The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally reserved for laying around or maxing out credit cards, but a group of pro-Palestine supporters made sure Wesley Chapel was given a chance to keep talking about the ongoing conflict between the Israeli government and Hamas.
The group of about 70 people, organized by Ali Abdel-Qader, of the Tampa Bay Branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, was on Grand Cypress Drive and moved into Tampa Premium Outlets.
Abdel-Qader told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that his group was out, in part, to protest what he described as the “slow ethnic cleansing” of Palestine by the Israeli government.
“What is happening right now did not start on October 7. It has been ongoing for 75 years,” he said, alluding to the 1948 “Nakba,” which the United Nations says, “refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.”
