The fledgling comedian harassed shoppers at a kosher market demanding they read the words “free Palestine” off of his cellphone.
By Algemeiner Staff
An Arab-American comedian and content creator has stridently defended a video he posted to Instagram over the weekend that showed him harassing Jewish shoppers at a kosher market in the Detroit area by asking them to read out the words, “Free Palestine.”
The comedian — who goes by the name Dulla Mulla and has an Instagram following approaching 300,000 — pushed back against criticism that the video was antisemitic, and that he sought to aggressively confront Jewish-Americans about a foreign conflict in which they have no role.
“You’re mad because I’m going to people to say ‘Free Palestine,’ but it’s okay to for you to go kill innocent kids and men and women?” he stated in his follow-up video posted on Monday.
The original video showed Mulla approaching shoppers at the Grove kosher market in the Southfield suburb of Detroit, and showing them a graphic with the words “Free Palestine” on his cellphone.
“Can you read that?” the comedian, dressed in a sweater covered with Palestinian flags, asked one woman in the store’s frozen meat aisle.
“Yep,” she responded dismissively, as she glanced at the phone.
Mulla then insisted, “Say it!”
“No, thank you,” the woman responded, before walking off.
Other shoppers gave Mulla similarly short shrift. After a store manager approached him, Mulla relocated his act outside the store, where he continued to harass shoppers as they entered.
One man responded, however, leaning into the camera and saying, “There is no Palestine.”
“Y’all hear that s***? You hear that?” a shocked Mulla answered.
After the two conversed for a few seconds, Mulla told the man, “It’s the truth — free Palestine.”
“So what? Who cares?” the man replied. “You have nothing to do in your life?”
In the Monday follow-up video, Mulla was visibly angry as he answered his detractors, at one point shouting, “You guys are claiming that not all Jews are the same but yet the Jewish shoppers couldn’t say two simple words: ‘Free Palestine.’ Y’all just mad because your true colors came out!”
Several commenters slammed Mulla for what they saw as his compromising of the Palestinian cause by targeting American Jews.
“Wallah in all honesty @g_dulla_mulla you’re f***** up for doing that,” wrote one respondent. “You honestly went in wherever that place was and did this for a reaction & nothing more. You obviously knew that there’s bad blood between them and you’re just trying to make it as they are the bad guys. They live here and they have nothing to do with what’s going on over there. Like you’re funny and ma’shallah you have a good community behind you and they look up to you, but you don’t need to do any of this.”
Said another: “Of course there’s going to be some Jewish people who do support Israel, but purposefully going into Jewish communities/shops and doing this is not pushing the movement to further progression, is it? Well done for saving countless Palestinian lives by pulling this cheap stunt.”
One commenter charged Mulla with double standards. “Don’t be such hypocrites by saying Palestine is so oppressed and Israel is bullying them, when you literally are bullying and harassing random shoppers who have nothing to do with what is going on in the Middle East something like 5000 miles away!” the person wrote. “Just let these people shop in peace and do something that will actually help whatever you believe in!”