My friend Noor (above left) has beautiful eyes, but today they look sad. Noor's grandfather passed away and she has had no way of letting her father know because the simple forms of communication all of us take for granted can't help her reach out to her father with this news. Noor's father, Ghassan Elashi, (at right) is a political prisoner incarcerated in a highly restrictive and secretive federal prison program called the Communications Management Unit (CMU), in which I was also incarcerated.
Ghassan is imprisoned for providing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, a selfless deed that the Bush administration argued was analogous to indirectly supporting Hamas, by sending charity to Zakat Committees that prosecutors allege were fronts for Hamas. In the same year US AID, The Red Cross, the UN and dozens of other NGOs contributed to the same Zakat committee to which Ghassan and his charity, The Holy Land Foundation, is accused of giving aid. The US attorney's office appeared to be selectively applying one's freedom to give, and selectively prosecuting some charitable groups, while sliding on others. For this alleged charity, Ghassan is being denied all contact with the outside world and the news that comes from it, including the news of his father-in-law's passing.
The Communications Management Unit is a designer penal program that focuses specifically on isolating and silencing its inmates. The demographic of the CMU's designees is made up of an overwhelming 64% Muslim majority and a smaller minority group of designees that have either highly politicized cases or ones with abundant press attention. This apparent racial disparity and the political nature of these prisons was the focus of a recent two-part investigation on National Public Radio entitled "Guantanamo North." CMU inmates are isolated and silenced by administrative segregation and through heavy vetting or complete denial of contact with the outside world. To make things worse for Ghassan, he was recently stripped of what little communication he was previously able to have with his loved ones from within the CMU, and is now being denied all phone calls, all visits, and all emails.
The United States prides itself on not having any political prisoners and yet the federal CMU programs in Marion, Illinois, Terre-Haute, Indiana, and the Administrative-Maximum Unit at Carswell, Texas (an institution for female inmates) are filled with a disproportionate amount of inmates who are Muslim, and a smaller group of non-Muslims with cases related to tax protests, environmental advocacy, and animal rights activism, all of which are considered political causes. The CMU violates federal designation protocols because most of the inmates sent to the CMU have federal custody classification points congruent with that of prisoners normally designated to low and minimum security prison facilities, and yet they are housed in conditions that at times exceed that of the US's most restrictive "super-max" prison, ADX in Florence, Colorado. (See Alia Malek's story, Gitmo in the Heartland, in the Nation.)
When the CMU was first implemented it may have been done so illegally because it side-stepped the Administrative Procedures Act (a law that demands that federal programs such as these must first be brought to the attention of congress and made available for public comment.) Moreover the Center For Constitutional Rights has argued in Aref v. Holder that the CMU violates constitutionally mandated laws of due process because as of yet there is no administrative process to challenge an inmate’s designation to or transfer out of a CMU.
Ghassan Elashi was accused of providing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza through his charity The Holy Land Foundation. Specifically, the government alleges that Ghassan's charitable contributions of humanitarian aid could be deemed as indirect criminal material support of Hamas under the newly redesigned and over-broad Material Support for Terrorists statute. When Ghassan was arrested in 2004, he immediately saw a Dallas judge and was released pending trial because the judge determined that he would not be considered a threat to the community or a flight risk. Ghassan stood trial once in Dallas in 2007, was acquitted on some of the counts levied against him and the jury deadlocked on the remaining counts against him.
A mistrial was declared on the counts the jury could not render a verdict upon and only after a second trial in 2008 were Ghassan and 4 other men found guilty of allegedly giving Material Support for Palestinians.
Ghassan was later sentenced in 2009 to 65 years in federal prison.
Noor, who has often told me "I am my father's daughter," is currently working on a memoir about her father's experience with the working title Eyes Like My Father. Noor's pen is her expression and in her writing, she seeks to provide her father a voice. Noor works tirelessly to advocate for her father while he awaits appeal, and continues her father's work towards a free and peaceful Palestine by using the mediums she knows best, visual arts, design, and the written and spoken word. As a graduate student at The New School in Manhattan, Noor has combined all of these mediums in a program called Project Palestine, an initiative by New School students to re-center Palestine in contemporary dialogue. Project Palestine's monthly programs began in the fall and the programming continues to outdo itself each month, by bringing artists, poets, writers, scholars, and musicians to the school's midtown NYC campus. One of the programs, Mainstreaming Palestine, consisted of a panel of artists moderated by a student, a performance by Israeli-born hip hop artist by way of Detroit named Invincible, a talk from documentarian Fida Qishta, and a reading from a young woman from Oklahoma named Pamela Olson, who shared excerpts from her new book Fast Times in Palestine, a recollection of her experiences as a press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate. Hundreds of New Yorkers from all walks of life, all religions, identity, race, and orientation attended the program helping to build an open-ended community dialogue around the continued plight of Palestinians. Re-centering Palestine in contemporary dialogue is of the utmost importance to Noor and through her work with Project Palestine, she is able to connect with and reach out to additional supporters who view the issue as having been a polarizing force for far too long in the hands of extremists on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
I recently attended one of Project Palestine's programs at The New School and Noor invited me to join her and her friends for a cup of coffee afterwards. Noor introduces me to her friends--they are Iraqi, Jewish, Korean, a wildly diverse group that transcends all boundaries of race, ethnicity, and identity. Noor wears a contemporary and stylish hijab but some of her friends who are Muslim do not. Noor is not to be pigeon-holed, nor can the group at this table be. They are a new generation of American justice seekers who are able to look past what those in power on both sides of the green line sometimes can't and to see the hearts of the people with whom they share a table. I could only imagine what the world would look like if the microcosm at this table was projected upon the rest of society.
One of the women at the table asks me if I was in the CMU with Noor's father. I explain that I was not, that I was released about a month before he was transferred there. She then asks me to explain what it was like. I did not know if I had it in me to fully explain and I worried about revisiting it in front of Noor, considering that this time out with friends over coffee could be a pleasant distraction away from the pain of thinking about her father. Fighting back tears felt like a rock rested in the back of my throat. In 2008 I spent the last six months of a three-year federal sentence for animal advocacy activism in the CMU in Marion, Illinois. The guards called me a "balancer," presumably to offset the numbers in an anti-discrimination lawsuit the Bureau of Prisons is now facing. During the half a year I spent there I was told in confidence that I was, "nothing like these Muslim terrorists" and that I "would be going home shortly." Indeed I did go home, but Ghassan Elashi and nearly sixty other men with stories similar to his have yet to come home.
That guard was gravely mistaken when he said I was "nothing like" those men. While I am not a Muslim, I am everything like those men. And just like them I felt the same uncontrollable sadness and anxiety when I could not use the phone to call home, when I could not touch my wife, or talk with my mother. Those men had stories exaggerated by prosecutors just as I did, their cases were compounded by politics and amplified by sensationalism in the press just like mine was. At the end of the day they were fathers, husbands, brothers, and friends who yearned to be free with their loved ones again as much as I did. These men showed such grace and selflessness towards each other and to strangers like me despite the glaring injustice and political repression inside the CMU.
Showing empathy towards these men and attempting to understand what it would be like to be in their shoes does not mean that one needs to have a bleeding heart. I lose sleep thinking of the men at the CMU with no way out--the ones with long sentences, the ones with administrative holds against them, the Palestinian stateless citizens who the US refuses to release on its soil and no other country is willing to accept them.
I knew of Noor for about four months before I finally reached out to her. I wondered if talking to her as someone who was where her father is now would be supportive and helpful to her. We met over coffee and I was not sure what to say when I saw her so I asked her if it was OK if I hugged her. I suddenly remembered what it felt like to sit in my cell thinking about hugging my wife again and then I thought of Ghassan. My head buzzed with possible things to talk about. I wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right yet I was certain that I didn’t know if that was true or not. I wanted to say the most encouraging things even though something malignant was gnawing away at her. She smiled at me. Her resilience was surreal.
Writing about the CMU consumes me emotionally. I pray that I can lend the best voice to Ghassan and all of these men stripped from their loved ones; it scares me to think that my voice is only one of a few who are willing to advocate on their behalf. They need more voices to demand accountability and reconciliation from our governing powers. They need you to break the silence of this secretive unit, to talk about it over dinner and to work draw it into the national discourse.
Imagine being told you can't speak to your father. Imagine what it would feel like to not know whether or not he was well, if he was hurt, sick, or simply needed someone to talk to. Imagine living your life in constant fear of never being able to touch him again. This is how Noor feels everyday. I remember vividly how it felt to be inside the CMU and to want so desperately to hug my wife and yet I can only imagine how it must feel to be a father in that situation. Ghassan deserves to be free to be with Noor again. For many people the grief would be debilitating, but in Noor's case we see the opposite--she shares with the world a renewed zeal to continue her father's struggle from outside the prison gates through creative dialogue and grassroots community building. When I ask her where she derives such resilience, she simply says that she "is her father's daughter." Reading her father's sentencing transcript reveals a man who was deeply patriotic, incredibly charitable and a shining example of what it means to be a strong, moral person. America should not bury Ghassan behind razor wire, concrete, and steel bars, instead we each should strive to mirror the brave example he and Noor have set for us to follow.
Stepanian is the co-founder of The Sparrow Project, a grassroots PR outfit that aims to braid popular culture, the arts, and revolutionary activism. In 2002 The Financial Times characterized SHAC as “succeeding where Karl Marx, the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Brigades failed.” Their actions drew the attention of Wall Street and the FBI resulting in a politically charged free speech case called the SHAC 7 trial where Stepanian and 5 others were charged and convicted as terrorists for their activism. Sentenced to 3 years in prison, Stepanian spent his last 6.5 months in a secretive federal prison program that NPR would later name ‘Guantanamo North’. Stepanian’s activism as part of the SHAC7 is the subject of a feature-length documentary due out in 2012 from Finngate Pictures. Since his release from prison Stepanian works for a publisher, consults for social justice groups, and speaks on his experiences at universities.
this is an incredible post, there’s so much here i don’t know where to begin but i hope everyone reads it. thank you so much andy for offering it to us. i’ve heard of the beautiful Noor and her activism many times before.
i had the immense good fortune to attend a seminar a couple weeks ago where her father’s lawyer Linda Moreno and members of center for constitutional rights spoke. moreno’s speech “Political Prosecutions in America: Prosecuting Other People’s Terrorists” told of the grim loops in federal law used to prosecuter Noor’s father. it’s scary what our country does. cruel and scary.
thanks for the amazing post and that photo too. Noor’s eyes are surreal.
I agree, annie. Thank you, Andy.
“Through the Wire” by Nina Rosenblum, presented on PBS’s “POV” in 1990, described how the U.S. government began experimenting with prisons that “torture” political prisoners:
“In 1986, three women convicted of politically-motivated nonviolent offenses were transferred to a secret, subterranean prison where they were kept in constantly-lit near isolation, watched 24 hours a day and strip-searched routinely for nearly two years. The women were not imprisoned in Turkey or Iran or Chile, but in Lexington, Ky. This startling film is simultaneously a frank account of three uncompromising women who would not renounce their political affiliations and a chilling expose of the secret unit in which they were confined.” link to pbs.org
Rosenblum’s documentary, narrated by Susan Sarandon and Dean Irby, won the 1990 New York Documentary Film Festival award and the Munich Documentary Film Festival awards.
link to amazon.com
This situation has to be laid at the feet of the Suupreme Court, which allowed this “material support for terrorism” designation. No one is safe anymore.
Potsy, SCOTUS will just deflect the issue via standing or political question tools. Yes, the same SCOTUS who gave eternal fictional entities dedicated to narrow material profit the same political campaign rights as any living, breathing US citizen. The same SCOTUS who now has in its ranks a member who deemed it appropriate to voice her love for a foreign country as part of the litmus test for potential membership.
Things appear to me to be getting worser and worser faster and faster. Would this be happening if the US hadn’t become an empire?
Noor’s father helped fund the Hamas suicide bombing campaign. He deserves to be in jail.
can you prove that? Or is it enough someone supports hospitals and humanitarian support for a suppressed people Israel would like to see collectively punished?
He was convicted in a US court for this. Is that proof enough for you?
No. The law he was convicted under does NOT require the prosecution to prove any explicit link between the money contributed and an actual act of terrorism resulting from it.
All that’s required is for the US government to designate a group as terrorist — even retroactively — and then establish that the defendant sent money to it. No malicious intent on the part of the accused (mens rea in legal terms), nor any actual attack resulting from the contribution, are required.
Sixty-five years for a nonviolent pecuniary offense which has not been linked to any actual crime or attack, is barbaric. This is a politicized law designed to railroad Muslims. The mirror image action — Jewish funding of Israeli settler groups who are definitely linked to violence — is not merely tolerated, but tax deductible.
It’s unpleasant to point out that this wildly inconsistent policy is administrated by government officials such as Stuart Levey, Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, who improperly incorporate their own religious biases into public policy.
Meanwhile, the CIA funds rebel groups all over the world who slaughter innocents by the scores, even as the CIA continues its drone vendetta on Waziristan, killing hundreds of civilians. But because the murderous spooks wear stinkin’ badges, it’s ‘all legal.’
“He was convicted in a US court for this. Is that proof enough for you?”
No.
Jim H, you said it all.
Certainly not.
Under this insane law you can be convicted for providing material support to terrorists for having communication with members of Hamas, even if you were advising them to adopt purely non-violent tactics. As others have said, this is a politicised law. Add to that the US designation of who and who isn’t a terrorist or terrorist organisation borders on arbitrary. Example: Nelson Mandela was classified as a terrorist by the State Department until 2008. If their definitions were going to be consistent surely the IDF and US armed forces should be designated terrorist organisations. They both regularly target and kill civilians.
Uhh, the Holy Land Foundation “charity” wasn’t supporting hospitals. It was funneling money to a terrorist organization as designated by the United States and the European Union.
In the United States, that’s a crime.
They gave money to the same charities that where still being funded by the USAID programme.
Israel funded Hamas in the start and for many years. Who in the Israeli government needs to be in jail?
”
By Richard Sale
UPI Terrorism Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 6/18/2002 8:13 PM
In the wake of a suicide bomb attack Tuesday on a crowded Jerusalem city bus that killed 19 people and wounded at least 70 more, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, took credit for the blast.
Israeli officials called it the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in six years.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon immediately vowed to fight “Palestinian terror” and summoned his cabinet to decide on a military response to the organization that Sharon had once described as “the deadliest terrorist group that we have ever had to face.”
Active in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and establish a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It is has gained notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.
But Sharon left something out.
Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.
Israel “aided Hamas directly — the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),” said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.
Israel’s support for Hamas “was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,” said a former senior CIA official.
According to documents United Press International obtained from the Israel-based Institute for Counter Terrorism, Hamas evolved from cells of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. Islamic movements in Israel and Palestine were “weak and dormant” until after the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel scored a stunning victory over its Arab enemies.
After 1967, a great part of the success of the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood was due to their activities among the refugees of the Gaza Strip. The cornerstone of the Islamic movements success was an impressive social, religious, educational and cultural infrastructure, called Da’wah, that worked to ease the hardship of large numbers of Palestinian refugees, confined to camps, and many who were living on the edge.
“Social influence grew into political influence,” first in the Gaza Strip, then on the West Bank, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
According to ICT papers, Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement’s spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association by the name Al-Mujamma al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work.
According to U.S. administration officials, funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted to set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini’s Iran.
What took Israeli leaders by surprise was the way the Islamic movements began to surge after the Iranian revolution, after armed resistance to Israel sprang up in southern Lebanon vis-à-vis the Hezbollah, backed by Iran, these sources said.
“Nothing provides the energy for imitation as much as success,” commented one administration expert.
A further factor of Hamas’ growth was the fact the PLO moved its base of operations to Beirut in the ’80s, leaving the Islamic organization to grow in influence in the Occupied Territories “as the court of last resort,” he said.
When the intifada began, Israeli leadership was surprised when Islamic groups began to surge in membership and strength. Hamas immediately grew in numbers and violence. The group had always embraced the doctrine of armed struggle, but the doctrine had not been practiced and Islamic groups had not been subjected to suppression the way groups like Fatah had been, according to U.S. government officials.
But with the triumph of the Khomeini revolution in Iran, with the birth of Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorism in Lebanon, Hamas began to gain in strength in Gaza and then in the West Bank, relying on terror to resist the Israeli occupation.
Israel was certainly funding the group at that time. One U.S. intelligence source who asked not to be named said that not only was Hamas being funded as a “counterweight” to the PLO, Israeli aid had another purpose: “To help identify and channel towards Israeli agents Hamas members who were dangerous terrorists.”
In addition, by infiltrating Hamas, Israeli informers could only listen to debates on policy and identify Hamas members who “were dangerous hard-liners,” the official said.
In the end, as Hamas set up a very comprehensive counterintelligence system, many collaborators with Israel were weeded out and shot. Violent acts of terrorism became the central tenet, and Hamas, unlike the PLO, was unwilling to compromise in any way with Israel, refusing to acquiesce in its very existence.
But even then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue to give Hamas support: “The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place,” said a U.S. government official who asked not to be named.
“Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with,” he said.
All of which disgusts some former U.S. intelligence officials.
“The thing wrong with so many Israeli operations is that they try to be too sexy,” said former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro.
According to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson, “the Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism.”
“The Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer.”
“They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it,” he said.
Aid to Hamas may have looked clever, “but it was hardly designed to help smooth the waters,” he said. “An operation like that gives weight to President George Bush’s remark about there being a crisis in education.”
Cordesman said that a similar attempt by Egyptian intelligence to fund Egypt’s fundamentalists had also come to grief because of “misreading of the complexities.”
An Israeli defense official was asked if Israel had given aid to Hamas said, “I am not able to answer that question. I was in Lebanon commanding a unit at the time, besides it is not my field of interest.”
Asked to confirm a report by U.S. officials that Brig. Gen. Yithaq Segev, the military governor of Gaza, had told U.S. officials he had helped fund “Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists,” the official said he could confirm only that he believed Segev had served back in 1986.
The Israeli Embassy press office referred UPI to its Web site when asked to comment.
Copyright © 2002 United Press International ”
And then continued to do so through 2008.
“In a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office earlier in the week, the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center warned that the government was actively aiding the perpetuation of Hamas rule in Gaza, despite its own stated policies. ”
link to israeltoday.co.il
One of the ultimate acts of cruelty: to forcefully separate families and loved ones.
“Stripped of my name and identity?
On soil I nourished with my own hands?
Today Job cried out
Filling the sky:
“Don’t make an example of me again!
Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,
Don’t ask the trees for their names
Don’t ask the valleys who their mother is
>From my forehead bursts the sward of light
And from my hand springs the water of the river
All the hearts of the people are my identity
So take away my passport!”
(by Mahmoud Darwish/Passport)
I understand you therefore support the Red Cross visiting Shalit and bringing him letters from his family?
Can’t speak for anyone else, but absolutely – with the correction of noting that the Red Crescent may actually be the correct group here.
Well then, how about the “audacity of hope” or any one of your other ships bring to Gaza also letters for Shalit? Yes? No? Cowards.
eee
Well then, how about the “audacity of hope” or any one of your other ships bring to Gaza also letters for Shalit? Yes? No? Cowards.
Last week I visited the Gilad Shalit campaign outside Bibi Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem. They have brought their campaign to the PM’s home because they know what we all know: the Israeli government holds the key to resolving this.
As a Shalit family member told me: “the price is well-known and has been well-known from the beginning: 450 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit.”
Per the Shalit family, Netanyahu needs to free a fraction of its Palestinian prisoners in return for Shalit.
Who’s the coward here?
Elliot,
The price is 1000 prisoners most of them very likely to continue terrorist acts and kill additional Israelis. How come that be worth it for Israel? Netanyahu is very smart not to give in. He suggested to Hamas that the prisoners be freed outside of Gaza and the West Bank and Hamas rejected this.
Irregardless, the question stands, will “audacity of hope” or any one of your other ships bring to Gaza also letters for Shalit? Yes? No?
Who gives a damn about Shalit? I don’t. Hes a POW. let him suck it up. Always you and your ilk to add insult to injury. There is no injustice written about on this site that doesn’t elicit the morally repugnant comments of your crew.
eee –
It’s actually 450 prisoners per the Shalit family. Regardless, it’s a fraction of the Palestinian prisoner population in Israel in return for 100% of the Israeli prisoner population in Gaza.
When you say “most of them” are you conceding that at least some of them are purely political prisoners.
Anyway, what we’re trying to here is stand up for the oppressed. If you identify with the oppressors then the onus of evenhandedness lies with you, not us.
Yeah, I think some Israeli settler stubbed his toe too while defending his stolen water. The next Gaza ship should bring him a band-aid.
Sure I feel sorry for Shalit and his family: the poor dispensable cogs in israel’s killing machine.
But the Red Cross contributed funds to the Zakat Committees that The Holy Land Foundation contributed to, and that the US government designated a front group for Hamas. Why would you want an organization, the Red Cross, that gave “material support to a terrorist group” to visit with Shalit?
Or do you believe in different reactions for the same act, depending on who was doing the contributing? If Elashi is guilty, then so is the Red Cross.
What possible motive except cruelty would there be for preventing contact with family members? What a sick country the US is.
This makes the blood boil, vomit rise in the throat.
My America has come to this.
This prison system gives Hitler-Stalin-Israel-Pinochet good company.
And the selective prosecution (and the use of the “is a front for” as evidence, where the USA publishes a list of proscribed groups and presumably the names of the so-called “front” organizations were not on that list) is absolutely horrifying.
The police-state and national-security-state is beginning to get to me, it really is. (And please tell me how Hamas, even if not-improperly designated a terrorist group, is in any way a danger to the USA and thus belongs on this dreadful list-for-oppressing-Americans.)
(I bet the Mexican gangs operating on the border are more a danger to USA citizens than Hamas ever was or ever will be; they are not listed, presumably because mere criminals, no matter how vicious or dangerous or actually damaging to anyone are not “terrorists” although the argument could be made that they use violence to “persuade” the surrounding society not to send the police or army against them.)
What a simpler, rustic and reassuringly unchanging world we would be in, if Chomsky, or Gandhi, or Mandela for example, were incarcerated in one of those units.
We know that some pesky prisoners use the time inside to develop subversive ideas instead of repenting at leisure.
Now the best way to prevent someone sowing anarchic or revolutionary thoughts is to disappear them. The disappearance method is quick, its permanent, and it shuts up, very effectively, any potential followers.
But in democracies, one’s hands are tied, so that parallel system needs to be implemented: the outcome is meant to be the same, but the sensitiveness of the squeamish are preserved. Hence the “Communication Management Unit”.
The subversives are held incommunicado, lest the ideas they espouse were to contaminate the masses. They can be Kant, Miles and Keynes combined, but they ideas will safely stay inside their heads and die with them.
The Land of the Free is protected. Champagne, anyone?
To the folks above who have alleged that Ghassan contributed to attacks. I would just ask them to recognize that the charity Ghassan was involved in was involved in countless philanthropic ventures, which included building schools, restoring hospitals, and providing furniture for bombed out homes. Some of this work the government argued involved alleged contributions to Zakat comities in the occupied territories which are controlled by Hamas. The US’s case which I read before writing this article does not allege that Ghassan was involved in financing Hamas directly in any way. Ghassan’s case is a prime example of how the Material support law is over-broad and can at times rope in 3rd parties who by no means what so ever should be prosecuted or slandered as extreme.
I would not have written this article had I not believed with every fiber of my being that Ghassan was innocent, and moreover a shining example of charity and good will.
>> Andy Stepanian April 7, 2011 at 5:31 pm
>> To the folks above who have alleged that Ghassan contributed to attacks. I would just ask them to recognize that the charity Ghassan was involved in was involved in countless philanthropic ventures, which included building schools, restoring hospitals, and providing furniture for bombed out homes. …
eee will not recognize anything. He is a hateful Zio-supremacist who employs a brand of (what he terms) “common sense” that defies all logic and reason. His heart appears to be as cold as his hatred is hot.
My sympathies and sincerest wishes for peace and strength to Mr. Elashi and to Ms. Elashi (a stunningly beautiful young woman, if I may be so bold) during their ordeal. May they soon be re-united.
Recognize that Israel’s apologists consider every Palestinian to be a terrorist.
Israelis would prefer it if Palestinians got up and left, leaving the land for Israel.
“He was convicted in a US court for this. Is that proof enough for you?”
From Wiki:
The term “kangaroo court” may have been popularized during the California Gold Rush of 1849. The first recorded use is from 1853 in a Texas context.[1] It comes from the notion of justice proceeding “by leaps”, like a kangaroo.[1] Despite the association of kangaroos with Australia, the phrase is considered an Americanism.[1]
The term is often applied to courts subjectively judged as such, while others consider the court to be legitimate and legal. A kangaroo court may be a court that has had its integrity compromised; for example, if the judge is not impartial and refuses to be recused.
It may also be an elaborately scripted event intended to appear fair while having the outcome predetermined from the start. Terms meaning “show trial”, like the German Schauprozess, indicate the result is fixed before (usually guilty): the “trial” is just for show.
Me: The trials with secret evidence that cannot be refuted are definitely of the “leaping” variety.
This vague ‘material support’ law is truly chilling. As are provisions of the Patriot Act, and our government’s now enshrined practice of eavesdropping on the private conversations of American citizens. These are the hallmarks of a police state. Those Americans who are naive enough to think that Mr. Ghassan’s tragic case has nothing to do with them should think again. The longer these laws stay in place, ostensibly to combat terrorism, the more they will be used to target American citizens for political reasons. The detainees at Guantanimo and elsewhere, and apparently Israel’s enemies living here in the US, are some of the first victims of our fresh batch of hysteria and hate driven laws: Eavesdropping, indefinite detention without trial, withholding of evidence, vagueries such as ‘material support’, etc… These laws aren’t reserved exclusively for foreign terrorists. They’re home grown and the longer they’re on the books the more likely it is that they’ll be used more broadly to incarcerate American citizens for reasons of ‘state security.’ Truly chilling.
First they came for the Arab “terrorists,” then they came for the BDS supporters, then they came for…
Then they came for Mondoweisserz…
And got a kick in the nut of the brain instead.
thank you for this post.
I think her eye will haunt me for a long, long time. I didn’t finish the story. I couldn’t. I don’t understand the isolation, the lack of communication….