Palestine of America: Inside the largest Palestinian stronghold in the USA

The streets of Patterson, New Jersey, which is half an hour from Manhattan, are decorated with many Palestinian flags, which is also the name of the main street in the city. A few minutes’ walk away is “Little Israel”, an Israeli stronghold that is only separated by a small bridge from the place where many celebrated the October 7 massacre.About 160 thousand people live in the city of Patterson. Another “nice” trivia detail about the city is – six of the terrorists who were complicit in carrying out the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers lived in this city before.

Before we got to Patterson, we made dozens of phone calls to try to coordinate interviewees who would give us the perspective of a Palestinian American, but everyone hung up on us immediately. It turns out that in America it is no longer acceptable for Muslims to talk to Israelis at all. We decided to try anyway and arrived at the main street – Derech Palestine.

The street is filled with Palestinian flags that are raised almost along its entire length. You can see stores like “Mecca Supermarket” and “Jerusalem Jewelry” in it. Three years ago, in a solemn ceremony, the name of the street was changed from Main Street to Palestine Street, which established the status of this city as America’s Palestine.

Andre Sage, the mayor of Paterson, an American of Syrian and Lebanese descent, said at the ceremony: “We are the first city to give the street the name ‘Palestine Road,’ but inshallah, we will not be the last city.”

The Palestinians started arriving in Patterson, a day-long immigrant city that relies on work in the Great Volume after the Six Day War, and the trickle hasn’t stopped since. This year the main street of the city is stormy with demonstrations against Israel. To understand the atmosphere here, it is enough to look at the celebrations that were held here on the evening of the massacre, murder and rape of October 7.

When we reach Palestine Road, not a minute passes and someone already hears our Hebrew. The resident of the place demands that we leave the place and delete all the photographic materials, and even tried to block our car.

A quick look at our investigation revealed that this is the owner of the “Palestine Hair Salon” hair salon, who by the way also serves as deputy mayor. He recently complained on the Al-Jazeera network that he was being threatened because of his pro-Palestinian views.

The “kibbutzim” of “Little Israel” and tensions with the Palestinian neighbors

As in the Middle East, in New Jersey as well, the Israelis are the neighbors of the Palestinians. Five minutes from “Little Israel” is “Little Israel”. Around the city of Patterson are five towns that have been nicknamed “the kibbutzim” and in which the percentage of Israelis is huge. The adjoining “kibbutz” is called Perlon.

Farlon is a much more spacious and suburban place and looks like the embodiment of the American dream. But the cracks in the dream appear quickly. Tal Liani, an Israeli-American resident of Perlon, told us at the entrance to his home that the mezuzah he had placed in his doorway he was forced to let in after a van with Palestinian flags arrived on October 8 with protesters shouting at the entrance of his home.

Liani came to the US in 1993 to do a doctorate and since then he has been working at “Bank of America” ​​as an analyst. He talked about life as an Israeli in America: “I walk with a chain of the kidnapped, I live in ‘Little Israel’ like the Chinese in Chinatown . I go to Israeli plays and Israeli films.”

 

 

 

Orli his wife works in an Israeli philanthropic organization and his son Oron, who was born in the USA, has now left the hotbed of “Little Israel” for university. There he met the real America even in the cell next to him.

“I was at my fraternity a few days ago,” he said. “One of the guys from the fraternity sent everyone in the group a picture of an ultra-orthodox boy with the caption ‘dirty Jew’.” When Oron was asked where he wanted to live when he grew up, he answered: “I want to live here and earn money, but I’m sure that one day I’ll move to Israel.”

From the Liani family’s house we went to eat hummus at Avi Baklo’s “Zola” restaurant. He said that he had very good relations with the residents of Patterson and especially with the Nablos bakery with whom he worked in catering. “Since October 7, I have not been near the area,” he testified.

Walking distance from there, Carmeli Gadiel Caspi lives right on the Israel-Palestine border. She said that she arrived near the events of September 11. “We heard that in Paterson people were dancing on the roofs and were very happy,” she said and said that her friends told her that it was worth coming to Paterson because of the affinity to the Middle East and the cheap prices.

However, the events of October 7 changed everything. “I was standing here outside and guys drove by with cars and yelled ‘Kill a Jew’ and cursed me,” she recalls. “They know that most of Farlon is an Israeli-Jewish area. Now none of our friends cross the bridge.”

The bridge that Carmeli is talking about is the bridge that connects Patterson and Perlon. It functions as a kind of border crossing. The Passaic River flows beneath it and the entire area is green and pastoral. Between “little Israel” and “little Palestine”, somehow in big America despair is still more comfortable and safer greener.