‘That mockery is painful.’ For Palestinian American businesses, a time of harassment and heartbreak

Last week, Fatmah Muhammad answered a phone call from someone who appeared to be an inquisitive customer. “It’s scary.” But in recent weeks she has also gotten inquiries from several new customers eager to support her Rancho Cucamonga-based baking business. “It’s just something we should never have to see, whether it is affecting our community or our Jewish brothers and sisters.” The group recently released statistics showing a sharp increase in the number of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias complaints reported in the month following Oct. 7, when Hamas militants waged a brutal incursion in southern Israel, killing more than 1,400 people and taking 240 hostages, according to the Israeli government. The complaints came from a broad swath of Americans, including students, doctors, business owners and protesters, CAIR said, noting that it was the largest wave of complaints it has documented since the winter of 2015 when then-candidate Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” In Anaheim’s Little Arabia neighborhood, a stretch with several markets and restaurants, cafe owner Asem Abusir, who is from the West Bank city of Nablus, told The Times last month that, after a pro-Palestinian demonstration took place on the main street outside his shop, a one-star review soon appeared on his Yelp business page. In Los Angeles, someone spray-painted messages — including the phrase “How many dead in the name of greed?” — beneath a mural outside Canter’s, one of the city’s most famous Jewish delis.