[News] Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War of Terror
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Apr 4 12:44:06 EDT 2007
While this is a lengthy article, it is crucial reading especially as
it is clear that the origins of this wave of repression and
anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian attacks by the US government have their
origins under the Clinton regime and are not merely a "Bush" phenomenon.
"...the Clinton Administration that has played a major role in the
criminalization of resistance internationally, and the
criminalization of solidarity within the United States -- the 1996
Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. This law, targeting
international movements of resistance to U.S. imperialism, formalized
two previous Executive Orders by President Clinton, creating a list
of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations," to be designated by the U.S.
State Department, to which "material support" was forbidden and could
be criminally prosecuted."
So much for the lesser of two evils approach to this "electoral" process.
cm
Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War of Terror
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6767.shtml
Charlotte Kates, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007
Dr. Sami Al-Arian, Palestinian political prisoner, is being held in a
prison hospital, after a debilitating 60-day hunger strike seeking to
draw the attention of the nation and the world to the injustice
visited upon him, jailed for his commitment to justice and dignity
for his homeland. This is not a scene from an Israeli jail, however,
but from a U.S. prison in North Carolina. Al-Arian's hunger strike
ended at the pleas of his family -- yet without justice for Al-Arian,
whose imprisonment is part and parcel of a U.S. government policy of
targeting Palestinian activists, as well as the broader Arab, Muslim
and South Asian communities, in an internal "war of terror" whose
policies run parallel to that being waged abroad.
The case of Sami Al-Arian is a story of persecution, perseverance,
and, ultimately, the determination of those in power to criminalize
resistance and punish Palestinian activism, subverting not only the
principles of justice but also their own criminal justice system in
order to do so. Sami Al-Arian, 49, is a Palestinian refugee who has
lived in the United States for over thirty years and has, for the
last decade, alongside his prominent role as an activist and leader
in the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities in the Tampa Bay,
Florida area and nationally, his work as a professor of computer
science at the University of South Florida, and his personal life as
a husband and father to five children, waged a prominent battle to
protect fundamental rights within the U.S. from an assault through
secret evidence, racist detention policies, and an all-out assault on
community organizing and solidarity work within targeted communities.
Al-Arian has lived with over a dozen years of surveillance, and eight
years of FBI agents shadowing his movements. Today, he is imprisoned,
despite the fact that he was convicted of nothing by a jury, despite
a parade of witnesses and years of harassment.
Dr. Mazen Al-Najjar, Al-Arian's brother-in-law and a fellow professor
at USF, was arrested in 1997, presumably for a minor visa violation,
which, at the time, should have been a simple problem to correct.
However, as a stateless Palestinian refugee, al-Najjar was instead
imprisoned for three and one-half years on the basis of secret
evidence to which Al-Najjar was never given access. Al-Najjar's case
became a primary target of the then-Clinton Administration's demand
to be able to hold and deport people on the basis of secret evidence,
a case that is haunting today in its relevance to the thousands of
men held around the world -- and the nearly 400 held at Guantanamo
Bay currently -- imprisoned by the U.S. government with evidence they
cannot confront and with no legal process to ensure any sort of real
hearing. In the late 1990s, however, secret evidence had not yet
assumed its terrifying and major place in the government's
extra-legal arsenal of imprisonment and detention. Sami Al-Arian
played a leading role in the campaign to defend his brother-in-law
and obtain his freedom -- a fight in which, it seemed, they were
victorious, as, in late 2000, Immigration Judge Kevin McHugh,
describing the government's case -- based on secret evidence -- as
"devoid of any direct or indirect evidence" to support Al-Najjar's
detention, ordered his release. By mid-2001, a bill to restrict the
use of secret evidence was progressing through Congress, all but one
of the non-citizens held on secret evidence had been freed, and even
George W. Bush had expressed, during his campaign, disapproval for
the practice. (Bush's statement against secret evidence, in a twist
that now seems bitterly ironic, helped to secure the support of many
in the Muslim and Arab communities; in Florida, Al-Arian himself was
key in mobilizing those communities to support Bush's campaign.)
Both Al-Arian and Al-Najjar were prominent activists in the Muslim
community, deeply involved with the Islamic Community Center of Tampa
Bay and the Florida Islamic Academy, as well as dedicated advocates
for the Palestinian cause. The organizations Al-Arian co-founded at
the University of South Florida, the World and Islam Studies
Enterprise (WISE) and the Islamic Concern Project (ICP), produced
volumes of educational materials and held numerous events and
conferences, helping to link their Islamic work with the struggle to
free Palestine from occupation and oppression, as well as providing
educational perspectives often silenced or unheard within U.S.
discourse around Palestine. Al-Arian was an exemplary founder and
leader of community institutions that provided immense support to the
strengthening of the Muslim community in Florida, as well as the
national and international trend of Islamic work for justice in
Palestine. Amidst the defense of his brother-in-law, he was also
president of the National Committee to Protect Political Freedom.
For this work, Sami Al-Arian was targeted for spying, harassment and
intimidation -- none of which silenced nor stopped his dedicated
activism. Following the events of September 11, the repressive
mechanisms of the state swung into action; Mazen Al-Najjar was
re-arrested, on the same immigration charges, and later deported.
Al-Arian, prominent as a spokesperson and leader in the Muslim
community, was invited to appear on notorious right-wing TV talk show
host Bill O'Reilly's program. While Al-Arian was informed that he was
to speak about the response of the Arab and Muslim communities in
South Florida to September 11, instead, he was confronted with an
ambush by O'Reilly based on his commitment to the Palestinian cause,
a commitment that O'Reilly, working from a campaign based on the work
of die-hard Islamophobes like Joe Kaufman and Steven Emerson -- who
sought to blame the Oklahoma City bombing on Muslims -- aimed to
criminalize, attacking Al-Arian on the air, and declaring that if he
were the FBI, he would be watching Al-Arian. The response to the
O'Reilly show on the part of the University of South Florida
administration was swift, and in line with the repressive
post-September 11 environment that saw thousands of Arab, Muslim and
South Asian men rounded up, detained for little or no reason, and
deported, as well as the passage of repressive legislation like the
USA PATRIOT Act: Al-Arian was placed on leave from USF, which claimed
that it could not ensure his security.
While al-Arian had campaigned for his brother-in-law's civil
liberties for years, his were now under attack. Faculty unions
supported him in his campaign to preserve his ability to teach and
work. Nevertheless, the worst was still to come. On 20 February 2003,
Al-Arian was an arrested on the basis of an indictment that charged
him, as well as three co-defendants, fellow community activists
Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatem Fariz and Ghassan Ballut, with various
charges centered around the allegation that they provided "material
support" to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian resistance
organization designated by the U.S. State Department as a so-called
"Foreign Terrorist Organization."
Like the persecution of Mazen Al-Najjar, this prosecution had its
roots not solely in the post-September 11 repression of the Bush
Administration, nor in the infamous PATRIOT Act, but rather in
legislation passed during the Clinton Administration that has played
a major role in the criminalization of resistance internationally,
and the criminalization of solidarity within the United States -- the
1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. This law,
targeting international movements of resistance to U.S. imperialism,
formalized two previous Executive Orders by President Clinton,
creating a list of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations," to be
designated by the U.S. State Department, to which "material support"
was forbidden and could be criminally prosecuted. This list of
so-called "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" was not restricted to
Palestinian (or even Arab or Islamic) organizations and political
movements -- indeed, it has come to include such diverse examples of
resistance to imperialism as the Communist Party of the Philippines
and its associated New People's Army and the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia. However, its genesis was as part of the U.S.
effort to enforce the Oslo process upon the Palestinian people.
The U.S. was deeply involved in the early to mid-1990s effort to
destabilize the Palestinian movement and create a willing Palestinian
security force for the benefit of their Israeli occupiers, a process
deceptively titled a "peace process" that, nevertheless, brought
little to no peace for Palestinians, no real autonomy, a deeper and
wider network of Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza, and no
justice whatsoever for the millions of Palestinian refugees and
exiles, who, after sixty years, continue to be denied their right to
return home to their original homes, lands and properties, from which
they were forced in the Zionist military campaign to conquer
Palestine and ethnically cleanse it of indigenous Palestinians in
1948. Despite decades of valiant struggle by the Palestinian people
within and without Palestine, as well as the vast weight of
international support -- outside that of U.S. imperialism, which
heavily funded and armed Israel, as a Western settler colony within
the heart of the Arab world -- the post-Gulf War and post-Soviet
international political environment, combined with an illusory
promise of some relief for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,
and accentuated by the political weakness of important sectors of the
Palestinian leadership within the Palestine Liberation Organization
at the time in their belief that making concessions to the occupying
power would in some way help to obtain meaningful independence, or at
very least, some form of Palestinian state, led to the ratification
of the "Oslo Accords." The following decade brought nothing but more
misery to Palestinians, as the assassinations of Palestinian
political leaders, the military occupation, the tripling of exclusive
Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the introduction
of closure and economic isolation of the West Bank and Gaza, and a
vast network of checkpoints and roadblocks failed to materialize
anything like independence or a state, while Palestinian citizens of
Israel continued to live under an apartheid regime as second-class
citizens at best and Palestinian refugees continued to be denied
their rights. It is not surprising, therefore, that many Palestinians
and Palestinian political organizations rejected the Oslo accords as
improper and destructive to the process of national liberation,
instead creating a "Palestinian Authority" with no real power except
for its authority to serve as a security force for the occupier and
oppressor, in its assigned role to root out and suppress Palestinian
resistance to occupation. The Islamic organizations in Palestine,
Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) and Islamic Jihad, rejected
Oslo, as did the Palestinian left, including the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). In time, the brutal realities of Oslo
led to the Al-Aqsa Intifada, often termed the "Second Intifada;"
however, this Intifada was far from only the second Palestinian
uprising for national rights, but rather the latest in a long history
of uninterrupted struggle for national liberation that had been
proceeding since before the Zionist occupation of Palestine, from the
time of British colonialism in Palestine in the early twentieth century.
In 1995, however, President Clinton sought to shore up an unjust
process built on an attempt to make the national movement of the
oppressed collaborate with its oppressor by issuing an Executive
Order that declared a "national emergency" to deal with the "threat
posed to the Middle East peace process" by Palestinian resistance --
as well as Hezbollah, for continuing Lebanese resistance to the
occupation of Southern Lebanon, and froze all transactions with
twelve named groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, the
DFLP, and Hezbollah. This Executive Order was soon followed by the
push for the 1996 law, which went beyond freezing transactions to
creating a criminal offense of "material support" to these
organizations. This served an important objective in attempting to
isolate Palestinian resistance and ensure Palestinian submission to
Israeli rule. As a nation largely in exile, the Palestinian and Arab
community in the United States -- and around the world -- was deeply
involved in political and charitable activity to support its brothers
and sisters inside the occupied land and living in refugee camps in
the Arab world. In addition, the larger Muslim community was also
actively involved in supporting Islamic peoples and movements against
occupation in Palestine and elsewhere. The resistance organizations
criminalized through this repressive legislation were not merely
organizations engaged in armed struggle. On the contrary, they were
-- and are -- engaged with all facets of Palestinian life. They are
the political organizations of Palestine, and their activists are
involved in social programs, community programs, unions, women's
organizations, student organizing and all aspects of social and
community life -- and the U.S. government has been quick to deem
large numbers of such organizations to be "front groups" for
resistance organizations, which, if honest, completely ignores the
way in which a national liberation movement functions. Such movements
are grounded in the people -- in grassroots organizing, social
programs and community involvement. The resistance belongs to the
people, and cannot be uprooted merely by a law prohibiting financial
support. However, if observed through the lens of the U.S.
government's political interest in aiding Zionist colonialism and
repressing the Palestinian movement for liberation, it is clear that
these laws targeted not "terrorism," but instead, the entire national
liberation movement of the Palestinian people, criminalizing its
institutions and its movements. (After all, if the U.S. was
interested in securing peace and ending "terror," clearly the
swiftest mechanism it would have for doing so would be to immediately
end its billions of dollars in annual support -- including its
provision of the latest U.S. military machinery, from Apache
helicopters to M-16 rifles -- to the Israeli regime and to impose
sanctions upon that regime for its conduct of terror against the
Palestinian and Lebanese people.)
The criminalization of resistance should be seen within the context
of the history of international solidarity inside the United States
for national liberation movements, most of which are readily branded
as "terrorists" by the imperialist forces opposing them. Take, for
example, the movements in support of the people of Nicaragua and El
Salvador in the 1980s, or the movement against South African
apartheid. Both the Sandinista movement and the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front (FMLN) were denounced as "terrorists," as
was the African National Congress -- an organization with offices in
major U.S. cities whose presence was able to lend vast coordination
and strength to the anti-apartheid solidarity movement. In light of
this repressive legislation and the U.S. government campaigns against
these organizations in decades past, it is difficult to imagine that
they would not be on the "Foreign Terrorist Organization" list of
their day -- leading to devastating and dramatic consequences for the
solidarity movements that proudly supported those popular national
liberation movements and their resistance. The El Salvador and
Nicaragua fundraisers of the 1980s branded illegal, would legislation
to ban funding to the contras or the Salvadoran dictatorship ever
have been passed? The ANC branded an "FTO," would, within the U.S.,
the anti-apartheid movement today be such a singular example of a
successful solidarity movement? In the early part of the twenty-first
century, when it is popular to declare that one opposed apartheid in
South Africa all along, it is often forgotten that the U.S.
government and its mainstream spokespeople for decades supported
South African apartheid in all of its brutal settler-colonial horror,
as today it supports Israeli apartheid in its own settler-colonial
horror, and designated the African national liberation movement as
"terrorists."
A vast array of charitable institutions and social organizations
within Palestine has been branded fronts for the resistance
organizations, and it has never been clear which organization will be
so described next. In the post-September 11 atmosphere of repression,
charities within the U.S., such as the Holy Land Foundation, were
shut down and their assets frozen. Yet, even before September 11, the
mechanism for the suppression of Palestinian community organizing in
the U.S. was activated by the 1996 law and its executive order
predecessor. The Oslo process itself was devastating to many
Palestinian community institutions, as many fell victim to post-Oslo
hopes for the end of the struggle and others sought to reestablish
themselves despite the transformation of much of the PLO's national
liberation structure to the new realm of the PA, limited in focus to
the West Bank and Gaza, and with a newly circumscribed mandate that
fell far short of national liberation. However, these laws were also
laying the groundwork for repression of the community and creating
fear of action and fear of supporting even purely charitable
initiatives for their brothers and sisters in Palestine. Cases like
those of Mazen Al-Najjar, combined with the existing
immigration-based prosecution of Palestinian activists in Los
Angeles, known as the Los Angeles 8, for their entirely legal
activities in promoting the Palestinian cause, were part of creating
fear in the community. Islamic institutions, which, outside the PLO,
faced different post-Oslo challenges than their leftist and secular
nationalist fellow organizations in the national liberation movement,
yet had maintained a basic continuity of organization in the pre and
post-Oslo era.
With the rise of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in Palestine, within the United
States, Palestinian community as well as solidarity organizing
rebounded in parallel to the upsurge in the movement in Palestine.
New organizations were founded and existing organizations were
inundated with support and volunteers. Despite repressive
legislation, the obvious need of the Palestinian people suffering
from the daily brutality of occupation combined with the
inspirational example of their resistance inspired activism in the
community around the world. Repression, however, fell harshly on
these organizations and institutions. Charities that had received
funds from thousands, if not millions, were shut down and attacked as
"fronts for terror," while prominent community leaders faced
insinuations and, at times, direct prosecution. While initially
hailed as "terrorism" cases, in reality, these often revolved around
minor immigration matters or financial matters with no relation to
alleged "terrorism." The enactment and enforcement of this repressive
legislation led to the defunding of Palestinian institutions, both
religious and secular, as funding of the social and community
institutions of Palestinian life, as well as for the financial
welfare of Palestinian families, were directly impacted by both the
freezing of funds and the repressive political climate that created a
well-founded fear of persecution for any fundraising that would end
up benefiting people outside the borders of the United States.
That so many organizations and institutions have continued to survive
and in fact grow is a testament more to the creativity and commitment
of the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities -- as well as that of
solidarity activists -- than it is to the limitations of repressive
legislation. Many organizations have focused on educating the public
in the U.S. about the Palestinian cause, to win their support, while
others have found non-governmental organizations and individual
families to which funds can be safely distributed without fear of
persecution. (It is also to be noted that the U.S., the European
Union and others were instrumental in the Oslo era of promoting the
rise of an NGO class in Palestine in an attempt to supplant the
resistance organizations and the national liberation movement within
the Palestinian social fabric, and that this repressive legislation
can also be seen as a means of directing funding to approved
institutions and attempting to undermine or separate the resistance
from the people through this mechanism. However, such NGOs have not
supplanted the resistance movements, and those NGOs, while
independent of political affiliations with any organization, are
often loyal to the Palestinian cause, rather than to the initiatives
of the U.S. administration, and it is those NGOs that Palestinian and
solidarity organizations in the U.S. have been able to safely
support.) Just as the Oslo accords themselves had sought to segment
out the Palestinian community -- separating Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza from those within the borders of the Israeli regime and
the largest Palestinian community, those in exile in the Arab world
and internationally, the repressive legislation as well as the
post-September 11 assault on the community sought to reinforce that
division and ensure separation between Palestinians here and
Palestinians there.
On 21 March, the New York Times noted that UN officials were
observing that Palestinians were "becoming increasingly dependent on
humanitarian handouts." Given the amount of energy expended by the
United States and Israel over more than a decade to defund, isolate
and undermine Palestinian institutions rooted in the people, this can
hardly be seen as surprising. Nevertheless, the United States has
opted to continue its war on Palestine, side by side with the war of
the direct occupier upon the Palestinian people, and alongside its
own direct war on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and its threats
upon Iran. It has done so not merely by imprisoning its own
Palestinian political prisoners, alongside the 10,000 held in Israeli
jails, including 41 members of the Palestinian Legislative Committee,
among them Aziz Dweik, the elected Speaker of the PLC from Hamas, and
Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, kidnapped with four of his comrades in March
2006 when Israeli military forces stormed the PA prison in Jericho
where they were being held at the behest of the Israeli regime. The
United States -- and indirectly, every U.S. taxpayer -- funds the
provision of military supplies to the occupier and other direct aid
to the tune of over $10 million daily. Meanwhile, the U.S., in
collaboration with the EU, has imposed a devastating economic
blockade against the West Bank and Gaza, in a new attempt to punish
Palestinians for democratically electing a government committed to
resistance and national liberation while demanding that government
accept the "right" of the occupier state -- built on stolen
Palestinian land and created as an ethnically and religiously
exclusive settler-colonial entity based on the denial of Palestinian
rights -- to exist as such a state and that the people of Palestine
renounce their own right to resist against the occupation that has
devastated their lives.
Despite the blockade, Palestinians have not acceded to these
conditions, based, as they are, not on any concept of justice or
legitimacy, but rather on the perpetuation of occupation without
costs. In response, the U.S. administration, as it once attempted to
criminalize resistance and demand Palestinians jail and imprison
other Palestinians for the benefit of the occupier, has attempted to
foment a civil war among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,
seeking out willing collaborators for funding and military training.
Nevertheless, the commitment of the Palestinian people in their
entirety to resisting this attempt has carried the day, despite the
best efforts of U.S. envoys. The U.S. government's war on Palestine,
however, has not been limited to the massive support of the oppressor
while attempting to isolate the oppressed -- it has centered efforts
on the Arab League summit in Riyadh taking place this week,
attempting to pressure the Arab regimes taking part in the summit --
many of whom maintain their power despite despotism and corruption
through the support of the U.S. -- to relinquish their support for
the most basic of Palestinian rights: the right of Palestinian
refugees expelled from their land to return to their original
properties, homes and lands. The return of six million Palestinian
refugees, of course, disrupts the Zionist project to create an
ethnically exclusive settler-colonial state on Palestinian land, and
thus, generations of Palestinian refugees have been forced to pay the
prices of Israeli apartheid, racism and colonialism, kept from their
stolen land at the behest of an occupying power, an apartheid state
ruling by the gun. The United States government, seeing maintenance
of the Zionist regime in Palestine as a primary goal, has devoted
itself, through envoys such as Condoleeza Rice, to seek an Arab
negation of this fundamental right. However, as much as many of the
Arab regimes may be dependent upon U.S. support, they also have
legitimacy to retain among their own people, and it is clear that the
Arab people do not support the attempts to undermine Palestinian
rights sponsored by the U.S., in an attempt to bring about Arab
normalization with Zionism.
In the meanwhile, Sami Al-Arian remains imprisoned. When his case,
and those of his fellow activists, was brought to trial, despite a
parade of witnesses including numerous Israelis, through the court,
he was convicted of nothing, acquitted on eight charges, while the
jury deadlocked 10-2 on nine others. This was the result of over a
decade of FBI surveillance, under repressive legislation, in the
post-September 11 political climate. It is no accident, however, that
Sami Al-Arian was not convicted by a jury; in fact, it was so clear
to his defense team that, rather than present their own defense,
Al-Arian's attorney, William Moffitt presented only four words: "I
rest my case," for Al-Arian's defense, after the close of the
prosecution case, and ten of the twelve jurors wanted to convict
al-Arian of precisely nothing.
Al-Arian's case is not an anomaly in this regard.
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6493.shtml>Mohammad Salah
and Abdelhaleem al-Ashqar, two Palestinian community activists who
were tried in Chicago on "racketeering" charges revolving around
alleged "material support" to Hamas, were acquitted of all
"terrorism"-related charges in February 2007. As William Moffitt,
attorney for both Ashqar and Al-Arian, told the New York Times, "the
Bush administration cannot win this war by trying to make criminals
out of people who are fighting for their freedom ... and two American
juries have said that." The Al-Arian and Salah/Ashqar juries made a
very clear statement that the people of the United States are not
interested in convicting Palestinian, Arab and Muslim community
leaders of "terrorism" for aiding their community and supporting
their people under occupation, which, despite the stand of the U.S.
government, is not surprising.
While U.S. imperialism wages war on the Arab world, invades and
occupies Afghanistan, continues an occupation in Iraq that has
brought about the deaths of over 650,000 Iraqis as well as several
thousand U.S. soldiers, funds a war on Palestine, funds and arms
Israel's war on Lebanon, threatens Iran, and attempts to criminalize
all resistance to its rule as it imprisons thousands around the
world, kidnaps and "renders" people to countries where they will be
interrogated under torture, and holds hundreds of men at Guantanamo
Bay in an international symbol of the apparent impunity of U.S.
imperialism and its brutality, the vast majority of people within the
United States have seen only misery from these policies. The minimum
wage -- on which many are forced to subsist -- is barely adequate for
survival. Millions of people in the United States have no health
care, and costs of education have been skyrocketing increasingly out
of reach for many. Youth of color in U.S. cities are put on a fast
track to criminalization, targeted by often-brutal police and
introduced at a young age to the world's largest prison system.
Women's rights are increasingly under attack, while women -- and men
-- immigrants, who form a major component of the U.S. working class,
have been targeted for severe repression. Within the U.S., around
solely domestic issues, the right to dissent is under attack, as the
administration seeks ever-increasing authority to spy on citizens,
tracking everything from library books borrowed to wiretapping
millions of telephone calls. Meanwhile, the power of major
multinational corporations appears to grow, virtually unchecked. And
yet, the administration attempts to sell its bankrupt policies to the
people of the United States through scare tactics, racist
manipulation, and repression. It deems resistance organizations
"terrorist" and attempts to link the resistance of a people against
occupation and oppression and for liberation to hatred of Jews -- a
deceptive attempt to obscure the reality that Zionism, a political
ideology based on racism and colonialism, and the regime it has
created, is neither representative nor equivalent to Jewish people or
Judaism as a religion -- while waging a bitterly racist "war on
terror" that has been, in reality, a "war of terror" for its victims
around the world, including those in the United States.
Despite the resounding defeat for the government in Al-Arian's case,
it expressed its determination to re-prosecute Al-Arian. In this
environment, with the stress of years of persecution wearing on his
family, Sami Al-Arian agreed to a plea bargain in which he would
plead guilty to one count of "providing services" to "people
associated with" Palestinian Islamic Jihad -- the enumerated
innocuous activities including hiring an attorney for his
brother-in-law, Al-Najjar, and filling out immigration forms for a
visiting Palestinian scholar -- and swiftly be deported. Despite his
over thirty years in the U.S., and the U.S. citizenship of his entire
family, he was willing to accept this in order to finally win some
peace for his family. However, despite the request made by the
prosecution at the entering of the plea that Al-Arian be sentenced
lightly, and primarily to time served, the judge on Al-Arian's case,
Judge James Moody -- who had shown immense bias during the
proceedings of the case, allowing numerous Israeli witnesses to
testify about the costs of Palestinian resistance to Israel while
allowing no testimony about the suffering of Palestinians, or
Palestinian rights -- sentenced him to an additional sentence while
lecturing Al-Arian about his "guilt" in a manner that was, in fact,
completely rejected by the jury in the case. Al-Arian and his
co-defendants, like Salah and Ashqar, were not convicted, or even
charged, with anything even related in the most remote degree to an
attempt to harm anyone within the United States, or even the
government or military of the United States -- every charge against
them pertained only to the Palestinian struggle for national
liberation against Zionist occupation. Al-Arian was scheduled to be
deported following his sentence, in April 2007. As part of his plea,
Al-Arian secured a promise that he would not be called upon to
cooperate in any additional government prosecutions. Nonetheless,
Gordon Kromberg, a Virginia prosecutor who has assailed "the
Islamization of America," targeted Al-Arian as part of his fishing
expedition in Virginia targeting Muslim organizations there through a
wide-ranging grand jury. Despite Al-Arian's plea, Kromberg has
demanded Al-Arian testify before his grand jury -- attempting both to
lay Al-Arian open for charges of perjury and force him to serve as a
witness against fellow community leaders and activists as part of a
government witch-hunt.
Al-Arian's hunger strike came in protest to his sentence, extended
yet again, for "contempt" for his refusal to testify, holding to the
terms of his plea agreement. The use of grand juries as fishing
expeditions in political cases is neither new, nor restricted to this
case -- however, the attempt to force Al-Arian's testimony in direct
contradiction of his agreement illustrates once more what little
regard the U.S. government has for its own principles of criminal
justice, in pursuit of a goal of political repression. Of course,
Sami Al-Arian is far from the only political prisoner in U.S.
prisons. From the many prisoners of the Black Liberation Movement, to
Puerto Rican political prisoners, to Leonard Peltier, targeted for
his work with the indigenous national liberation movement, to the new
charges against Black liberation movement activists from the 1970s,
the criminal justice system in the U.S. has always held political
prisoners in its wars against oppressed communities and oppressed
nations within the United States. The Al-Arian case is representative
of an internationalization of political imprisonment in U.S. jails,
alongside the impunity of Guantanamo Bay and its "military
commissions" and U.S. secret detention around the world.
However, Al-Arian's case is not only an urgent call for support for
his case, which is in urgent need of public pressure to make it clear
that people in the U.S. will not stand for this persecution in our
name (and with our money -- the prosecution of Al-Arian is estimated
to have cost the government $50 million of our tax dollars).
Al-Arian, like his fellow political prisoners in U.S. jails, and his
fellow Palestinian and Arab political prisoners in Zionist jails, is
an inspiration to all of those who struggle for justice. Despite
repression and despite the targeting of him and his family, Sami
Al-Arian never ceased his work with the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim
communities. While he was under investigation, being shadowed by the
FBI and attacked in the press, he traveled coast to coast, continuing
to speak out for justice in Palestine and in support of the
liberation movement of his people. He is an example of the courage,
dignity and bravery of those who resist. Resistance takes many forms
-- including, for many, like Al-Arian and the others who have been so
targeted in these prosecutions -- speaking, writing, educating the
public and building community-based institutions capable of
mobilizing many for justice in Palestine, and it is that example that
stands as a reminder of the tasks that are incumbent upon all of us
that are also committed to that cause.
The U.S. administration engaged these prosecutions not simply to
target a few prominent activists and leaders. Rather, a major goal of
repressive legislation and prosecution has always been to silence the
community of support for the targeted cause, to quiet activism, to
press people to withdraw from their political work for fear of also
becoming examples. However, the only successful response to
repression has always been struggle and defiance in the face of
repression and not allowing our legal and legitimate work to fall
silent in the face of repression. The greater the level of activity,
the stronger the institutions of the community, the louder and more
visible the movement of solidarity, the stronger we are as a movement
-- and the more repressive forces are pushed back. Indeed, Sami
Al-Arian's case is a striking example of repression, of the targeting
of a community leader and -- despite it all, his continued resistance
and dignity in the face of attempts to force him to join the
witch-hunt. With every event for Palestine, every act of solidarity
and support for the Palestinian people, every Palestinian Arab
community institution that is rebuilt, supported or encouraged, the
criminalization of solidarity and the criminalization of resistance
is pushed back. If that activism were not so crucial, vital and
important, its leaders and activists would not have been targeted as
part of the campaign against the national liberation movement. In
much the same way, if the right to return were not the core and
crucial issue in Palestine -- the achievable, indeed, realistic, core
issue in Palestine, it would not be under sustained and direct attack
from the U.S. and its Zionist allies.
Therefore, in the face of repression, attempted isolation, and the
war on Palestine, there is only one real choice and one real hope for
those who seek justice in Palestine, and those who wish to build
solidarity with Palestine within the United States -- holding to the
principles to which these political prisoners, those in U.S. and
Zionist jails, have shown such deep and vigorous commitment: the
right to return, the liberation of the land, the right to resist, the
end of apartheid, the undoing of occupation, the freedom for the
prisoners -- and popularizing them as broadly, as clearly, and as
visibly as possible, within all areas of society, while supporting
the mobilization and organization of the Palestinian and Arab
communities, as well as the organization of the Muslim community,
wherever and whenever we can. In the face of such sacrifices, it is
the least we can do, and a critical task not only for Palestine, but
for all forces of liberation who stand in the crosshairs of
imperialism, in order to achieve the decriminalization of solidarity
and the empowerment of community organizing for national liberation.
Charlotte Kates is an organizer and activist with
<http://www.newjerseysolidarity.org/>NJ Solidarity - Activists for
the Liberation of Palestine and Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to
Return Coalition. She is a 2006 graduate of Rutgers School of Law,
and is admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey.
The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20070404/c5449e73/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list