Maureen Clare Murphy, managing editor of Electronic Intifada has written an important article for Al Jazeera titled Criminalising Palestinian solidarity. Murphy herself has been issued a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury the government says is ”an investigation into violations of the laws banning material support to foreign “terrorist organisations.”
The following video appears on Murphy’s Blog @EI
Back to her AJ article:
None of us have given money or weapons to any group on the State Department’s foreign terrorist organisation list. But what many of us have done is participate in or help organise educational trips to meet with Palestinians and Colombians resisting the US-funded military regimes they live under.
The goal of these trips is to learn about the human rights violations happening in these places and to bring those stories back home to the US, to educate people and to organise to change US foreign policy for the better. Travel for such purposes should be protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. But a year ago the US Supreme Court decided in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project to dramatically expand the government’s definition of what constitutes material support for a foreign terrorist organisation.
Travel to Colombia was the initial pretext for the investigation into the 23 of us, but it expanded to travel to Palestine. This was confirmed with the recent discovery of files accidentally left behind by the FBI in one of the homes raided last September.
The file includes dozens of questions that the FBI wanted to pose to activists – many of them focused on travel to Palestine and Colombia, two asking activists to name every person they know who has ever travelled to the Middle East or South America.
The last link in the blockquote about the discovery of files leads to The Committee to Stop FBI Repression website and offers links to many of the documents pertaining to this injustice as well as an article describing “interview questions” and “The New McCarthyism” I’m fearful of these witch hunts, I’m fearful we have entered into another McCarthy-like era. Murphy, in her AJ article, cites the State Department statements/warnings on the flotilla. The very warnings Audacity of Hope passenger Kathy Kelly also cites:
Washington has also threatened to use “material support to terrorism” laws against boat participants — the same laws which have been used to criminalize the totally legal and peaceful antiwar, solidarity and humanitarian activities of the 23 FBI/grand jury targets in the Midwest, and hundreds of others, mostly Muslim/Arab/South Asian.
