THE HANDSTAND

DECEMBER 2005
 
AUT AND THE THREAT IMPLIED TO THE UNIVERSITIES BY NEW BRITISH TERROR LEGISLATION PENDING


ACADEMICS AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIANS may find themselves subject to criminal indictment if Tony Blair's key proposal in his Terror Legislation is carried forward in the lords debate soon. "The intention of the person who acts, or by their statements seems to incite others to commit acts of terrorism"; these are the key words.

The actual dangers that the previous battle for AUT over the boycott of Haifa University can now be realised in the UK, by Blair's draft which echoes and promotes the exact legisltation demanded by Daniel Pipes in the USA(campus-watch.org.)

Previously discussed in Handstand, this new legislation could lead to, or provoke, the suspicion and intolerance that the guidelines for a Boycott are attempting to achieve. All academic pursuits from standard chemistry to history courses may fall under this legislation exposing academic lecturers, librarians and students to prosecution. Even University Management, according to Vivienne Stern, public affairs adviser to the Union - Universities UK - could be implicated.

Daniel Pipes must be rubbing his hands together in satisfaction, also Professor Blackwell will be able to abandon the massive lobby of Students for her project of Boycott as the legislation if passed will more than satisfy Jewish needs to provide a public platform for the distortion of Academic Freedom that she plans.(See prosecution of Dr Al Arian in Florida below that is an example of the results planned by Daniel Pipes and his Campus-Watch programme.JB,editor)

Joseph Massad on academic freedom

Via Lenin's Tomb, an excellent article by Joseph Massad on why the Zionists have decided to attack American academic freedom:

"What makes these anti-scholarship attacks possible and popular is the existence of a major discrepancy, even a radical disconnect, between popular knowledge and media coverage about the Palestine/Israel conundrum and established scholarly knowledge about the topic. It is this disconnect that the witch hunters mobilise against scholarship as proof that it is not media and popular knowledge, which defends Israeli policy and Zionism's axioms, that is ideological, but rather academic scholarship which has largely uncovered unsavory facts about both. Thus when young American students who come from ideologically charged homes, schools, and environments, attend university classes about the subject, they mistake established scholarship as pro-Palestinian propaganda, a conclusion that is propped up by the likes of Campus Watch, the David Project, and the Anti-Defamation League, all three organisations who make it part or all their business to attack scholarly criticisms of Israeli policy."


I've noticed that people over the age of twenty-five or thirty accept the full package of Zionist lies about Israel, while younger people are much better informed. This fact has to terrify the Zionists. Massad gives some examples of what scholars have found out that conflicts with the mythology of Israel:

"All respected scholars in the field agree that most or all Palestinians who became refugees in 1948 were expelled directly or indirectly by Israel. The debate that exists is about whether all Palestinian refugees were physically expelled by the Israeli army or that the Israeli army expelled the majority while a minority of refugees fled, not as a direct result of physical force but as an indirect consequence of actions taken by the Israeli army and government which might, or might not, have been deliberately intended to expel them. In contrast, media and popular ideological knowledge in the US still insists that the Palestinians fled on their own, or worse, were called upon to do so by Arab leaders (despite Israeli false claims that Arab leaders called on Palestinians to flee, research has shown that they called upon them to remain steadfast in their homeland) while the Zionists begged them to stay!

Established scholarship enumerates all the racist laws and institutional racist practices in operation in Israel which discriminate between Jews and non-Jews, granting Jews differential rights and privileges over non-Jews, and rendering Israel a racist state by law. Popular and media knowledge, in contrast, depict Israel as a democratic liberal state that treats all its citizens equally. It is also established in scholarship that Israel discriminates against non-European Jews (the majority of the country's Jewish population) and also against recent Russian Jewish immigrants, and has engaged and continues to engage in a racist discourse about them and in unofficial institutional discrimination against them (witness the most recent case of discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in admissions to Israeli universities). In contrast, popular and media knowledge depicts Israel as a place where all Jews are equal. Scholarly knowledge addresses the question of Israel as a quasi-theological state, where religious law governs major aspects of Jewish life and that only Orthodox Judaism is allowed to have religious authority over Jewish citizens to the exclusion of Reform and Conservative Judaism, let alone other Jewish denominations. In contrast, media and popular knowledge depict Israel as a secular state. These are only a few examples of how scholarly knowledge is drastically different from and contradicts media and popular knowledge about key issues regarding Israeli society and history."


Massad goes on to point out that the trick employed by so-called 'liberal' Zionists like Nat Hentoff is to contrast 'good' Arab scholars, who accept some of the American liberal consensus on Israel, with 'bad' Arab scholars, who don't accept any of these lies. Hentoff makes this kind of distinction so he can feel comfortably liberal in enforcing book burning. Unfortunately for the Zionists, 'liberal' or not, the truth is gradually working its way into the consciousness of younger people who will eventually constitute the majority of the voting population. The current fascination of Zionists with book burning represents their realization that they have already lost and the truth has escaped their grasp.

Effort for review of anti-Semitism on campus meeting new resistance

By RonKampeas
24 Nov 2005
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=16059&intcategoryid=3


WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (JTA) - The effort by some Jewish groups to establish a government review procedure to address claims of anti-Israel bias and anti-Semitism on university campuses appears to be under threat just as it's making serious headway.

Buried in a massive budget bill passed recently by the Senate are two paragraphs with language stating that the U.S. Department of Education must not "mandate, direct, or control an institution of higher education's specific instructional content, curriculum, or program of instruction."

The inclusion suggests resistance among conservatives in Congress and elsewhere to reforms that Jewish groups say are needed to alleviate what they claim is a hostile environment toward Jewish students on some campuses.

The resistance came to the fore last Friday when three Jewish groups testified on the matter before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, encountering tough questions from the more conservative commissioners. The Senate language, inserted in the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005 and passed by the Senate on Nov. 3, would gut plans to make universities that receive federal funds accountable to the Education Department to the degree that some Jewish groups have sought. "There should be something in there that requires a balance of viewpoints," said Susan Tuchman, director of the Center of Law and Justice at the Zionist Organization of America, a group that has been lobbying hard for federal review of universities' Middle Eastern studies. "It's not enough to ensure that appropriate changes are made."

The American Jewish Congress, also a leader in the effort, has been fighting hard to remove exactly the same language from another bill making headway in both houses, said Sarah Stern, the AJCongress' director of governmental affairs. Stern said the inclusion of the language in the deficit-reduction bill came "completely under the radar." Three other Jewish groups involved in pressing for the legislation said they only learned of the language in recent days, some because of JTA's questions. At least one of the groups was still reviewing the legislation and wasn't ready to condemn it outright. The American Jewish Committee said other provisions in the bill might meet the standards it has been seeking by giving the secretary of education some limited powers of review.

"It has always been our contention that those reforms would not allow the secretary to interfere with academic freedom or autonomy of institutions," said Richard Foltin, the AJCommittee's legislative director.

A U.S. House of Representatives version of the deficit-reduction bill that scraped through last Friday does not include the language, and Jewish groups were hoping it might disappear in the version that emerges in the House-Senate conference before Christmas break. It's not clear which senator inserted the language during the lengthy process of composing a bill that deals mostly with budget cutting to offset the costs of war and hurricane recovery, but it would have had to pass Republican muster. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the chairman of the Senate's Budget Committee, initiated the bill, and it passed 52-47, largely along party lines.

As Foltin noted, the bill does provide some redress. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings would be able to suspend federal funding for a university for 60 days if she deems a complaint serious enough, but after that she would be required to resume the funding whether or not the complaint has been resolved. She also would be authorized to take such complaints into account when renewing grants to universities.

Additionally, the bill suggests linking funding for universities to their success in creating a cadre of Middle East experts in government.

However, the language that keeps the education secretary from touching "specific instructional content, curriculum, or program of instruction" means that she wouldn't be able to require a university's Middle East studies department to balance a reliance on Arabists such as Edward Said with other historians with a more pro-Western tilt, such as Bernard Lewis.

Groups like AJCongress, ZOA and the Institute for Jewish and Community Research allege that anti-Western bias pervades American universities's Mideast studies departments. Other groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the AJCommittee, agree that there is a problem but say progress is being made. "Institutional anti-Semitism, discrimination and quotas against Jewish students are largely a thing of the past," the ADL said in written testimony to the Commission on Civil Rights.

Should the language survive the House-Senate conference, another bill promoting much tougher measures could fall by the wayside, Jewish lobbyists said. Legislators could argue that a solution is already on the books, so they don't need to pursue the matter further. Jewish groups favor another bill that would establish an advisory committee to review complaints of bias, a measure that academic organizations say smacks of McCarthyism. That has passed a House committee but has yet to be considered by the full House, meaning the diluted version passed by the Senate on Nov. 3 is much further advanced. Witnesses at the Civil Rights Commission hoped they would get a sympathetic ear for the proposed advisory committee. The commission has no enforcement powers, but its recommendations would have moral force in Washington.

Citing a litany of complaints from Jewish students across the country, Stern of the AJCongress, Tuchman of ZOA and Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, painted a picture of a pervasively hostile environment. "Anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism are systemic ideologies in higher education," Tobin said.

Instead of the sympathy they expected, the witnesses got a sometimes-testy exchange on the role of government in policing campuses. Significantly, the toughest questions came from commissioners most closely associated with the Bush administration, which recently revamped the commission to more closely reflect its own conservative values.

"I am extremely nervous about administrative oversight on university campuses," said Abigail Thernstrom, the commission's vice chairwoman. "You do not want administrators waking into classrooms and deciding what a professor is teaching is acceptable or unacceptable." Stern said such worries were unfounded. By mitigating bias, a federal advisory panel that would review complaints would encourage debate, not inhibit it, she said. "Any intellectually honest person with integrity would say, 'Wait a minute, there is another side here,' " she said.

Tobin said the threat of withdrawing federal funding would be a last resort meant to spur universities into using tools already at their disposal - for instance, increasing the involvement of trustees in hiring and firing decisions. "This truly is a nuclear option," he said of the proposed legislation.

The witnesses got a more sympathetic hearing from the two Democrats on the eight-person commission. "Simply because something happens in the arena of a university does not qualify it as untouchable," said Michael Yaki, a San Francisco lawyer. He also chided conservatives on the commission who suggested that only physical harassment was out of bounds, noting that the legal definition of sexual harassment includes its verbal forms. The conservative commissioners were equally skeptical of a federal role in policing anti-Semitism on campus.

Thernstrom, who is Jewish, said posters that had appeared on campuses that depicted Israelis as baby-killers were appalling, but might be part of the necessary give-and-take of university life.
"I don't want universities to be comfortable places for students," she said.
From: Peter Marshall <petemar@tsn.cc> and Peter Myers


The problem for AUT, whose members voted down any such Boycott on Haifa University or Bar Ilan,Tel Aviv, has been that it must be put up again for debate, and the advantage of a pause has been taken by the pro-boycott brigade. They have constantly been lobbying students who probably know little about the consequences that this could bring about for their own universities and for education. But if the general publicity ever manages to surface beyond hidden paragraphs under such obscure headlines as glorification in the education Guardian they may scent danger.

The UUK President Drummond Bone says that the bill is drafted in such a way that it "might well get in the way of normal academic work," "One gets worried that chemists might be forbidden from producing a certain kind of noxious substance - where do you draw the line? Librarians are worried about lending material which might be construed as having details about terrorism. Nobody is disputing the principle, but it is terribly loosely drafted in our view. Will the politicians of the time listen to the lobby of the Teacher's unions or the Librarians ?


    Ilan Pappe wrote:

I said that the peace movement in israel has no
chance in the world of bringing an end to the occupation because it is so
pathetically small and therefore only sanctions and boycott can do the job.

The Principles for which we must make a Stand
Dave Kersting comments:

    To oppose “the occupation,” instead of taking a principled stand against any and all ethnic discrimination (upon which the “Jewish state” is founded), is a purely Zionist-apartheid position, 100% racist and 0% pacifist. An officially racist “peace movement” - refusing to give Zionist racism the primary emphasis and zero tolerance that are standard for all other cases of openly declared racism – is no peace movement at all.

Michael Warshawski comments:

I believe that there is an urgent need of analysis of the activities with the goal to raise their effectiveness. To create a kind of priority list which will take into considerations the limited forces and the great needs.I believe that it is high time to launch a campaign calling to recognize the Palestinians as indirect victims of the Nazi Judeocide and of the Judaeophobia and that they should be indemnified accordingly from monies already gathered by the Holocaust industry. I talked with some Jewish restitution activists and they don't even dream to demand the whole sum. One of them said that they would not know what to do with so much money, as they believe that most of the owners or their heirs would not be found.
It should be demanded that such heirless assets should go to finance peace projects and should be used for Palestinians. This would be a first step towards the compensation of Palestinians for their own properties confiscated as of 1948.

Such a campaign doesn't need a mass movement of activists, though it will need a wide support, but not so broad as needed for effective boycott and sanctions.

And this last is the crux of the matter for it will need the determination not of organisation, but a large public participation over a certain period, as for instance obtained by the workers in Dunnes Stores Dublin re. Apartheid in the past.

The Prosecution of Dr Al-Arian in Florida USA

Moreno said the clearest example of Dr. Al-Arian's intent was the
Islamic Academy of Florida, a full-time school he built from
nothing. The school went from three or four classrooms when it first
opened in 1992 to 10 buildings on 14.5 acres of land seven years
later. She said Dr. Al-Arian was so dedicated and committed to
education that he "bought books out of his own money." She pointed
to the testimony of IAF graduate Alia Radwan, who said the school
prepared her for everything. "It prepared me to be a constructive
citizen and a well-rounded individual," she quoted Radwan as
saying. "The school was about teaching children to be citizens of
this great country. This is what Sami Al-Arian was about. This is
the choice that he made," Moreno concluded.

Closing Arguments in Dr. Al-Arian's Trial, TAMPA--
The government has alleged that Dr. Al-Arian's legitimate organizations---the Islamic Committee for Palestine, World and Islam Studies Enterprise and Islamic Academy of Florida-- were fronts for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. While they attempted to prove that Dr. Al-Arian and his three co-defendants had "criminal intent" to further the unlawful goals of the PIJ, all they have shown was mere association and involvement in nonviolent, charitable activities.

Closing arguments in the case of Dr. Sami Al-Arian and his
co-defendants began on Monday, November 7 with prosecutors admitting
the evidence in the case was circumstantial.

To cover the fact that there is no evidence pointing to criminal
activity, prosecutor Cherie Krisgman asked jurors to "use their
common sense" to "connect the dots." On Tuesday, Dr. Al-Arian's
lawyers, William Moffitt and Linda Moreno, argued that the
government failed to prove its case against Dr. Al-Arian and present
any evidence to back up its claims. Moreno said "when Ms. Krigsman
asks you to use your common sense, she's asking you to take a leap
of faith, to suspend your disbelief." More importantly, Moffitt and Moreno argued that the case is about nothing more than First Amendment-protected speech. They made impassioned pleas to stand up for the principles upon which the United States was founded and to defend Dr. Al-Arian's right to speak out against the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestinians.

Moreno began her closing argument by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen,
the prosecution against Sami Al-Arian is built entirely on his
words, built on his beliefs, and that is un-American." For example,
during the five-month trial, the prosecution repeatedly referred to
the Occupied Territories simply as "the territories" to de-
contextualize the plight of Palestinians. Furthermore, Moreno
explained basic concepts related to Palestinians such as "Diaspora,"
or the forced migration of a people. Moreno said that to completely
dismiss or deny the occupation is "the very reason Dr. Sami Al-Arian
is sitting at that table." Words are very important, "they can
rewrite history. Words can inspire people." In this
prosecution, "words have been redacted, censored, edited,
manipulated and exploited."

Moreno emphasized that many of the conversations introduced as
evidence by the government were edited and redacted (large portions
were removed). "Context is important. Censorship is dangerous," she
told the jury. Pointing to several books introduced as evidence,
Moreno said prosecutors merely translated the title or author,
disregarding the table of contents, let alone the books themselves.
Throughout the trial, and during its closing argument, the
prosecution repeatedly pointed to publication or possession of
magazines such as "Inquiry," a periodical edited by Dr. Al-Arian, as
evidence of criminality, Moreno said such arguments are
dangerous. "The government wants you to believe there's something
terribly wrong with what's in those magazines," she said. "It's un-
American to bar books." Later, Moreno pointed out that Noam Chomsky
and former Congressman Paul Findley were both contributing writers
for Inquiry.

Citing the testimony of the government's own witness, Palestinian
Authority legislator and scholar Dr. Ziad Abu Amr, Moreno described
the daily hardships and suffering Palestinians face under military
occupation and their dire economic situation. For example, she said
unemployment is at over 50 percent in Gaza, whose GNP per capita is
less than $1,000. "Not a Palestinian home was unaffected by the
occupation," Moreno quoted Abu Amr as saying. He also testified that
Gaza was a "big jail." Moreno's main point to the jury was summed up
in the following statement, "This is not a criminal case. This is a
political case."

Dr. Al-Arian's attorneys also said that according to an affidavit by
Abu Amr, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has a "small military
wing autonomous from the political wing" of the group.

Moreno also spoke about the first Intifada, explaining that it took
the form of nonviolent protests, mass demonstrations and strikes,
but was confronted by a lethal response by the Israeli military. It
was in the context of the first Intifada that the Islamic Committee
for Palestine (ICP) conferences took place, Moreno explained. In
terms of the five ICP conferences, Moreno said they were open,
videotaped and held in hotels. They were not underground. Dr. Al-
Arian invited the FBI to come to them. They were focused on
Palestine, and the first conference, held in 1988, was 40 years
after the original Israeli occupation. She said, "We need to look
at them in context, and reject the government's cruel and cynical
interpretation of these speeches." Moreno then pointed out that
after wire-tapping Dr. Al-Arian for nine years, all the government
could come up with were 300 to 400 phone calls between the four
defendants out of nearly half a million to introduce as evidence.

Moreno said the clearest example of Dr. Al-Arian's intent was the
Islamic Academy of Florida, a full-time school he built from
nothing. The school went from three or four classrooms when it first
opened in 1992 to 10 buildings on 14.5 acres of land seven years
later. She said Dr. Al-Arian was so dedicated and committed to
education that he "bought books out of his own money." She pointed
to the testimony of IAF graduate Alia Radwan, who said the school
prepared her for everything. "It prepared me to be a constructive
citizen and a well-rounded individual," she quoted Radwan as
saying. "The school was about teaching children to be citizens of
this great country. This is what Sami Al-Arian was about. This is
the choice that he made," Moreno concluded.

Next, Bill Moffitt began his part of the closing argument. "Ladies
and gentleman, today I listened to my client called a thug and a
crime boss, in fact, Tony Soprano." Moffitt said the best evidence
needed for the First Amendment is prosecutor Krigsman's closing
argument. "If you listened to Ms. Krigsman, you would not know there
was a war going on for 50 years, or a harsh military occupation in
the occupied territories. You would have thought that Palestinians
and Israelis lived in peace for the last 50 years, except for these
four gentlemen. And you'd think that Sami Al-Arian sprung up from
nowhere simply to do evil. No mass arrests, intimidation, torture,
etc. You might even believe that universities are open, travel
throughout the Middle East is unlimited. You might even believe that
Palestinian children and Israeli children are treated the same by
the occupier."

Continued Moffitt: "If only they would not trouble us by writing,
reading and thinking about the occupation. If only (the
Palestinians) could see the reality in Ms. Krigsman's terms. If only
they would share the view of their oppressors." Pointing to Dr. Al-
Arian and raising his voice, Moffitt said: "This man has the
temerity to be angry about how his people are treated, and then he
has the audacity to write and publish and think about it – all
crimes. And he has the audacity to speak about it. How horrible.
Where did he get the idea he could do that? Certainly it wasn't in
the occupied territories."

He continued, "One way to persuade people not to listen to him is to
call him a thug." He asked, "Why should we care about the
Palestinians? They have no army, they have no oil, let's ignore
them. Let's ignore the context." He said that one of the problems
we have, as a society, is the judgment we give to one's country of
origin, or skin color. "So we can remorse over the deaths of the
children of one side, and the other side are collateral casualties.
How does that feel if you're on the side that's a collateral
casualty?"

Moffitt said that there are numerous responses to those on the side
of the collateral casualties. There are angry responses, there are
violent responses. He said Dr. Al-Arian chose to respond by opening
a dialogue and debate and discussing it in an academic context. He
said Americans "should be proud he would come here to express
himself." He asked the jury if there was something odd or peculiar
about Palestinians, that they shouldn't have what Americans
have. "Is it reasonable that they should want to come to the
richest country in the world?" "Is it offensive to you that they
should want to feed their children?" Moffitt said.

Referring to the prosecution's frequent references to Dr. Al-Arian's
advanced degrees in a pejorative manner, Moffitt said, "My client's
education is being used against him. If he allowed his people to be
exploited, to be killed, and failed to speak up, we wouldn't be here
today. And if he were a farmer in the field, rather than an
intellectual, that would be the case." Moffitt said, "I'm told that
there's nothing in this case that has to do with the First
Amendment, but I'm confronted over and over with evidence of
speeches and publications." Reading from the Declaration of
Independence, Moffitt said, "We hold these truths to be self
evident, that all men are created equal – even Palestinians." He
concluded: "Al-Arian's dreams for his people are not that different
from yours or mine."

The next day, Moffitt continued his closing argument by bringing up
World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE) publications and events.
WISE published peer-review journals and held academic conferences
and round-table discussions that were well-attended forums where
ideas about the Middle East were debated. "Do you think this kind of
academic production would have been possible in Palestine in the
early 90s?" he asked. He described WISE as "the only place in the
world where Palestinians were given that level of humanity."
Referring once again to the government, Moffitt said that to call
WISE's accomplishments "propaganda," was to "cheapen the academic
efforts of all who participated."

Turning his attention to violence, Moffitt said none of the evidence
shows any discussion about planning any violent activity. Finally,
he asked the jury to have the courage to maintain the "great values
of our society that we are defending. Without the First Amendment,
there is no United States," he concluded.

For the rest of the week, defense attorneys for the three co-
defendants also gave their impassioned pleas to jurors, arguing that
there was no evidence in the politically-motivated case. Sameeh
Hammoudeh's attorney Steven Bernstein pointed to numerous mistakes
in the government's investigation, including the mistaken
identification of various documents. "At best, they were mistakes,"
he said, "but at worst, they are lies."

Bernstein then utilized the testimony of Hammoudeh's father, 78-year
old Taha Hammoudeh who came from the West Bank to testify in his
son's trial. Prosecutors had colored several telephone
conversations between father and son about donations to Palestinian
charities in a sinister light. Providing detailed receipts and
documentation, Taha Hammoudeh shattered the government's insinuation
that Sameeh's donations from the Tampa Muslim community had gone to
anything other than charitable causes.

During their presentation, attorneys for Ghassan Ballut continued
their argument that the case against their client was completely
devoid of any evidence. In fact, the government had not monitored
Ballut's telephone or come away with a single incriminating document
from searches of his home and bank records. Mocking the
government's claims of a "mountain of evidence," attorney Bruce
Howie displayed to the jury the dearth of documents related to
Ballut, in the form of a small stack of telephone transcripts.

In reference to the government's notorious graphic titled "the cycle
of terror," Howie produced a "cycle of nonsense" that demonstrated
the absurdity of the government's theory, in which Ballut's non-
disclosing of alleged terrorist ties on immigration forms was proof
of his involvement in a conspiracy. Prosecutors frequently employed
such circular reasoning throughout their arguments.

Howie's co-counsel, Brooke Elvington, referred to the
government's "Google search" method of investigation, in which the
mere mention of someone's name in a conversation was submitted as
evidence of a crime. In one instance, a 57-page telephone
transcript between two people made brief, casual mention of Ballut
in one line, but when asked, FBI Case Agent Kerry Myers stated that
the sole purpose of the phone call was to inform about Ballut's
activities.

Elvington also blasted the government's absurd inferences and
insinuations, none of which were accurate or based on any facts.
The selective use of speech was used to draw a portrait that simply
did not reflect the reality of the situation. Very often,
prosecutors attempted to imply the involvement of other individuals
outside the case in supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad, without
offering a shred of evidence. In the case of El-Ehssan, a Gaza
charity supported by Ballut and Hatim Fariz, Elvington assured
jurors that not a shred of proof existed that it was run by the
PIJ. "Just because they say it, doesn't make it so," she said,
referring to the government. In fact, all documentation in the case
supports the contention that it was a legitimate charity that
provided support to needy Palestinian families. However, even if the
charity were connected to the PIJ, it is only a crime to donate to
it if it furthered illegal activity by the PIJ.

The final defense presentation was given by Federal Public Defender
Kevin Beck on Thursday afternoon. Beck argued passionately on
behalf of Fariz, pointing out that the government had made numerous
glaring errors in its investigation. Arabic translators
demonstrated a clear agenda when they frequently mistranslated
innocent words to give them a malicious meaning, such as when a word
that means "pancakes" was offered to jurors as "brigades."
Similarly they avoided translating words that shed light on the
benign nature of certain documents, as when they ignored the
word "charitable" that described one organization supported by Fariz.

The government had even gone as far as to misidentify key
individuals in the case, and would simply alter their theory to fit
the new individual's identity when the truth was discovered.
Overall, Beck painted a picture to jurors of a prosecution intent on
criminalizing innocent activities at any cost, even manipulating the
truth to fit its malevolent theory.

Following the final defense closing argument, the prosecution was
given a two-hour rebuttal. Prosecutor Terry Zitek took to the
opportunity to continue the government's racist tirade. After
hearing Krigsman refer to Dr. Al-Arian and his co-defendants
as "thugs," "criminals," "liars," and other insults, Zitek went
further during rebuttal, calling them "dogs." It appeared to most
observers that in their zeal to defend the brutal military
occupation by Israel, prosecutors had even adopted the racist
terminology of the occupiers.

This case has major implications. If the prosecution succeeds, there
is a danger that the government will continue criminalizing
political speech and organizations by accusing members of criminal
conspiracies and imprisoning them.

On Monday, November 14, 2005, prosecutors will conclude their
rebuttal. Judge James Moody is then expected to read jury
instructions and jurors will begin deliberations.

Professor Edward Said wrote in one of his last texts:
Politicians can talk and do what they want, and so can professional demagogues. But for intellectuals, artists and free citizens there must always be room for dissent, for alternative views...and most importantly there must be ways and possibilities to advance human enlightenment and liberty....It is a universal value to be found in every tradition that I know of....The purpose of education is not to accumulate facts or memorize the 'correct' answer, but rather to learn how to think critically for oneself..... In deploring the opponents of the idea that young Israelis would benefit from reading a major Palestinian author, many people argued that history and reality couldn't be hidden for ever, and that censorship of that kind has no place in the educational curriculum......The point is to make the powerful oppressor uncomfortable abd vulnerable both morally as well as politically. Suicide bombing doesn't achieve this effect and neither does anti-normalization, which in the case of the South African liberation struggle was used as a boycott against visiting academics....The fear of being addressed by what their collective memory has suppressed was what stirred up the whole debate about Palestinian literature. Zionism has tried to exclude non Jews, and we, by our unselective boycott of even the name 'Israel' have actually helped , rather than hindered this plan..... The main point has to be that real life cannot be ruled by taboos and prohibitions against critical understanding and emancipatory experience. Those must always be given the highest priority. Ignorance and avoidance cannot be adequate guides for the present. Parallels and Paradoxes, Bloomsbury 2003.

AUT Internet site:April6th A Boycott:As of noon on Friday, more than 120 university academics and researchers from across Europe had signed during the course of three days, an open letter, presented for publication in The Guardian, calling for a moratorium on all future cultural and research links with Israel at European or national level until such time as the Israeli government abide by UN resolutions and open serious peace negotiations with the
Palestinians along the lines of the recent Saudi peace plan.
A further text was published in Counterpunch with this proviso:The statement gave an overview of the Palestinian condition, a criticism of the "West" in allowing this situation to continue, and then a carefully reasoned argument why academics and students should engage in the time honored peaceful protest, an academic boycott of Israeli institutions. When Professor Alam invited some academics to consider joining the academic boycott against Israel, he said, "one wrote back saying how disappointed he was that I should support this boycott, since it was destructive. I felt called upon to explain why I thought the boycott was morally justified." Smear
Mongers by Paul de Rooij CounterPunch http://www.counterpunch
an excerpt:Another disturbing development is campus-watch.org, a website compiling "black lists" of faculty at US campuses whom it considers biased, and compiling "dossiers" on them. Not surprisingly, this website is yet another creation of Daniel Pipes, an ardent Zionist pundit. The website employs McCarthy-ite tactics that do not promote academic freedom or open debate. In an open and democratic society, academic debate is advanced by the force of argument, and not by sinister slander or veiled threats. "We are watching you," isn't the behavior expected in US academia. Or as Prof. Alam, one of those targeted, put it, "I see it as a serious challenge, indeed, an affront, to academic freedom and freedom of speech in United States. By creating a dossier on professors who have written critically about Israel, they are inviting their colleagues and students to spy on them and perhaps harass them. What would happen to academic freedom if every
group in this country did the same?"


A Recent Text by Prof. Illan Pappe, Bar Ilan University, who was drawn into the campaign by Prof. Susan Blackwell
s.a.blackwell@bham.ac.uk
and Mona Baker
palmem@monabaker.com


The Last Moment of Hope

By ILAN PAPPE

This month marks the fifth anniversary of the Palestinian uprising and may well be the last moment for making peace in Israel and Palestine. Peace is not only important for the people who live there. It will pay dividends to the world and especially to the United States.

This is because a prolonged conflict in Palestine will destabilize the Arab world and allow its leaders to continue ignoring urgent issues such as poverty and democracy. The unsolved Palestinian question means that that the age of colonialism is not over and that dealing with poverty or liberty can be described as a luxury. As long as the Palestinian refugees who were expelled by Jewish newcomers in 1948 cannot return home and as long as the military occupation of the territories conquered by Israel in 1967 persists, there will be no lasting solution. No peace proposal to date has offered a fair solution to either the Palestinian refugees or those continuing to live under a brutal military occupation.

This perception of Israel as an aggressive relic of a colonialist past is widespread in the Muslim world. And it has ominous implications for the United States. Israel could not have uprooted close to a million Palestinians in 1948 and occupied another two million for the past 38 years without American support. Indeed, American taxpayers foot the bill for a $3 billion annual grant. This financial backing, combined with unremitting diplomatic support, has enabled Israel to sustain the longest occupation of another people in modern times.

Here are the horrors inflicted on the Palestinians that are witnessed by people across the Arab and Muslim world: widespread home demolitions, the confiscation of private property for the construction of Jewish-only settlements and Jewish-only roads and the expulsion of Palestinian Christian and Muslim people. And their wrath is not always limited to protesting Israel, the occupier and expeller. They sometimes also challenge --with condemnable terror --the United States, whom they see as the superpower behind the oppressor. The US does not need to be embroiled in a tense relationship with a fifth of the world population.

And yet this is a moment of opportunity. It is unrelated to the Gaza pullout, which has turned out to be an internal Israeli ploy to substitute direct occupation with an indirect one. The opportunity is a very American one, reminiscent of the civil rights struggle fought by and behalf of African Americans.

Despite their expulsion and occupation, anyone who has visited Palestine and who has Palestinian friends would tell you that, just like other human beings, Palestinians simply wish to be treated as equals. They yearn for a normal life, next to, and with the Jews in the tiny land of Palestine and Israel. If Christian and Muslim Palestinians were offered the kind of equality with Jews in Israel that all Americans now enjoy, they would accept it with open arms.

No Israeli government in history, backed by the US, has offered equal rights to the Palestinians, either in Israel or in the occupied territories. Israel has always demanded a Jewish majority and exclusivity in the shared land, while allowing, in the latest peace proposal, an impossible Palestinian state over a fragmented 8% of historic Palestine. More generous Israelis offer a few more percent.

Snippets of Palestinian territory, reminiscent of South African Bantustans --as the failed Oslo accords have proven --is a recipe for more bloodshed. It will drag the United States even more deeply into an endless conflict --one which could be solved today by embracing the very values Americans hold dear: equal rights and justice for all.

Ilan Pappe, a senior lecturer in political science at Haifa University, is a leading Israeli historian and equal rights advocate.