Last spring Condoleezza Rice had to intervene when Israel refused to allow seven Fulbright scholars to leave Gaza. Israel relented. Well now three of the seven have been denied visas to the U.S., by the U.S. One, Fidaa Abed, was turned away when he arrived in the States to pursue his studies at UC San Diego. Back in Gaza, he relates his experience in an op-ed in The San Diego Union-Tribune, and says the denial was arbitrary:
secret charges. All sorts of outrageous claims can be leveled based on
information that Israeli officials garner coercively. Could the secret
evidence against me have been extracted through the torture of some
young Palestinian? Was I even the one denounced, or someone with a
similar name? Was my “crime” sharing a classroom or a lunchtime
conversation with someone Israel believes poses a danger? I have no way
of knowing, and thus no way of defending myself.
David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, agrees that the claims against Abed surely originated in Israel. Then he justifies the refusal, and smears Abed with innuendo:
communicated all its intelligence about the three earlier in the
process, the visas would never have been issued. An official in the
Prime Minister's Office told me that "Israel gave information" to the
Americans "before the visas were issued and after the visas were
issued. There has been an ongoing process. We left no doubt all along
that there were very serious concerns here."…
Given that these were
Fulbright students, he said, Israel might have put aside its concerns
if they weren't acute – "if this had been in the gray area. But it was
black and white, and we told this to the Americans."…it is not the first time that the US has seemed to
underestimate some of the potential dangers associated with the
entirely admirable effort to enable deserving young Gazans to enjoy the
benefits of the Fulbright program.
Dangers? What dangers? Intelligence? Serious concerns? This adds up to nothing. Since when do Americans conduct star chambers on behalf of foreign countries that practice apartheid? Let him in.
