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<font size=3><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/<br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">March 23,
2010<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>My Father's
Unjust Incarceration <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">The
Case of the Holy Land Five
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By NOOR ELASHI
<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">A</font><font size=3>
decade before my father received a 65-year prison sentence, he handed me
an unusual book, one that ultimately shifted the way I perceive the
world. It was titled Magic Eye, and it contained pages of what seemed
like simple multicolored patterns. But each page had a hidden gift, a
sensational truth. By diverging your eyes, my father told me, you’ll see
an unexpected image. It seemed to challenge everything I’d ever known. I
stared at the flat, distorted artwork until it transformed into a faded
silhouette and then a three-dimensional shape like a group of dolphins or
a rose-filled heart. Years later, as I flip through the pages of my
family’s narrative, I see images that are far less whimsical, and indeed,
painful.<br><br>
Last week, U.S. attorney Jim Jacks filed a motion asking the federal
judge of the Holy Land Foundation case to transfer my fatherGhassan
Elashi, the charity’s co-founderand his colleagues to a prison that
closely monitors its inmates. If transferred to either of these so-called
“Communication Management Units” in Terre Haute, Indiana or Marion,
Illinois, my father’s phone calls would be more limited than they are
now, in Seagoville, Texas. His letters would be monitored, his visitation
time would be reduced to four hours a month and his conversations would
be restricted to English, which is his second language. <br><br>
Perhaps this may seem like an illustration of an effective justice system
at work. But if one diverges his or her eyes, the camouflaged truth will
slowly unfold, until it comes into focus. I, for one, see a hazel-eyed
girl with pale skin and soft dark curls losing her home uponIsrael’s
creation in 1948. The young woman, now my paternal grandmother, often
tells me about her banishment from Jaffa, a once vibrant Palestinian city
known for its orange groves and turquoise beach. I also see a man who was
expelled from his native Gaza City in 1967 and was not allowed to return.
I grew up hearing stories from this man, my father, about the plight of
Palestinians, whom he called “a voiceless population” suffering from
occupation, starvation, demolished homes, uprooted trees, constrained
movement and a devastated economy. <br><br>
As I look deeper, I see the Holy Land Foundation rise to stardom in the
eyes of human rights activists worldwide who had witnessed this
charitable organization alleviate poverty in Occupied Palestine through
bags of rice, boxes of medicine, conventional humanitarian aid. I see my
family scrutinized throughout the 1990s due to agenda-driven reports
linking my father to terrorismreports written by individuals who saw the
HLF’s strength as a threat, for they wanted Palestinians to remain weak
and desolate. I see President Bush shutting down the Holy Land Foundation
three months after Sept. 11, 2001, calling the action “another important
step in the financial fight against terror.”<br><br>
I see my father and his colleagues tried in 2007 and almost vindicated. I
see him tried a second time and convicted in 2008, thereby receiving a
life-long sentence. In both trials, prosecutors argued that the HLF gave
money to Palestinian zakat (charity) committees that they claimed were
controlled by Hamas, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization
in 1995. To prove this, prosecutors called to the stand an Israeli
intelligence agent testifying under the pseudonym of Avi who claimed he
could “smell Hamas.” The prosecutors intimidated the jury by showing them
scenes of suicide bombings completely unaffiliated with the HLF, and they
used guilt by association by linking my father and the other defendants
to relatives who are members of Hamas. The defense attorneys’ argument
was simple: The Holy Land Five gave charity to the same zakat committees
to which the American government agency USAID (United States Agency for
International Development) gave money. Furthermore, none of the zakat
committees included in the HLF indictment were named on any of the U.S.
Treasury Department’s lists of designated terrorist
organizations.<br><br>
Nationally respected human rights law professors such as David Cole have
associated the Holy Land case with McCarthyism, and other experts have
called it a miscarriage of justice. The book that my father gave me had
this subtitle: A New Way of Looking at the World. If one looks at our
world with a fresh pair of eyes, he or she will see that Jim Jacks’
request for harsher prison conditions is unnecessarily cruel, and that
supporting the appeal process is the only way to achieve justice. He or
she will also see that the Holy Land Five are political prisoners, and
that we live in a twisted time, a time when humanitarians are pursued
relentlessly for political purposes.<br><br>
<b>Noor Elashi</b> is a Palestinian-American and writer based in New York
City. <br><br>
<br><br>
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