows someone killed or displaced — and discusses journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh (Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief) at length: Al-Dahdouh's wife, two children, and grandchild were killed in an airstrike while he was on air; his cameraman Samer Abudaqa later bled to death after being struck himself, allegedly while rescuers were prevented from reaching him; and a son was later killed in a separate strike — with Al-Dahdouh returning to broadcast each time. Suleiman also recounts in detail the killing of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy stabbed 26 times by his family's landlord in Illinois in the days after October 7th (his mother, Hanaan, was attacked first), describing it as a hate crime he connects to circulating wartime rhetoric, including a debunked claim about "40 beheaded babies" that President Biden had repeated and the White House later walked back. He argues this killing received comparatively little sustained media attention relative to the Detroit synagogue-president stabbing that same period (which he notes ultimately was not classified as a hate crime), and frames this disparity, along with rising surveillance, job losses, and public harassment faced by Muslim and Palestinian Americans, as anti-Palestinian bigotry functioning as an extension of Islamophobia.
On the ethics of resistance, Suleiman argues — drawing on Martin Luther King Jr.'s framing that "peace is not the absence of violence, it's the presence of justice" and on Malcolm X's view that it is hypocritical to demand nonviolence from the oppressed while placing no comparable restraint on the oppressor — that occupation and apartheid are inherently unjust, that resistance to them is presumptively justified under international law, but that specific acts within that resistance (deliberately targeting civilians, on any side) can still constitute transgressions requiring accountability; he states plainly that violence against women, children, and non-combatants is wrong "no matter who is doing the killing," and argues international bodies capable of enforcement, rather than solely U.S.-mediated diplomacy, are needed to assign blame and accountability fairly. He rejects labeling of nonviolent Palestinian resistance (the Great March of Return, boycotts modeled on the South African anti-apartheid movement) as it having been met, in his account, with lethal force (citing reported Israeli sniper "knee counts" during the March) or accusations of antisemitism, arguing this leaves Palestinians without any resistance method Western commentators will accept. Asked why many Palestinians reportedly expressed sympathy toward the October 7th attacks, he argues one must understand the psychology of people who have lived under blockade, recurring bombardment ("mowing the lawn," a phrase he attributes to Israeli officials), and the loss of family members — arguing sympathy for anyone promising to end that suffering is a human response regardless of one's view of the methods used, while separately noting polling he describes as showing a majority of the Israeli public, prior to October 7th, favoring policies he characterizes as opposed to a two-state solution and indifferent to Palestinian welfare.
He is sharply critical of both major U.S. political parties: he faults President Biden for repeating the unverified beheaded-babies claim, for what he calls insufficient empathy toward Palestinian civilian deaths relative to Israeli ones, and for continuing U.S. military support and blocking international accountability efforts, predicting concrete electoral consequences among Muslim American and broader "ceasefire" voters (citing polling he cites showing majority U.S. public support for a ceasefire); he is equally dismissive of Donald Trump, citing the Jerusalem embassy move and Trump's stated intent to be "worse" on related issues (deportations, visa revocations for pro-Palestinian student protesters). He describes speaking at a roughly 400,000-person "Free Palestine" march in Washington, D.C. that he says received minimal mainstream coverage compared to a similarly sized "Stand With Israel" rally, and emphasizes what he describes as unusually broad interfaith and multiracial participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including Jewish anti-occupation groups (naming "Jewish Voice for Peace" and "If Not Now"), while acknowledging that large protests inevitably include a small number of individuals whose statements don't reflect the broader message.
On Benjamin Netanyahu, Suleiman argues his current rhetoric and policies are consistent with a decades-long record rather than a new development, while cautioning that the deeper problem is the occupation itself rather than any single Israeli leader (citing more moderate-branded figures like Yair Lapid as pursuing similarly harmful policies from his perspective). He argues Gaza meets the international legal definition of "occupation" despite the 2005 Israeli troop withdrawal, citing continued control over Gaza's airspace, borders, sea access, and population registry. On faith, he explains Islamic theology's view of continuity across the Abrahamic prophets (Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, each confirming the prior message), Al-Aqsa Mosque's status as Islam's third-holiest site and former first qibla (direction of prayer), and states a principle he attributes to the Prophet Muhammad — that the sanctity of one human being's life and dignity exceeds even the sanctity of the Ka'aba itself. He also describes a marked rise in American public interest in Islam and Quran study since October 7th, which he attributes to widespread exposure to Gazan civilians' visible faith and composure under extreme conditions, and outlines the simple process of Shahada-based conversion.
He closes reflecting on a photo notification bearing his own name attached to a different, murdered 16-year-old Omar Suleiman in the West Bank — a moment that crystallized his sense of "there but for circumstance go I" — and voices hope for a long-term shift away from nation-state-centric worldviews toward a more universal recognition of shared humanity, grounding his own resilience and motivation in religious conviction rather than any expectation of external validation or immediate political outcome.
Excerpts
On why he believes the escalation was predictable, from his October 9th public statement:
“Our Palestinian casualties are always your footnotes. The daily humiliation of occupation ignored, the aggression by settlers and soldiers alike on holy sites and souls, the annihilation of entire families that follows, the devastation of whatever scraps remain in the open air prison of Gaza, unsustainable and inhumane.”
On journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh continuing to report after repeated personal loss:
“Wael was reporting on TV when an airstrike hits his wife, two kids and a grandchild... He gets back on camera the same day because he feels a responsibility to continue to cover the lives of the people of Gaza... Tell me a man that would be put through what Wael was put through and still stand on that pulpit and in front of the world with such dignity, with such grace.”
On his moral framework for resistance, invoking both King and Malcolm X:
“Peace is not the absence of violence, it's the presence of justice... The default of resistance to occupation and apartheid is that it is justified, but there can be transgressions even in resisting occupation and apartheid... Malcolm found it hypocritical to commit the oppressed people to nonviolence while not restraining the oppressor from its violence... Children should not be killed. Non-combatants should not be targeted. We can all agree upon that.”