Pro-Palestinian demonstrators stormed the Michigan Democrat’s Christmas Party to confront a lawmaker over his support for Israel — sparking a melee that left an elderly female partygoer hospitalized with two black eyes.
Around 20 to 30 demonstrators swarmed a Detroit bar Saturday night to interrupt the holiday party being thrown for around 200 people by the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party, according to Bridge Michigan.
The protesters from the Palestinian Youth Movement and Party for Socialism and Liberation were there to confront Rep. Shri Thanedar, who had renounced his membership in the Democratic Socialists of America over its support of a “hate-filled and antisemitic” Times Square rally.
Party chair Jonathan Kinloch said that “polite” requests for them to leave fell on deaf ears, which “angered the event attendees, who then forced the protestors” out to protect seniors and disabled attendees.
Partygoer Valeria Berra said a protestor “initiated” violence by shoving her against the wall.
The brawl even featured 91-year-old former Detroit police commissioner Bernice Smith hitting protestors with a cane, according to footage posted on Instagram, an act she justified as self-defense.
“Get outta here!” she repeatedly yells at one of the gatecrashers.
Smith’s sons helped push protestors out. “I started it because I couldn’t believe they were doing this and nobody was doing anything,” one of her sons, Sterling Jackson, told the outlet.
At least one partygoer, Democratic activist Bobbie Johnson, was hospitalized, suffering two black eyes.
“They came in here — they bust me in my head!” she cried while wiping away blood from her face in a livestreamed video while still at the event.
Once home from the hospital, Johnson told the Bridge Michigan the protest was “unreal.”
“I live in a community that’s diverse, I do a lot of work in the Muslim community,” Johnson said. “I have nothing against Muslims. I just don’t see why (they decided to protest) in Detroit.”
Kinloch, the local party chair, denounced the protesters as “rioters.”
“It’s not productive,” he said, while acknowledging that Israel’s revenge war on Hamas has divided the party.
Some protestors, however, maintained that it had been peaceful until they were pushed. Sammie Lewis said her glasses were broken and that they were given “no warning” before being shoved.
“We were met with violence for calling for an end to genocide,” she said. “One part of our messaging is the Democrats are taking a page out of the Zionist book — they are essentially assaulting us and playing the victim.”
The representative they were targeting, Thanedar, 68, had renounced his membership in the Democratic Socialists of America soon after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack.
Hours after the party brawl, he was awakened at 3 a.m. by pro-Palestine protestors in front of his home, he wrote on X.
“Your silence is violence, your silence is abhorrent!,” a protestor screamed on the sidewalk in front of his mansion while horns blared in the background.
Thanedar’s political contrast with anti-Israel “Squad” member and fellow Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents the adjoining Detroit congressional district, underscores the nationwide party divisions that have been brought to the forefront in the Great Lakes State.
Tlaib is the only Palestinian-American in the House, and has faced criticism from her own party and survived a censure attempt from across the aisle for promoting the slogan “from the river to the sea,” a phrase that Jewish groups say is an antisemitic call for the genocide of Israel.
She has said that Biden, the leader of her party, “supported the genocide of the Palestinian people,” by propping up Israel’s war on Hamas.
Michigan is home to more than 300,000 residents of Arab descent and 90,000 Jews, and both groups had recently been solid Democratic voting blocs until recently, the outlet noted.
Now, Arab-American leaders are threating to withhold support for President Joe Biden in the key battleground state over his administration’s support for the war.
Biden’s approval rating from Arab-Americans nationally had plummeted from 59% in 2020 to 17% this year, a poll commissioned by the Arab American Institute in October found.
The president is now trailing leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump in Michigan by an average of 5%, according to RealClearPolitics, a state he won by three points against the Republican in 2020.
“I do believe that the Israeli war has taken a toll on his numbers,” Bernie Porn, president of polling firm EPIC-MRA, said.
“The tension here is even heightened more than maybe any other metro area in the country,” state Sen. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, who is Jewish, told Bridge Michigan.
With Post wires