This article originally appeared in The Dissenter. The article’s author, Dissenter editor Kevin Gosztola, kindly allowed us to republish it. It captures our reaction to the attack on Chicago’s Nabala Cafe days after we appeared there alongside Gosztola and others to discuss press freedom at an event organized by Defending Rights & Dissent. You can subscribe to The Dissenter here.
On October 21, I participated in an event on the state of press freedom at the Palestinian-owned Nabala Cafe in Uptown Chicago. We spent a significant amount of time highlighting the record number of Palestinian journalists that the Israeli military has killed in Gaza with U.S. weapons.
The event was organized by Defending Rights and Dissent and hosted by Chip Gibbons, the policy director for DRAD, who has previously contributed articles for The Dissenter. Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Advocacy Director Seth Stern and Palestine In America Editor-in-Chief Nader Ihmoud also were part of the panel discussion.
We gathered at 7:30 p.m. and sat at the front of the cafe with a Palestinian flag and Irish flag hanging in the storefront windows behind us. The cafe was packed with people who came to listen to our discussion, which does not always happen.
For an hour and a half, Chip led the panel in a conversation about the most clear and present dangers to freedom of the press, as well as more specific topics, like the leaked U.S. documents on Israel’s preparations for an attack on Iran. I met the owner Eyad Zeid after the event and thanked him for graciously allowing us to use his space for the evening.
The cafe was attacked three days later by a man who took a sledgehammer to the glass door and all of the storefront windows. It was the second time in two months that the cafe was targeted. In September, one window was destroyed — the window with the Palestinian and Irish flags.
I could have spoken about the September attack, but unfortunately, I neglected to mention it. We did not spend any time on the threat to freedom of expression from acts that are intended to promote fear and fuel hatred.
When I first learned of this second attack, I immediately shared a fundraiser by Chicago Irish for Palestine to restore the windows. I was angry and upset that this happened, but several hours later, the fundraiser reached its goal of $10,000. And a day later, the Nabala Cafe has raised more than $15,000 (as of Oct. 28, it’s over $18,000).
Eyad penned an eloquent and inspiring response for In These Times magazine following the first attack. As he noted, “Palestinians and Palestinian businesses have been frequent targets since the genocide in Gaza began. When we opened ([in July), we thought that it would only be a matter of time before someone attacked us.
“As soon as word got out about the attack, our community came through to support us. We raised more than 10 times the money we needed to replace the broken window in less than 24 hours. Our business flourished in a way that we could not have ever imagined, and people got to work immediately beautifying our space, including painting a mural on our boarded-up window and covering the sidewalk with chalk artwork.”
Though, as Eyad acknowledged, “So many businesses and individuals who experience a violating attack like this are not met with even a fraction of the support that we received. Often, they are completely alone.”
Eyad barely involved police (aside from filing a report for his insurance claim). Instead, it was the community that surrounds the Nabala Cafe that helped him press onward.
“I’m incredibly grateful for our community, and more proud of Nabala Cafe than ever. I’m more optimistic than ever that it can be a space of connection and bonding, of love and nourishment,” Eyad concluded.
Art hanging on the wall at the Nabala Cafe
I felt that connection and bonding, that love and nourishment while I was in the cafe. It is more than just some coffee shop. It is the kind of space that every community should have as they resist the military assaults carried out by the U.S. and Israel on not just Palestinians but also Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, and Iranians.
So many Arabs or Middle Easterners that find themselves under relentless bombardment believe their lives do not matter, and community spaces like the Nabala Cafe represent resistance to the atrocities that occur daily, whether they be the destruction of hospitals, the obstruction of food aid, or the assassination of journalists.
“I named the shop Nabala Cafe as a tribute to my ancestral home in Palestine, Bayt Nabala, a village that was destroyed during the Nakba in 1948,” Eyad previously wrote. “Three thousand villagers (called ‘Nabalis’) mostly fled east towards Ramallah. As Israel occupied more and more Palestinian land over time, Nabalis continued to be displaced. Some stayed in Palestine or across the eastern border in Jordan, but we’ve all been forced to find homes in different parts of the world.
“Chicago is home to the largest population of Palestinians in the United States, and we have a strong community of hundreds of Nabalis living in the area.,” Eyad added. “The concept of Nabala Cafe started here, building on the deep community roots of Nabalis that have remained strong over decades, all centering our home of Bayt Nabala.”
No matter how many times some hateful individual hides their face and takes a sledgehammer to the cafe, there will always be a community response that restores and defends the Nabala Cafe. That to me is incredible and why I am more convinced than ever that it was a privilege to participate in an Oct. 21 event at the cafe.
Watch/listen to the event at the Nabala Cafe here or below.
