Repression
of Palestinian Activists in the US: Where are the
Defenders of Justice?
11/18/05
by Noah Cohen
April of 2002 saw some of the largest and most vocal
demonstrations of solidarity for Palestine in US history.
On April 5 in Boston, 2,000 people marched in the street
protesting the Israeli invasion of Jenin and other
Palestinian population centers; the march received
prominent and unusually sympathetic coverage in the
Boston Globe. On April 20 of 2002, between 50,000 and
100,000 people marched in Washington DC, protesting both
the escalation toward war in Iraq, and continued US
support for Israel in its military actions against
Palestinians. The march was arguably the largest
pro-Palestinian demonstration in US history; the
Washington Post gave it front-page coverage, quoting
Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause at
length. In both of these demonstrations, Arabs and
Muslims turned out in large numbers.
The significance of rallies and marches for changing US
policy can be debated. The purpose of this article will
not be to discuss the relative merits of public
demonstrations, but rather to observe something about the
recent history of repression against the Palestinian
cause in the US, as yet uncommented in most of the
current discussion of civil liberties. This silence is a
glaring omission to anyone directly involved in
pro-Palestinian organizing over the last few years.
For in fact, by the end of 2003, both of the two
Palestinians who had spoken from the national stage in DC
on April 20th had been detained; one was subsequently
forced to leave the country, the other faces long-term
imprisonment inside the US. In Boston, five of the
central non-citizen Palestinian organizers had been
forced from the country; two had also been detained by
the INS or by its later incarnation, the Department of
Homeland Security, and one had also been tortured in
custody.
Why have these facts not been more generally discussed?
More importantly, why has so little been done about them?
The View from Boston
Jaoudat Abouazza
Jaoudat Abouazza was part of a small community
of Palestinian, non-citizen organizers who were centrally
involved in building public demonstrations in Boston. His
picture appeared at the front of the march in the April 6
Boston Globe. He attended regular demonstrations in front
of the Israeli Consulate and brought supporters.
On May 30 of 2002, he was stopped by police in Cambridge,
MA, ostensibly for an elapsed vehicle registration. The
police searched his car and found a stack of flyers
announcing a protest of the upcoming Israel Day of
Celebration. Soon Abouazza would find himself in the
Cambridge jail being interrogated by members of the FBI.
During Abouazza's arraignment on the following day, the
police had formulated a laundry list of charges against
which Abouazza would never have the opportunity to defend
himself.
The prosecutor cited the presence of the protest flyers
along with a roll of speaker wire as a reason to deny
bail (now infamous as the "flyers and wires"
theory), an argument that the judge found persuasive. He
was held for another three days until his first pre-trial
hearing. During that time, he was repeatedly questioned
by members of the FBI concerning his political beliefs
and associations, in the absence of his court appointed
attorney. By the time his pre-trial hearing arrived, the
INS had already filed a detainer; he pleaded innocence,
but the INS took him into custody on the following day.
Since he was therefore unable to appear at his next
hearing on June 12, the Cambridge Court issued a warrant
for his arrest.
The Jaoudat Abouazza Defense Committee (JADC) was formed
immediately after Abouazza's arrest in Cambridge. Members
worked on two fronts: mounting a public pressure campaign
for Abouazza's release; securing effective legal
representation. After Abouazza's detention by the INS,
the JADC held a meeting with members of the local chapter
of the National Lawyer's Guild who were centrally
involved in the NLG Immigration Rights Project. The
meeting seemed favorable. The NLG representatives
surprised the committee a few days later by declining to
take the case, without explanation. They provided instead
a referral to an NLG affiliated immigration lawyer-Nelson
Brill-who agreed to handle the case for his normal fee.
After
Abouazza was transferred into INS custody, the
interrogations continued, along with an escalating
pattern of physical and psychological abuse. Upon his
detention in Bristol County Jail, where he was moved from
Cambridge, one guard punched him in the stomach; another
called him "Taliban." He was introduced to the
other prisoners as a "terrorist." He was
repeatedly awakened in his cell by federal agents, who
showed him flyers and pictures of political associates
and asked him questions. He was placed in solitary
confinement for refusing to answer questions. At no time
was his lawyer present.
On Sunday, June 16, Palestinian activist Amer Jubran and
another member of the defense committee visited Abouazza
in Bristol. His mouth was swollen and bleeding. He told
them that earlier on the same day he had been taken from
his cell to a medical office inside the prison, strapped
into a chair, and four of his teeth had been pulled
against his will and without anesthesia. Attorney John
Reinstein of the ACLU and Abouazza's public defender,
Emily Karstetter, visited Abouazza two days later.
Karstetter confirmed to the press that she saw Abouazza's
wounds; Reinstein said nothing.
The JADC began a public pressure campaign to have
Abouazza transferred to a medical facility both to
receive treatment and to gain independent documentation
of torture. Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson first
denied that any teeth had been pulled; then claimed that
the treatment was voluntary. He refused to grant access
to an independent medical investigator, and later barred
members of the defense committee and the ACLU from
further visits.
On June 27, 28 days after his arrest, Abouazza was
finally granted an immigration hearing. He asked for
voluntary departure to Canada (where he was a citizen) in
order to be released as soon as possible from the INS and
from the threat of further abuse at the hands of US
officials. The judge granted his request, but allowed for
his continued detention by the INS pending their appeal.
Amnesty International wrote a letter to Bristol on July
5, warning them that physical abuse of prisoners was a
violation of international human rights, and asserting
the need for independent medical review. The INS finally
executed the order of voluntary departure to Canada a
week later.
Partly as a result of the work of the JADC, news of
Abouazza's detention spread quickly through the local
activist community. One consequence was an immediate
chilling effect among local Arabs and Muslims, who
recognized correctly that their own participation in
political speech would not be protected. Whereas 2,000
people-disproportionately Arab and Muslim-had been on the
street on April 5, less than 100 were present on June 9,
for the protest for which Abouazza had been building at
the time of his arrest. Abouazza's subsequent torture in
INS custody further drove home the message of
intimidation.
Amer Jubran
Amer Jubran-active in Abouazza's defense-was
himself the object of political targeting and harassment.
Jubran had helped to organize a protest of the Israel Day
of Celebration in Brookline in June of 2001. The
Brookline police arrested him and broke up the
demonstration. They charged him with "assault with a
dangerous weapon" (his shod foot) claiming that a
local Zionist had accused Jubran of kicking him from
behind.
A police video-tape gave clear evidence of the truth:
Jubran had not kicked anyone. An independent eye-witness
told the police that the accuser had been the aggressor,
bumping into Jubran and speaking aggressively. The police
at first attempted to suppress this evidence, along with
dispatch tapes showing that there had been an advance
order to "arrest Jubran" and "clear the
demonstration." As it turned out, the Brookline
Police were also in the pay of the Israel Day of
Celebration organizers, which included the Israeli
Consulate; the Brookline Police had communicated
information about the protest and protest organizers to
the Israeli Consulate-an agent of a foreign government.
After a long defense campaign, with 11 court appearances
and lasting nearly a year, the Brookline court ultimately
granted "pre-trial probation" and dismissed the
charges.
Jubran
went on to become a leading organizer of the New England
Committee to Defend Palestine(NECDP), which helped to
organize the June 9, 2002 protest against the Israel Day
of Celebration. On November 2, 2002, the NECDP held its
first fully independent event -a protest in commemoration
of the disastrous Balfour Declaration of 1917-at which
time it also announced publicly its principles:
opposition to the existence of Israel as a
colonial-settler state and support for a unified,
democratic Palestine in all the historic territory of
Palestine; full support for Palestinian human rights,
including the right of Palestinians to resist
colonization and the right of refugees to return their
land; and an end of all US military, economic and
political aid to Israel. Jubran led the demonstrators in
a march through downtown Boston.
Two days later, on the morning of November 4, INS and FBI
agents forced their way into Jubran's home in Rhode
Island and demanded that he answer some questions. INS
agent David Adkins told Jubran that if he would
"please the ears" of the FBI, he would be free
by that afternoon. If he failed to do so, he "could
rot in jail for 50 years." Jubran said that he would
only speak to them in the presence of an attorney. When
he insisted on this right, the INS proceeded to arrest
him.
Members of the NECDP formed a defense committee and
organized a public pressure campaign to gain Jubran's
release, hiring Nelson Brill to handle his legal defense.
Initially the INS insisted that it planned to hold Jubran
indefinitely, and refused to cite the statutes under
which it claimed authority to do so. INS agent Mike
Clifford hung up the phone on Brill when he demanded this
information.
On November 21, the INS finally granted a bond hearing
and did not contest bond when it was set by the judge. It
nevertheless affirmed that it would move forward with
deportation against Jubran, now claiming that his Green
Card-granted three years earlier--had been obtained
fraudulently, based on an alleged false marriage.
As the case unfolded over the following year, the
INS-which became Immigration and Customs Enforcement of
the Department of Homeland Security while the case was
pending-systematically abused institutional power,
withholding evidence and intimidating witnesses. A little
more than a week before the trial scheduled for July 24,
federal agents visited members of Jubran's ex-wife's
family, interrogating one of them for nine hours and
threatening to take her children away if she testified on
Jubran's behalf.
The prosecutor consistently failed to turn over
documents, submissions of evidence, or witness lists.
Jubran complied fully with these requirements. During the
July 24 hearing, his ex-wife gave clear testimony that
their marriage had been for love. The prosecutor
submitted no evidence or witnesses to the contrary;
instead, he used the proceedings to inquire about
Jubran's political activities and other extraneous
matters. The judge over-ruled all objections to this line
of inquiry. Although the judge claimed that he was
prepared to rule in Jubran's favor, he nevertheless
granted the prosecutor time to prolong the case. It
became clear to Jubran and the AJDC that the prosecutor
was using the immigration proceedings to conduct a
fishing expedition into Jubran's political community.
The most disturbing aspect of Jubran's trial was the
tacit cooperation of his own lawyer with these
proceedings. Brill made the appropriate political
statements to the press: Jubran's case was one of
political silencing, an attempt to intimidate the
activist community. He filed letters objecting to some of
the most outrageous acts of the prosecutor-most
importantly, the intimidation of Jubran's witnesses. But
he acted more as an officer of the court than as an
advocate for his client's rights. He defied specific
instructions from his client not to enter into agreements
with the prosecutor without consulting him, most
importantly not to agree to repeated further continuances
that were being used to facilitate an illegitimate
investigation. As the final date of the trial drew near,
this cooperation grew worse: against Jubran's specific
instructions, Brill agreed to a schedule for the trial
itself that would have increased the ability of the
prosecutor to use the trial as a means of conducting an
illegitimate interrogation.
During
his final trial on November 6, 2003, Jubran told the
judge that he did not have faith in his lawyer and asked
that he be granted time to obtain another. The judge told
him that if he discharged his lawyer, he would be
required to go on with the proceedings with no
representation. The judge himself would proceed with
direct questioning. Under these circumstances, Jubran
requested voluntary departure. He would leave the country
in January of 2004.
Further Cases
Two other members of the same Boston community
of Palestinians were targeted during the same period.
They will remain nameless, since they have not chosen to
make their cases public. One was a very active member of
the religious community who had been effective in the
local mosques in building support for public
demonstrations. He was visited by the FBI at his work and
home. Although his immigration status was valid and he
engaged in no illegal activities, he decided to leave the
country after witnessing the treatment of Abouazza and
Jubran.
His roommate was not so fortunate. Agents discovered that
he had some irregularities in his immigration papers and
detained him. They threatened him with 10 years in
detention if he refused to discuss his roommate and other
members of the activist community. He told them that
there was nothing to discuss, since no one was engaged in
anything illegal. They detained him for another ten
months before deporting him.
Civil Liberties Organizations: a Pattern of
Inaction
In the course of the proceedings against
Jubran, the Amer Jubran Defense Committee submitted FOIA
petitions to local, state, and federal police agencies.
We obtained extensive evidence of police surveillance of
activists: twelve video tapes from the Boston police
department; evidence of the sharing of photographs
between the Brookline and Boston police
departments-including photographs of Jubran and his
supporters inside the Brookline court; and communications
between local and federal police agencies. During the
July 24 hearing, an agent John Blake of the Department of
Homeland Security attempted to attend the proceedings as
if he were a "member of the interested public,"
but was asked to leave after he was forced to reveal his
true identity. The AJDC would later photograph him
shadowing them at an anti-Ashcroft protest.
Jubran and members of the AJDC presented this information
to civil liberties organizations, along with the record
of federal abuse of institutional power in using
immigration proceedings against Jubran to silence his
political speech. In conversation, ACLU representatives
affirmed that his case clearly showed a pattern of
political harassment; they never followed-up with action
on his behalf.
In August of 2003, Jubran wrote a letter to John
Reinstein. Directed specifically to the ACLU, it
expressed the failure of the civil liberties community in
general to act in response to the unfolding repression of
Palestinian activists in Boston:
"I am writing you to express my lingering
dissatisfaction with the Boston Chapter of the ACLU.
[]
The United States Government has targeted me because of
my political beliefs and activities. The events that I
have been subjected to in the last three years prove this
beyond a doubt. Other Palestinian activists have
been targeted as well.
The attacks on me started with Brookline case. I
appreciated your involvement at the beginning of that
affair. The information that we obtained from your
inquiry was startling. This included the following
discoveries:
n The Israel Independence Day organizers paid the city of
Brookline for police protection;
n There was direct contact between the Brookline police
captain and security officers at the Israeli consulate in
Boston about our intention to protest on June 10;
n Surveillance of our demonstration in Brookline was done
specifically to obtain mug shots of demonstrators;
n The FBI was contacted about local activists who only
wished to express their political opinions.
Following this there continued to be other violations of
my right to free speech and the linking of my name with
September 11 by Brookline officials in the media. These
events were of great significance to other activists and
me. Yet, despite my numerous requests, you did not
express any interest in following up with the any of
above matters.
In the
summer of 2002 Jaoudat Abouazza became the center of
attention. His was a clear case of government targeting
of Palestinian activists. On June 16, 2002, personnel at
the Bristol County Jail extracted by force four teeth
from Jaoudat's mouth, without using anesthesia. More
disturbing was the fact that even though you saw the four
wounds first hand and documented them with sketches, you
did not provide any acknowledgement that this had
happened. I hoped that you would at least confirm to the
media, who did not think that I was a credible witness,
what you saw that day. I did not then, and do not
now, understand why you would not confirm what you saw.
Legal intervention was critical in the period while
Jaoudat was still in custody-not only to remove him from
the immediate danger of further abuse, but also to ensure
that an independent medical and dental examination take
place in time to document this act of torture. As it
turned out, you helped us to obtain a lawyer [] who
was willing to take on a lawsuit on Jaoudat's behalf, but
neither you nor [he] made any serious attempt to pursue
either Jaoudat's immediate release or immediate access to
independent medical personnel. By the time Jaoudat was
released from custody on 'voluntary departure' to Canada
and we were able to re-establish contact with him, it was
already too late for X-rays to show conclusively what had
taken place.
The only other word I had from you last summer was your
contacting us, not to inquire about Jaoudat, but to ask
some questions on behalf of Nancy Geffen of the Jewish
Council of Greater Boston. You asked to negotiate
with us on our plans to protest the Israeli Day of
Independence in Boston on June 9, 2002.
Last fall the government arrested me and put me in jail
for seventeen days, without charges. After I was
released, I visited with you and talked about my case in
the hope that you would defend me. I was comforted by
your strong statement that I was arrested because of my
political actions and openly expressed opinions. In
this December meeting, you explained that you could not
do anything related to immigration defense. I
replied that the Amer Jubran Defense Committee would take
care of that. You also commented that the FBI's targeting
of me based on my political actions would be hard to
expose. Since then, friends of mine, with limited legal
resources, managed to obtain important information
through FOIA requests. This information, consisting of
police reports and videotapes, provides clear evidence of
an established network of surveillance and information
sharing between local police departments, the FBI, and
the Department of Homeland Security. []
My case has reached a crucial juncture. The immigration
judge has expressed his unwillingness to hear testimony
concerning FBI witness intimidation; he suggested that
the civil courts would be a more appropriate place to
bring such allegations. A civil rights suit against the
Department of Homeland Security is the next step that we
must take -- a step that is both logical in my case, and
necessary for defending the fundamental rights of others
-- but this step will require serious legal support, not
merely token gestures of interest.
With the limited resources of the Amer Jubran Defense
Committee we managed to get a lot done. However, the
government is getting bolder in attempting to harass,
silence my dissent, and punish me, as well as
others. More support is needed to stop these
illegalities and to prevent further abuses. The ACLU is a
respected organization. I have seen how eager ACLU is in
protecting the freedom of expression of others, but for
some reason this eagerness stops short with me. I
am left to ask why?"
The ACLU replied by inviting Jubran to a meeting. Once
again, Reinstein agreed that Jubran's case demonstrated
political targeting and required action, but again no
action followed. Reinstein was present during the final
trial; his only intervention was to interrupt the
proceedings to recommend that Jubran take the stand and
submit to direct questioning by the judge-- without the
protection of a lawyer.
Other
organizations were no better. Bill Goodman, a civil
liberties attorney and former director of the Center for
Constitutional Rights looked at the case and suggested
that it be the subject of a civil lawsuit. He promised to
contact the Center for Constitutional Rights and ask for
their support. On further follow-up calls, he insisted
that nothing could be done until the immigration case was
over. At an initial meeting, the local NLG representative
made the outrageous claim that Jubran's arrest had
nothing to do with his political activities, but was a
mere coincidence of broad sweeps of the Muslim and Arab
community. She would later threaten a member of Jubran's
defense committee that other NECDP activists should not
expect any help from the legal community after they had
spoken publicly of their dissatisfaction with Brill-an
NLG affiliated lawyer. Although the AJDC had hired Brill
privately and paid him more than $5,000, she spoke as
though the NLG had provided Brill's services pro bono.
Response from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee (ADC), both local and national, was minimal.
The local ADC took its cue primarily from the ACLU.
After the conclusion of the November 6 trial, members of
the AJDC began to speak publicly about ACLU inaction. The
Massachusetts ACLU Executive Director Carol Rose invited
us to discuss our concerns in person. On December 3, 2003
we met with her, John Reinstein and Nancy Murray, and
spoke of two things primarily:
1) The ACLU encouraged people to stand up for their
rights-e.g. to insist on their right not to be questioned
without an attorney. It then failed to act legally in
their defense when they did so-this meant that the ACLU's
campaign of community legal education tended only to put
people in danger, since it gave them the false impression
that they could expect a vigorous legal defense of their
rights.
2) When the ACLU failed to take any legal action, it also
undercut the credibility of the people targeted when they
turned to the public for support.
Members of the AJDC had also been active in immigrant and
detainee response networks in New England. One member had
given the ACLU lists of names of individuals who reported
abuse in detention.
ACLU representatives asked that detainees be encouraged
to document these abuses in writing-an action that placed
their testimony in the hands of prison guards, often the
same ones who had subjected them to the abuse. In only
one case did the ACLU send a lawyer to investigate
further, after a delay of more than two weeks; by then
the inmate had been transferred to another facility, and
the lawyer did not attempt to investigate allegations of
abuse by other prisoners at the same facility. The ACLU
undertook no further follow-up action that might have
protected the prisoners from reprisal.
Rose admitted that the ACLU had not won the faith of the
Arab and Muslim community, and she looked to us for help
providing some guidance for improvement. She asked us to
put our concerns in a letter to her, and invited us to
meet again in order to initiate a plan of further action.
We sent a five-page letter reiterating what we had said
in conversation; she replied by breaking off all
correspondence.
In our meeting, ACLU attorney John Reinstein claimed that
he had never been asked to take any legal action on
Jubran's behalf, neglecting to mention Jubran's letter.
He also insisted that no legal action-such as a suit for
a violation of Jubran's constitutional rights-could be
taken under the circumstances. The Supreme Court had
already decided in the case of the LA8 that the federal
government could selectively prosecute immigrants for
deportation because of their political views. It was thus
futile to litigate the matter further.
The View Nationally
Amer Jubran and Sami al-Arian had shared the stage as
Palestinian activists in DC on April 20, 2001. In
February of 2003, Al-Arian would be arrested and
imprisoned on charges of "supporting
terrorism." For the next eight months he was forced
to rely on court-appointed attorneys who did little to
help him. Much of his time was spent in solitary
confinement under 23 hour lockdown. Serious defense did
not begin until his defense campaign was able to raise
enough money to hire private attorneys in October of
2003.
His
trial is finally coming to a conclusion. It has clearly
been a case of targeting for political speech and other
legal activities in support of Palestinian organizations.
The targeting of Palestinian political activists has
taken place within a broader context of attacks on Arabs
and Muslims. This has allowed the government to conceal
the political nature of its campaign: specific attacks
against activists can be hidden under sweeping policies.
The overall purpose has nevertheless been to silence a
community living within the US that has intimate
knowledge of US imperial crimes in Palestine, Iraq and
the surrounding region.
On the whole, the civil liberties community has protested
against these sweeping attacks on Arab and Muslim men; it
has-perhaps for this very reason-tended to distance
itself from more overtly political cases. Few rallied
around Ali Al-Timimi-a religious leader sentenced to life
in prison for preaching in his mosque against US
imperialism. Imprisonment specifically of politically
oriented Muslims who support armed liberation of their
countries has been normalized in the full range of US
discourse, even in cases where "support"
consists entirely of speech.
On April 9 of 2002 Lynne Stewart was arrested for
vigorously defending Muslim cleric Shiek Omar Abdel
Rahman. Many progressive lawyers expressed outrage, above
all because the action targeted a member of their own
community. Equal support has not been extended to her two
assistants, Mohammed Yousry and Ahmed Sattar, arrested at
the same time. Though Stewart herself has said that she,
her client, and her two assistants have all been subject
to the violation of the same basic right to freedom of
speech, leading civil libertarian David Cole would write
instead:
"So how did the prosecution meet its burden [against
Stewart]? With classic McCarthy-era tactics:
fearmongering and guilt by association. First, it tried
Stewart together with Ahmed Sattar, an Egyptian-born US
citizen against whom it had thousands of hours of
wiretaps of communications with a terrorist group. Among
other things, Sattar had issued a fake fatwa urging
followers to "kill [Jews] wherever they are."
By trying Stewart and Sattar together, the government
could taint Stewart with Sattar's sins, even though, as
was the case with the fatwa, she had nothing to do with
them and no knowledge of them." ("The Lynne
Stewart Trial," The Nation, February 17, 2005)
Notice that Cole takes Sattar's "sins" at face
value; he describes telephone conversations as
"communication with a terrorist group,"
adopting the government's language. He objects not so
much to trying all three defendants for their speech, but
rather to Ashcroft's "tainting" of Lynne
Stewart by association.
Legal Action as Part of a Strategy for Change
Reinstein's comments about the futility of litigating the
rights of immigrants to freedom of speech and equal
protection of the law after the 1999 Supreme Court
decision in the case of the LA8 must be understood in its
full ideological context. In fact, progressive lawyers
have a long history of litigating cases on principle as
part of a larger strategy of political change.
At an NLG forum in San Francisco in November of 2003,
David Cole and Jules Lobel gave a talk entitled
"Fighting (for) Justice after September 11: the
Threat to Civil Liberties and What We Can Do About
It." Lobel's talk centered around the issues raised
by his book, Success Without Victory: Lost
Legal Battles and the Long Road to Justice in America.
He affirmed that it was not only necessary to fight
"winning cases" that establish precedent. Where
poor legal precedents have already been established, it
was still necessary to fight "losing cases" in
order to build political movements-in some cases
political movements that will help to change the law.
Thus it was necessary to continue to challenge slavery in
the courts after Dred Scott, since this was a part of
building the movement to abolish slavery. It was equally
useful to litigate against US military intervention in
Central America-though bound to lose-because this would
contribute to public education and the building of a
movement to stop US military intervention.
This
analysis leads to an important corollary: although a
civil liberties attorney might take a "winning
case" on principle in defense of freedom of speech
for a cause he does not support, he will not take a
"losing case" if the only consequence will be
to build support for that cause. A
"progressive" attorney might defend the
free-speech rights of a Nazi or pedophile if he believes
that it will set a valuable precedent in defense of the
free-speech rights of all. He might take a "losing
case" if he supports the political cause it
represents.
Based on the official position of the National Lawyer's
Guild in support of the Palestinian Right of Return and
other similar positions, one would expect strong support
in NLG chapters across the nation for the rights of
Palestinian activists in the US. The NLG has historically
helped in the defense of Palestinians; David Cole
continues to represent the LA8 in their ongoing appeals.
In Boston, this support has not been forthcoming from any
of the existing organizations. In addition, active
members of the civil liberties community who have taken
public stands on the Palestinian cause have clearly been
on the side of "left Zionism." Our experience
suggests that "left-Zionists" in particular may
have an interest in silencing Palestinian activists,
since this allows them to dominate what passes for
"pro-Palestinian" politics in the US.
Palestinians who call for strong positions in support of
their full historic rights to land and their right to
defend themselves from colonial settlers "by any
means necessary" are frequently repudiated and shut
out of public venues by these same nominal
"pro-Palestinians."
Will ideologically committed "left-Zionists" be
likely to continue mounting challenges to the rules of
"ideological exclusion" if they are not likely
to win cases in the current ideological climate? Will
they do so if one consequence will be to give Palestinian
radicals a larger voice in the political movement?
There are individual lawyers in the existing civil
liberties organizations who genuinely fight for the
rights of Palestinians. There are young legal activists
who support the full range of Palestinian rights. But
these individuals are buried under the larger
organizations and have no coherent voice.
Locally, in our attempts to fight repression, we have
found that we cannot in good conscience provide Arabs and
Muslims asking for legal aid with NLG, ACLU or ADC
contact information, since we cannot rely on their
genuine help. This is especially true in cases of
activists targeted for their political views. Local
immigrant rights and civil liberties organizations have
largely confined their challenges to post-9/11 government
action to defending what they call "innocent
immigrants"-this means primarily non-political
people who have been arrested as a result of racial
profiling or other sweeping institutional and legislative
actions. Even here their record has been shoddy.
We need an organization of radical lawyers who truly
believe in the right of Palestinians to
self-determination, including their right to speak out on
behalf of their struggle here inside the US. Only such an
organization will be willing to defend those rights
zealously.
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