Mehanna Appeal Hearing Draws Large Crowd

The courtroom was packed and the spillover room was filled, with over fifty supporters observing Dr. Tarek Mehanna’s appeal hearing in Federal court in Boston on July 30, 2013, where Attorney Sabin Willett asked a panel of three judges to throw out Mehanna’s conviction that resulted in a sentence of 17 1/2 years. Mehanna, who is imprisoned at CMU Terre Haute, was not present at the hearing.

Mehanna, who pled not guilty, was found guilty by the jury in 2011 of conspiracy to provide material support for al Qaeda by translating Arabic documents online, and planning to join a terror training camp in Yemen. Mehanna insists he went to Yemen to study Arabic. There is no evidence that he ever picked up a gun or planned anything illegal. The prosecution relied solely on statements by informant Kareem Abuzahra, who was granted immunity by the FBI in exchange for wiretapping and testifying against Mehanna at trial. The government’s case was framed by scouring Mehanna’s computer for evidence that Mehanna had an “obsessive interest” in jihad. 

He had indeed voiced strong political opinions and made some crude jokes via IM chats with his friends online, but Attorney Willett told the Boston Globe, “Our view is that if the government cannot tie the knot between Mehanna and Al Qaeda, this is simply speech, just protected opinion... All he has done is talk a lot, and talk loudly.”

Willet argued in Tuesday’s hearing that government prosecutors prejudiced the jury by showing them a huge number of irrelevant videos such as the World Trade Center explosions, beheading videos, Osama bin Laden, and other widely available images that had nothing to do with Mehanna’s case but which poisoned the trial outcome.

Assistant US attorney Elizabeth Dorsey Collery, who works for prosecutor Carmen Ortiz, claimed that Mehanna had received an email from someone named Murabed, who informed him that al Qaeda was looking for translations, and yet he continued to translate Arabic texts for the Tivian website. 

Willett argued that Mehanna was translating these texts, which were primarily religious texts, out of personal interest. He never even opened that email from Murabed.

The US had used Evan Kohlmann as a trial witness to frame the case as part of a global Islamic conspiracy. “Kohlmann doesn’t use science,” argued Attorney Willett.

Attorney Collery argued, “These were ideological crimes. Mehanna believed that he had a moral obligation to assist al Qaeda and to engage violently against the US in Iraq.”

Judge Selya seemed to scold the prosecutor, saying, “The government grossly overdid it. Stick to the facts.” He acknowledged that overwhelming the jury with evidence, relevant or not, can have a cumulative effect, causing prejudice “to show intent.”

Collery continued to insist that Mehanna was not as he claimed, “a scholarly man in search of enlightenment” but that he worked as a “propagandist for al Qaeda... he was radicalized and radicalized others.” 

Mehanna was convicted only on the Yemen travel related indictments. The propaganda charges were dropped. However, the conviction was based on spillover arguments from the irrelevant evidence. The prosecution relied heavily on mention of IM chats, open to interpretation. The defense pointed out that many of these statements, such as the comment about being “al Qaeda’s media wing” were followed with LOL, Lots of Laughs. These chats were never quoted verbatim but paraphrased by the prosecutors.

Judge Thompson asked, “Was the inflammatory evidence necessary (for conviction)?”

The prosecution then engaged in a long discussion about legal technicalities regarding permissible evidence. 

The snickering of some of the journalists at the end of the hearing revealed prejudice.

Mehanna supporters gathered in fellowship after the hearing, including a technician for a Walgreens pharmacy, who often conversed with Tarek at the Worcester Islamic Center since Mehanna was a pharmacist at CVS. “We used to compare notes about all the nice little old ladies,” he said. “Some even brought us baked goods!”

Kate Bonner-Jackson, an organizer of the Tarek Mehanna support committee said, “Tarek was vocal about the right to self defense of US invaded people.” She noted the American double standard when discussing self defense when it comes to Muslims, mentioning the recent Zimmerman acquittal. 

“We are looking for justice,” Ahmed Mehanna, Tarek’s father told the Muslim Observer. Smiling, Tarek’s father said, “The judge vented my anger. He vindicated me!” He was referring to Selya’s comments during the hearing, where the judge seemed to empathize as a father: 

“What could they find if they looked through three years of my three young sons’ electronic records? What disgusting pictures did they look at? What gross movies did they watch? What kinds of things did they joke about with their friends? What topics did they flirt with?” 

We agreed that the defense lawyer had a strong, calm tone of voice while the prosecutor’s voice was noticeably shaky. 

“Because she has no case!” Ahmed Mehanna exclaimed. “She was just dancing in circles around the issues.”

Mauri Saalakhan of Peace and Justice Foundation said he was not overly optimistic as “98% of first appeals are denied. But there will be more appeals.”

Tarek Ismail of Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute is working on a study of 35 government prosecutions of Muslims. Ismail said Mehanna’s appellate brief is over 100 pages long and raises many issues. During the hearing, each side had only 20 minutes to talk, so they focused on the prejudicial evidence that was rampant during the trial. Photos that were cached or downloaded on Mehanna’s computer were used as evidence, whether or not he ever opened them.

“They argued over whether evidence was prejudicial or probative (proving the case). An overwhelming amount of evidence that is not entirely related was presented instead of clear evidence of crime. The government was able to stronghold the jury because of so much evidence used as emotional manipulation. The cached computer files were used to construct a story.” 

Activist Laila Murad added, “So much is speech protected under the 1st Amendment: opinions, translations of public documents.”  

Younger brother Tamer Mehanna told the Muslim Observer, “Attorney Liz went to some liberty in interpreting "between the lines" of the actual statements made in the conversation. The way the government set it up is as follows: typically, the burden of proof is on the government to establish that he went there for violent reasons. The government found a workaround to that tall task by finding Tarek's friends and threatening them into becoming cooperating witnesses for the government, and recruited the services of Evan Kohlmann to tie it all together into a tidy narrative. Once it accomplished this, it had those cooperating witnesses agree that there was a conspiracy to go to Yemen for violent training, had Kohlmann "validate" the theory behind the conspiracy, and that Tarek was a part of it. Because this established Tarek as part of this conspiracy, the burden of proof now gets laid on the defense to prove that Tarek was not part of this conspiracy. 

“This is part of the government's tactic-- it creates a frame within a frame within a frame so that your task of defending yourself becomes that much more complex, until you agree to cut a deal just to end it.  Needless to say, we'll never look for that exit in this case.”

Boston Bombing Mystery: Leaked Photos Prove Police Lied

 TMO 

It is deeply offensive and un-American to slander someone as a bomber or terrorist without any evidence, long before the trial. Assuming someone guilty before proven innocent threatens the Constitutional rights of all Americans who at some point might be accused of a crime.

It is naive to assume good will on the part of government prosecutors, especially in these fake “Islamic terror” cases, knowing how much foul play has gone on in courtrooms especially over the past few years that involved the FBI and high ups in the government misrepresenting evidence and engaging in illegitimate smear campaigns. It appears that the government’s purpose for putting a Muslim on trial in America is rarely to establish the facts of the case but to create deliberately misleading narrative for the purpose of bolstering a political agenda that most Americans would not agree with if they knew the facts.

At this point there is zero proof being offered that the Tsarnaevs were responsible for the Boston marathon bombings, and even less convincing evidence that if they did, that their motivation was religion. That’s all part of a stereotypical, false narrative-with-an-agenda the media promotes, similar to Nazi journalism about Jews in the 1940s. While the agenda is unclear here in the US, the narrative is spectacular.

We have countless unverified statements made by FBI and Boston police to the media. These media claims are then used as evidence in court. This is standard operating procedure for a frame up. Many of these claims are obviously implausible, like the “confession letter” that mysteriously appeared inside the boat nearly 3 months after the suspect’s capture. The entire world is laughing their heads off about that one.

Now we have photographic proof that a member of the Boston police brazenly lied on TV saying Tsarnaev had a throat wound. Leaked photos of his capture on April 19 clearly show that the young man had a head injury and his hand was badly mangled but his larynx was fine – there was no blood dripping down his neck.

Photos leaked to the internet that were taken at the hospital clearly show a straight slash about 5 inches long down the side of his neck near the ear, but his larynx is just fine. Why was the public told he could not speak? And what happened to him afterwards?

At the court hearing on July 10, “his eye was almost completely swollen shut, his cheek was very swollen – I’m pretty sure these were on the left side of his face- and one side of his mouth was droopy.. His mouth kind of reminded me of when someone has a stroke… the swelling wasn’t bruised from what I could see,” an onlooker told TMO.

There are many questions remaining. The marathon bombing took place April 15, 2013. On April 21, government prosecutors submitted a motion to the court to seal Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s case. The judge granted the motion. On the same day they submitted their criminal complaint under seal. This all took place on a Sunday, oddly enough. On April 22, Tsarnaev was handed over to US Marshals by the FBI and was charged with using a “weapon of mass destruction” and property damage resulting in death. He nodded in response to the judge a couple of times, then he said “No” once. The case was then unsealed, but many files are missing from the docket.

A probable cause hearing was scheduled for May 30, but on April 20, it was rescheduled to July by agreement of both parties “in view of the complex factual and legal issues present in this case and the need for adequate time to obtain and review evidence.” The Federal Grand Jury indicted the suspect on June 28, so the probable cause hearing never happened.

What is bizarre is that the killing of MIT police officer Sean Collier was added to the multiple grave charges, even though Cambridge police never claimed the murder was related to the bombing suspects. Why was the cop-killing charge thrown in later?

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s friends and family all describe him as a friendly, laid back guy and without exception, they are universally confused by government accusations that he bombed the Boston marathon. The predatory media could not find one person to say a bad thing about him. Meanwhile, on June 9, police found someone who actually fits the profile of a psycho killer.

27-year-old Daniel Morley “had all the materials needed to build a pressure-cooker bomb before this kind of weapon was used in the Boston Marathon attack in April,” according to comments made by the man’s own mother in a recently unsealed police affidavit.

“Police also said they found a shoe box with the head of a decapitated bird, dismantled cell phones, flex cuff restraints, black gun powder, and a burnt green stuffed animal that had been stabbed repeatedly,” wrote Tim McLaughlin for Reuters. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force said it is investigating. But the only investigation that has been reported is whether or not the man has any ties to the Tsarnaevs.

All we know for sure about the Tsarnaevs is that they were fleeing from the police, shortly after their faces appeared on TV. Lightly armed, Tamerlan engaged in a shootout with police, which was filmed from a window. The brothers appeared vulnerable and crouched behind a car on the side of the street. Then, there were some loud explosions and smoke filled the air. But there was no property damage, no shrapnel, nor any reported injury from these explosions, just some marks on the pavement on the opposite side of the street – not where the Tsarnaevs were crouched. When the smoke cleared, Tamerlan was dead and Dzhokhar was on the run.

It will be interesting to see if government prosecutor Carmen Ortiz will provide proof that Dzhokar Tsarnaev bombed the marathon, or if she will resort to the cheap tactic of using “secret evidence” against the accused. Other than wild media stories about the manhunt that resulted in the cities of Boston, Cambridge and Watertown being shut down under martial law, all the public has to go on is surveillance camera footage showing Dzhokhar and Tamerlan walking peacefully through the crowd at the Boston marathon wearing light backpacks. The criminal complaint is based solely on the affidavit of one FBI agent, Daniel Genck, who, based on video footage that no one else has seen, claims that the men were carrying large heavy backpacks and that they set their backpacks down prior to the explosions.

The public should demand to see a real investigation of all the actors in this drama, not just the accused. The FBI should not be simultaneously investigating a case and framing a case for the prosecution. That’s a conflict of interest.

Jon Roland of the Constitution Society wrote, “The Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged with multiple federal offenses, but none of them are authorized by the U.S. Constitution… If the federal courts were constitutionally compliant, they would be compelled to dismiss them all, and let the State of Massachusetts prosecute him under its laws.”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Faces Accusers

Family members of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev leave the federal courthouse following the arraignment of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston, Massachusetts July 10, 2013. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to committing the worst mass-casualty attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, a crime that could bring the death penalty. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

There was “pin-drop silence” in the courtroom as the surviving Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev took the stand during his first pre-trial hearing on July 10, 2013. A crying baby held by Tsarnaev’s sister pierced the silence. Watching the trial were about 30 people representing the victims’ families, as well as a row of family members and supporters of the defendant. The grand jury indictment by the FBI in coordination with federal and local authorities charged Tsarnaev with 30 counts of federal crimes including using a weapon of mass destruction and killing a police officer.

Represented by Federal attorneys Miriam Conrad and William Fick with input from Attorney Judy Clarke and Prof. David Clarke, Dzhokhar pled “Not Guilty” to all charges. Reporter Pam Gelly describes: 

“Assistant US Attorney William Weinreb… continues reading through groups of charges: possession and use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence resulting in death; carjacking resulting in serious bodily injury; bombing of a place of public use resulting in death.

“Not Guilty,” Tsarnaev says again. More charges are read.

“Not Guilty,” he says and rubs his mouth.

“Not Guilty,” clenching his hands together.

“Not Guilty.” He says it seven times.

The judge explains that the United States will bring 80 to 100 witnesses to the trial. It will take 3 to 4 months, starting on September 23 at 10 am.”

The hearing was presided over by Judge Marianne Bowler.  Time will tell if Tsarnaev will settle for a plea bargain or if he will fight for his innocence in court. If the case goes to trial, Judge George O’Toole, who convicted Tarek Mehanna to 17.5 years for “material support for terrorism” on account of internet speech, will be presiding. Attorney General Eric Holder will decide whether Dzhokhar will get the death penalty, if convicted.

According to witnesses, Tsarnaev, who wore an orange jumpsuit, kept turning around to look at his family and friends in a row behind him. At one point he waved at his sisters, whereupon one of them burst into tears. He appeared to be heavily medicated and not entirely aware of the seriousness of the proceedings. Friends say he was not acting like himself. According to his wrestling teammates Tsarnaev, who went to high school in the US and was thoroughly Americanized, spoke in court with an uncharacteristically heavy Russian accent that his friends called “weird.”
A former schoolmate and wrestling teammate said Tsarnaev looked tired and “beat up.”

“His face was swollen on one side. He looked exhausted.”

Brittany Gillis, who went to UMass Dartmouth at the same time as Tsarnaev, was inside the courtroom. “It was very nerve wracking,” she said. “His family was crying as soon as he walked in. And the victims’ families were very upset. You could just tell they were upset just by seeing him. His family was crying and he kept looking back at his family. It seemed like he was very nervous.”

A small rally in support of Dzhokhar Tsnarnaev and suspicious of the government gathered outside the courthouse. At least one protester wore an “Anonymous” mask.

There is certainly reason to doubt the veracity of government accusations – and if Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev really did use homemade bombs to kill and injure hundreds of Boston marathon spectators, there is good reason to suspect FBI and CIA involvement. Some years back, when Dzhokhar’s brother Tamerlan applied for a travel visa to visit relatives, Russian authorities reportedly asked the CIA to investigate the Muslim family, whose female members had recently started wearing hijab. The brothers had met with the FBI multiple times in the two years before the marathon bombing. Their mother Zubeida Tsarnaev, who was also reportedly on a government watchlist, said the FBI was closely scrutinizing her son’s online activity. 

It will be interesting to see if government prosecutor Carmen Ortiz will provide proof of Tsarnaevs’ criminal wrongdoings, or if she will resort to the cheap tactic of using “secret evidence” against the accused. Other than wild media stories about the manhunt that resulted in the cities of Boston, Cambridge and Watertown being shut down under martial law, all the public has to go on is surveillance camera footage showing Dzhokhar and his brother Tamerlan walking peacefully through the crowd at the Boston marathon wearing light backpacks.

All we know for sure is that the police shot the brothers multiple times, killing Tamerlan while he was handcuffed in police custody, and severely wounding the unarmed Dzhokhar in the process of capturing him.

Circulating on Twitter is a rumor stating that, according to the wife of a Boston police officer, “all the cops took turns beating the crap out of him… jumped on his chest and everything.”

The 19 year old immigrant was aggressively interrogated for 18 hours and pressured to confess without a lawyer present after arriving at the hospital with multiple bullet wounds upon his arrest. It looks like someone broke his arm rather recently, as he appeared in court with a new cast on his arm. However, the defense was not permitted to discuss anything about police brutality.

In an interesting twist of events, the proceedings of the secret hearing were illegally videotaped by someone standing behind the court camera and aired by a television station in Russia. Grainy cell phone photos from inside the courtroom showing the thin, young, pensive looking man seated next to his lawyer, were also circulated widely online via social media.

The intense international interest in this court case is unique for a US “Muslim terrorist” prosecution in that there are so many vocal advocates insisting on his innocence and demanding a fair trial – balancing the huge number of unquestioningly pro-establishment American citizens ready for another public hanging of a foreign Muslim.

This time, the public wants to know what’s really going on. If the Boston marathon bombing was really simply carried out by two youths playing with homemade explosives, why is that being treated as a federal terrorism case rather than a local violent crime under the jurisdiction of Boston police?

Did the Tsarnaevs do it?  If yes, they probably did not act alone. It is important not to let this kid become a scapegoat to cover up for a deeper government conspiracy.

Write a Letter This Ramadan

Letter writing has become a lost art. In today’s world of texting and emailing, a letter received by postal mail, written on paper with pen, is something really special. Fewer and fewer children these days even know how to write in cursive, and thus have trouble reading the sometimes very personal script of their grandparents and great-grandparents.

Practicing our penmanship is only one of many reasons why we should encourage our family members to keep in touch with loved ones this Ramadan, and also to initiate contact with those Muslims who are isolated in US prisons.

National Coalition To Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF) has initiated a letter writing campaign for the second year in a row for Ramadan. Part of the mission of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms is to educate the public about the erosion of civil and political freedoms in our society, and the abuses of prisoners within the U.S. criminal justice system especially after 9/11. Many individuals have been the victims of government prosecutorial overreach and pre-emptive prosecutions based on thought crimes, entrapment, and manufactured charges.

Last year was a big success with even more letters being requested from the community. “As a result of your letters, many prisoners received communication with the outside world for the first time. Let’s write a short note to tell someone you care, to tell them that they matter, and that they are not forgotten. Let them know they will always be part of our Community and that they are in our prayers. It’s an easy process that takes only a few minutes, but would mean so much to the prisoners and their loved ones.”

NCPCF also organized a Ramadan gift program, sending $100 to the poorest prisoners’ commissaries, enabling them to buy things for Ramadan like dates, honey, books, and things they need. Those who wish to donate or to participate in the letter writing program should contact prisoners@civilfreedoms.org. Since there are hundreds of Muslim prisoners on the list, greeting them all is more work than one person can reasonably promise to do. Writing to the prisoners needs to be a community activity. Why is this so important?

Sharmin Sadequee of NCPCF explains: “Believing the media and government, the larger Muslim American community isolates and ostracizes Muslim political prisoners and their families and treats them as “other”. Different sections of the Muslim community in US have internalized the meta-narratives of our government about their own community, faith and religion, and abandoned the prisoners and their families. But, Muslims have a duty to help prisoners according to traditions of our prophet (pbuh). ” She states:

“We have received many letters from prisoners saying they did not know that there were people and organizations in the US that care about Muslim prisoners, although many Muslims from Europe have been writing to prisoners in the US.”

NCPCF is looking for volunteers from around the country to organize letter writing activities and events in their own community, which would be done as a group. The volunteers will receive pre-addressed envelopes as many as they want. Some people request 100 others request 200 or 50 or 75.

The paintball man, Ismail Royer wrote to NCPCF: “Greetings…I am very grateful for the money your organization sent last Ramadan. It was the first time I’d had that much money in my account for many years and it made Ramadan that much more special.”

TMO asked Ghaliyaa Haq of freedetainees.com why a similar campaign does not exist for the detainees at Guantanamo, who are on hunger strike for freedom or death. She explains that “the reason no one has a specific to Guantanamo letter writing campaign is because the prisoners almost never get the mail. I have never heard of a single prisoner getting mail from anyone but their lawyers and very rarely a wife or mother.  I don’t really ask people to send to Guantanamo because they simply don’t give it to them.”

The current update is “they just decided that despite an attempted lawsuit they will go ahead and force feed during Ramadan – albeit at night instead of daytime.”

There are many things going on that are worse than the lack of mail.

“There are some seriously needy prisoners here in the US though. I mean young people who have no one at all. There are women too like that. Sr. Fatima (Colleen LaRose) has no one. Jamie Ramirez is the other one… I am sure you are aware of the fact that once a prisoner is convicted CAIR and places like that vanish as quickly as possible. The prisoner is almost always left to his own devices then,” concludes Haq.

In May 2013, the female relatives of political prisoners organized a demonstration at the Department of Justice in DC to protest how the DOJ turned their relatives into political prisoners and buried them alive in federal prisons. It was the first time women relatives from around the country, whose loved ones have been snatched away from them in preemptive prosecution cases, came together to demand justice for their loved ones.

“It was historic and beginning of a movement like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina,” Sadequee told TMO.

“Unfortunately people do not know enough about what is going on in their own country. People are being imprisoned for crimes that they did not do…. They are basically being framed. They’re being put into prison for feeding hungry children,” said a prisoner’s daughter during the rally,” reported PressTV.

Attorney Steve Downs told TMO: “NCPCF has a data base of over 800 cases that includes all of the preemptive prosecution cases which we are following. We have determined that about 90% of the cases which the government has listed as “terrorism” cases are either preemptive prosecutions or have “elements” of preemptive prosecution (in which the government prosecuted on fake or manufactured charges individuals who seemed suspicious but who had not committed any crime). 

Downs continues: “Many innocent prisoners were abandoned by their Mosque or Community or family following conviction, and are living in isolated conditions that amount to torture. Just the human contact of a letter can make all the difference. This Ramadan, we should do what we can to keep up their spirits and hope until a solution to our civil rights crisis can be found and the prisoners can be freed.”

Dzhokahr Tsarnaev Claims Innocence

Even as a federal grand jury returned a 30-count indictment against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his alleged role in the Boston Marathon bombing, this week, supporters are gathering messages and poems to wish him a happy 20th birthday on July 22, which he will most likely spend at Devens Federal Medical Center in Ayers, Massachusetts, where he is now. The allegations against the young immigrant from Dagestan are being doubted world wide, and suspicions of an FBI frame up are growing. The addition of “using a firearm to intentionally kill Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Police Officer Sean Collier” to the list of charges against Tsarnaev is certainly odd, since previous police reports stated that the shooting incident was unrelated to the bombing suspects. 

“This indictment is the result of exemplary cooperation between federal prosecutors and a wide range of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to investigate the horrific attacks on the Boston Marathon two months ago,” said Attorney General Eric Holder, who did not mention the heavy Israeli involvement in the aftermath of the bombing, investigation, and televised fundraising campaign for Homeland Security, where Israeli agents were treated deferentially by the Boston Police Department.

NBC news reported: “Under normal circumstances, the government must issue an indictment within 30 days of arrest, which would have been May 19 in Tsarnaev’s case, but no indictment had been issued.”

A probable cause hearing had been scheduled for July 2. The purpose of this hearing would have been in order to determine whether the government has a strong enough case to continue legal proceedings. Because of the grand jury indictment, the case will move directly to arraignment and trial.

Further adding to public skepticism is the FBI execution-style shooting of Ibragim Todashev in Orlando Florida last month. Todashev was someone who knew Dzhokhar’s brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by Boston police after being arrested and stripped naked. The FBI claimed that just before they killed Todashev, he was about to sign a confession stating that he and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were guilty of three bizarre murders that took place in Waltham, Massachusetts in 2011, where the victims were found with their throats slashed and their bodies sprinkled with marijuana. Most people assumed the victims, who were local marijuana dealers, were killed by the police, angry about the recent decriminalization of marijuana in Massachusetts, who wanted to send some kind of warning to marijuana dealers.

Another bizarre story that the FBI fed to the news media just this week – over two months after the event, is that the Tsarnaev wrote a confession message with a pen on the inside of the boat where he was hiding and was eventually captured after being shot at 200 times by the police and miraculously survived. According to CBS news, the alleged note said the bombings were retribution for what the U.S. did to Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims collateral damage in the way Muslims have been in the U.S.-driven wars. “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” the note allegedly says.

A member of the Free Jahar Movement, Cindy Chapman, told TMO she doesn’t buy that story. “If he was injured as he is – and was shot in his left hand – And he is left handed. He came out of the boat holding his left arm kinda funny. And the way he was pictured laying in the boat he was laying on his right side. I guess his right side is also hurt I am not really sure. But he could NOT have not written it. And why did they NOT find that note or notes sooner. I mean really why are they just coming out now with it? I mean like really – just before the trial?”

While Tsarnaev is not allowed to discuss his case with anyone except his lawyer, his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the Associated Press that her son told her he is innocent. “I could just feel that he was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan.” She also told reporters that Tamerlan called her just before his death saying “The police are chasing us and shooting at us” and told her, “I love you, Mama.”

Tsarnaev’s supporters have taken to the internet to demand a fair trial. The Dzokhar Tsarnaev Jahar Facebook page, which has more than 8,000 members, states that the 19-year-old’s “life has been stolen and has been made into a public object of hate, created by the inaccurate reports by the media.” His fans are also twittering using the hashtag #freejahar and handles that include @FreeJaha @Fighting4Jahar and @PrayForJaharr. Some news reports claim that young people are even getting tattooed with his name.

A rapper named Beacorn wrote a rap song called “Free Jahar Tsar” that goes, “A boy with his cap backwards, hoodie down and white bag just / walking behind his brother past surveillance cameras / He wasn’t even tryna be hidin’ his facial appearance / And  that’s all it took to take his rights as an everyday American? / Besides the bags shown blown to bits were both black / so how does that account as hard evidence after the fact?”

The birthday messages being collected from all over the world for the young man – mainly from strangers – are deeply moving – full of prayers, intense love, encouragement, telling him not to give up and that he’s not alone, with unshakable faith in his innocence.  Many people, when they learned about Tsarnaev’s ordeal, realized that if this could happen to him it could happen to any young Muslim, and it immediately made them decide to start practicing their religion and in some cases, convert to Islam. Someone in Boston wrote, “I’m so glad you opened my eyes, Jahar. I’m so glad I snapped out of being brainwashed by the media.”

Tsarnaev will need that level of support to spread to the wider population if he is going to receive anything that even resembles a fair trial. All Americans should want Tsarnaev to get a fair trial, to make sure they got the right guy – because if he’s not the marathon bomber, then whoever actually did it is still at large.

CMU Prisoner Shifa Sadequee’s Sister Speaks to TMO

As a little boy, Sharmin’s brother often reminded her to not to step on bugs. As a young man, he worked with his sister Sonali at Raksha, an Atlanta-based organization dedicated to the eradication of violence against women. The US-born Bangladeshi, who had attended a private Islamic high school in Canada, used his knowledge of classical Arabic to translate ancient Islamic texts into English for the former Tibyan Institute website. (The current website appears to be run by US government agents.) Some of the religious opinions that he translated he agreed with, and some he did not agree with. Some of the scholarly work he translated analyzed the concept of ‘jihad.’

Shifa engaged in frank and sometimes wild chat discussions with his online friends. The teenagers who connected through this website discussed Freemasonry and the New World Order as well as their obligations as Muslim men.

Shifa’s mother, Shirin Sadequee said her son was just “talking” about jihad and exploring ideas with other youth.

Shifa Sadequee’s sister Sharmin told TMO that the online chats “consisted of teenagers discussing religious and spiritual matters and opinions of scholars on various issues, political comments, wars abroad, etc.” The mostly South Asian teenagers “used cultural idioms, slang terms that a lot of second generation immigrant youths use in their conversations, but the government interpreted a lot of those phrases and conversations as ‘code’ words.”

“He was not at all planning to join Taliban. He was living in Bangladesh in 2001, when the war in Afghanistan broke out. He emailed some websites wanting to know how he could help the Muslims in Afghanistan. Which the government interpreted as ‘joining’ the Taliban.”

In August 2005, Shifa was detained and questioned at Kennedy International Airport in New York on his way to Bangladesh to get married.

On April 17, 2006, twelve days after his wedding, Shifa was disappeared by Bangladeshi authorities. At a press conference in Bangladesh, his father begged for help from the public in finding his missing son. The Bangladeshi government kept silent.

The FBI brought him to New York aboard a “secret” CIA rendition aircraft via Alaska, stripping off his clothes and wrapping him in clear plastic wrap. FBI agent Michael Sherck requested the warrant for Shifa’s arrest.

In New York, Shifa was charged with making a “false statement” to the FBI but the case was later dropped. In August, 2006, the US government transferred Shifa to Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on “terrorism” related charges. No government agencies communicated about his arrest to his father and wife in Bangladesh or to his family in Atlanta. Shifa was held for three years in solitary confinement without trial, during which time he was pressured to testify against his friends in exchange for a plea bargain. He refused.

Sharmin told TMO, “When my brother was arrested, Atlanta Muslim community leaders and members, when they went to talk with the US Attorneys to learn more about the case, the US Attorneys acknowledged that my brother and his friend did not do anything, but that they really needed to prosecute someone to let others know not to talk or do things like these youth.”

Shifa was targeted due to online association with FBI targets including the Toronto 12. Tarek Mehanna was translating for the same online publication and they knew each other from online. There is no evidence that there was any plan to do anything illegal.

Sadequee was charged with supporting a foreign terrorist organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), a group struggling to liberate Muslim-dominated Kashmir from India––although LET was not designated as a terrorist organization in the U.S. in 2005 and did not even exist as an organization then.

““The LET… one of the terrorist organizations that they’re accusing him of beginning to intend to start becoming a part of, didn’t even exist at the time and also was not registered in the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization until two weeks after Shifa was arrested,” stated Atlanta activist Stephanie Guilloud.

He was also accused of sending videos of tourist sites in Washington, D.C. to his online friends, who supposedly were in contact with LET. However, the government could not demonstrate a single conversation or sentence from the online chats about plans or plots for attacking these sites.

Evan Kohlmann testified as an “expert” witness at Sadequee’s trial. Kohlmann, who is connected with Steve Emerson and Israel lobbies, has a history of giving false testimony about Muslim political groups – at Yassin Aref’s trial he absurdly claimed that Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda and Kurdish separatists were working together.

The religious debates of teenagers were taken out of context by the government to paint them as terrorists and to preemptively prosecute them. Yet the actual chats remained classified as “secret evidence” and were not presented to the jury.

FBI agents testified that online chat conversations by Sadequee discussed robbing people at ATMs and selling marijuana to raise travel money. Sadequee cross examined FBI Agent James Allen regarding the conversations, pointing out that the term “LOL” (laugh out loud) indicated that the conversations were not serious. The judge allowed Allen to interpret evidence which he, as a fact witness, should not have done.

“When ethnocentrism guides in the making and application of the law, jurors and courts/judges as products of culture and bound by culture and politics will always find certain groups ‘guilty.’” said Sharmin.

Shifa was convicted on August 13th, 2009 and sentenced to 17 years. He was also sentenced to an additional 30 years probation, during which time he cannot access the Internet. He spent some time at the CMU in Marion, Illinois before being moved to the CMU in Terre Haute, Indiana in May 2012.

“Within 24 hours of my brother’s conviction, the Director of the US Attorney Office in GA, David Nahmias, was promoted as a Judge to the Georgia Supreme Court– it was headline news in the local media the morning after my brother’s verdict.  And a few years later the lead US Attorney in the case was also placed as a judge in the Fulton County System. Not sure what kind of promotion the FBI agents received,” Sharmin told TMO.

Community organizing played a large role in Shifa’s relatively light sentencing, who was faced with up to 60 years and defended himself without help of a lawyer. 2,900 people wrote letters to the judge asking for leniency. Sharmin explains:

“From the very beginning it was the progressive non-Muslim community and the queer community who stood by us. And, communities that were active around Imam Jamil Al Amin’s case and campaign were very supportive and understood how my brother was targeted for his spiritual and political beliefs and how the case against him was an attack on his First Amendment Rights because he was brown and Muslim.

“This attack was not only on Shifa who is a critical thinker, or on our family, but it was also a violence on the whole community and our ability to think critically about our beliefs, practices, politics, and the way of the world. So, our community-based cross-racial and interfaith alliance helped us to create collective resiliency to respond to the violence of the War on Terror.

“Of course this case was in 2006, and a lot of Muslims in America then believed only the ‘bad’ Muslims are under surveillance and get targeted but now we know this is not true. Things are improving, however. I think more people are realizing keeping quiet is not going to take them anywhere.”

Spring Cleaning

“Cleanliness is half the faith.” – Prophet Mohammed (s)

Next to a clean conscience, there is almost nothing that makes a person feel more relaxed than a clean house. When our home is tidy, we feel more eager to invite somebody inside, and we feel more able to think clearly.

According to Tirmidhi, the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) said: “Allah is pure and likes purity, He is clean and likes cleanliness, He is generous and likes generosity, He is hospitable and loves hospitality, so clean your courtyards.”

When our home is a mess, cleaning up that mess usually takes up space in our brains as something that must be dealt with before we can truly focus on our true life goals and desires. Living in a cluttered or dirty home drains one’s energy and mood so much that the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) taught that living in filth erodes the faith. He taught that a Muslim is not even supposed to look at filth. Obviously we cannot clean something properly without looking at it. But what we should never do is look at filth and leave it there, forcing others as well as ourselves to look at it again and again, while telling ourselves we will get around to cleaning it up later. Looking at a messy house is often more mentally draining than the actual work of cleaning it.

“People who constantly live in a state of chaos are prone to procrastination and an inability to commit to work or relationships. They get anxious and overwhelmed with change and usually give up before they even start the project. Their finances and time are wasted; they feel stuck and bad about themselves,” writes Ranka Burzan, author of The SOS Guide to Organize and Clean Your Home.

How many marriages have stalled, because one or both partners have felt overwhelmed by organizational tasks, so that year after year they promised their spouse, “I’ll have time to pay attention to you after I do x,y and z”? Let’s pretend x,y, and z are fixing the garage door, filing taxes, and finding gainful employment. These things could be seriously delayed by lack of organization, in other words they are dependent on u,v and w – finding one’s lost tools, locating one’s lost receipts, and overcoming a lost sense of self. Meanwhile, the hair becomes grey and youth fades away. The house is still messy but years of potential joy and togetherness have been wasted without being fully lived.

Regina Leeds, author of One Year to an Organized Life, writes that to remove the chaos, we must examine the psychological inner workings that influence our behaviors in order to create lasting change. Leeds states that clutter creates a “brain dance,” an agitation and inability to think clearly amidst the stuff. She believes that “our clutter makes noise” keeping us “upset and churned.” When confronted with the piles and junk drawers we are also haunted with the “tyranny of shoulds,” stemming from our feelings of guilt about our disorganization. Leeds goes on further to describe disorganization as a “waste of time, waste of money, and waste of energy.”

Imam al Baqir said: “Cleaning of the house banishes misery”.Islamic ahadith suggest that satans and djinn live in dusty and neglected places. Some of the unseen beings that could result in evil might also include germs, mold and bacteria. The good news is that the actual act of cleaning your house not only improves your state of mind but cures spiritual lethargy.

Cleaning up significantly improves your quality of life without spending a penny. It’s something a poor person can do to make his or her home more beautiful and valuable. Islam teaches that the act of cleaning up actually increases your blessings.

Remove cobwebs from your house, for they cause poverty,” the Prophet reportedly said.

Sherrie Bourg Carter discusses in Psychology Today that not only is clutter a symptom of mental clutter and a side effect of stress, but in a vicious cycle, clutter in itself causes us stress: “Clutter can play a significant role in how we feel about our homes, our workplaces, and ourselves. Messy homes and work spaces leave us feeling anxious, helpless, and overwhelmed… Why does mess lead to so much stress?”

“Clutter bombards our minds with excessive stimuli (visual, olfactory, tactile), causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren’t necessary or important.

Clutter distracts us by drawing our attention away from what our focus should be on.

Clutter makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally.

Clutter constantly signals to our brains that our work is never done.

Clutter makes us anxious because we’re never sure what it’s going to take to get through to the bottom of the pile.

Clutter creates feelings of guilt (“I should be more organized”) and embarrassment, especially when others unexpectedly drop by our homes or work spaces.

Clutter inhibits creativity and productivity by invading the open spaces that allow most people to think, brain storm, and problem solve.

Clutter frustrates us by preventing us from locating what we need quickly (e.g. files and paperwork lost in the “pile” or keys swallowed up by the clutter).”

One of the best things we can do as parents is to teach our children how to clean, by giving them the responsibility and showing them how to do it. Many children will respond best to cleaning up with help, as a group. In time, this will give children the confidence and organizational skills that come with experience. It’s best if we can find a way to make it fun, like “Let’s pretend we are playing basketball with the toys into the toy box!” rather than screaming and demanding. But even if you have to force them to clean, every boy and girl will need to know how to clean a toilet, how to mop a floor, how to scrub a stovetop or it will hurt their future chances for marriage!

Most of us often find it hard to muster up the excitement to throw ourselves into organizational tasks. In order to conquer this feeling, we can make a fun plan for what we are going to do after we finish cleaning. For example, “After cleaning the kitchen, I will set up candles and flowers to romance my spouse,” or “After I fix the leak under the sink, I will go out and play tennis with my neighbor.”
Viewing home upkeep as a step towards goal, not the goal, will make the task seem less daunting or at least more worthwhile.

Pakistani Rape Laws Islamic or Un-Islamic?

Murtaza Haider in an important article, “A License to Rape” published in Dawn newspaper, discusses the British (not Islamic) origins of the Hudood laws of Pakistan, which prosecute women and even minor girls for being raped, while excusing the rapists.

Prof. Asifa Quraishi’s Michigan Journal of International Law article entitled “Her Honor: An Islamic Critique of the Rape Laws of Pakistan from a Woman-Sensitive Perspective,” details how the rape provisions of Pakistan’s Hudood Ordinance directly contradict Islamic law regarding sex crimes.

The Quran states: “Those who defame chaste women and do not bring four witnesses (shuhada) should be punished with eighty lashes, and their testimony should not be accepted afterwards, for they are profligates” (24:4).

“The Quranic speech is clear and without confusion. The requirement to produce four witnesses, and not just male witnesses, is required by the Quran to prevent false accusations of fornication against women,” Haider writes.

However, in Pakistan and in some other Muslim countries that have experienced the legacy of British rule, a woman is considered guilty UNLESS she can provide four male witnesses to prove that she is innocent!

This has given a lot of ammunition to Western and feminist critics of Islam and Muslims, because of the obvious injustice – especially regarding high rates of incest involving children within extended families. In the Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Pakistan in 2010, Dr. Iram Manzoor wrote that most rape victims were aged between 10 and 19 years old.

“A series of events in the past few weeks have again highlighted the injustices being committed against women in the name of Islam in Pakistan,” writes Haider. “Recently, the three accused of raping an 18-year old woman at Jinnah’s Mausoleum were set free by a court in Karachi. The court refused to entertain the DNA evidence, which reportedly proved the guilt of the accused, and gave the accused the benefit of the doubt because the victim could not produce four eyewitnesses to the rape. Weeks later, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) decreed that the DNA evidence in the absence of four righteous men as witnesses to rape is not sufficient for conviction under Islamic law.”

“By turning our collective backs on science, logic, and ijtihad, we have brought ourselves to a state where discrimination against women and the disenfranchised is being committed in the name of Islam.” The CII ruling “contradicts the Islamic tradition of using scientific procedure to determine the truth or falsehood of rape accusations,” concludes Haider.

Anwar Mahmud Dabur in al-Qara’in wa Dawruha fi al-fiqh al-Jina’i al-Islami narrates the story of a woman who falsely accused another man of rape. She spread egg white on herself and her clothes and brought it as evidence to Caliph Umar ibn Khattab. The Caliph consulted another woman who confirmed the woman’s clothing bore semen stains. The Caliph consulted Ali (subsequently the fourth Caliph), who immersed the stained cloth in boiling water that turned the stains into white solid, which smelled and looked like egg.

In another case, “The Prophet himself (saw) is reported to have consulted an expert on face recognition to settle a paternity dispute (Sunan al-Dar Qutni).

Modern feminist theory considers rape to be a violent crime to be understood within the context of the power relationship between the rapist and the victim. A woman who is pressured into sex by an employer, or a prisoner who consents to sex with a prison guard, is considered blameless. The Quran similarly warns against raping slave women, and absolves the raped woman of sin.

“… And do not, in order to gain some of the fleeting pleasures of this worldly life, coerce your slave women into whoredom if they are desirous of marriage, and if anyone should coerce them, then, verily, after they have been compelled (to submit in their helplessness), God will be much forgiving, a dispenser of grace (to them)” (24:33).

During the time of the Prophet (saw), punishment was inflicted on the rapist on the solitary testimony of the victim. Wa’il ibn Hujr reports of an incident when a woman was raped. Later, when some people came by, she identified and accused the man of raping her. They seized him and brought him to Allah’s messenger, who said to the woman, “Go away, for Allah has forgiven you,” but of the man who had raped her, he said, “Stone him to death.” (Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud).

During the time when Umar (raa) was the Khalifah, a woman accused his son Abu Shahmah of raping her; she brought the infant borne of this incident with her to the mosque and publicly spoke about what had happened. Umar (raa) asked his son who acknowledged committing the crime and was duly punished right there and then. There was no punishment given to the woman. (Rauf)

Uzma Mazhar writes in “Rape & Incest: Islamic Perspective,” that traditional Islamic legal scholars interpret rape as a crime in the category of hiraba (violent crime). Rape and incest are not considered a subcategory of zina (fornication). Al-Dasuqi held that if a person forced a woman to have sex, his actions would be deemed as committing hiraba. Ibn ‘Arabi held that “hiraba with the private parts” is much worse than hiraba involving the taking of money, since anyone would rather be subjected to the latter than the former.

“Each school of Islamic law has held that where a woman is harmed through sexual intercourse (some include marital intercourse), she is entitled to financial compensation for the harm. Further, where this intercourse was without the consent of the woman, the perpetrator must pay the woman both the basic compensation for the harm, as well as an additional amount based on the ‘diyya’ (financial compensation for murder, akin to a wrongful death payment),” concludes Mazhar.

Holding rapists accountable for their crimes is a good start, but in the long run we must also look at the social conditions that lead to rape. In the west, free mixing of men and women is often viewed by Muslims as leading to fornication (consensual sex). However, the extreme cultural segregation of men and women in some Muslim countries can also be viewed as possibly leading to rape and incest, in the same way that priestly celibacy leads to pedophelia and homosexual perversions within the Catholic church.

Respectful and appropriate interaction rather than total avoidance of females should probably be encouraged before secret perversions develop, so that boys and men will more likely respect girls and women as equally valuable human beings.

Timeline of Zionist Criminality

Supporting the existence of a State for Jews is a total betrayal of
fundamental American values.

===

1902
Forced transfer of native Palestinian population proposed by
Zionist leader Theodor Herzl.

1908
Racist Eastern European settlers organize to terrorize the native
people of Palestine.

1933-39
Zionists collaborate with Nazis to fund the creation of a Jewish
State on Palestinian land.

1934
Arab leaders offer asylum to European Jews fleeing the Nazis and
present a plan for legal Jewish immigration to Arab countries.
Zionist leader Ben-Gurion refuses offer and condemns millions of
Jews to death.

1947-48
Zionists begin genocide of Palestinians to create a racist Jewish
State. Arab states attempt humanitarian intervention but fail.

1948-56
Israel destroys hundreds of Biblical villages, murders or expels
700,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians.

1956-67
Israel wages two aggressive, premeditated wars against Arab
nations, grabs land from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan, expels hundreds
of thousands of people, and kills thousands of Egyptian and
Palestinian prisoners.

1982
Israel invades Lebanon and starts a war in which 20,000 Lebanese
civilians are killed. 2,000 unarmed Palestinian women, children and
old men are massacred at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps.

1988
Arafat initiates the Middle East Peace Process at the UN General
Assembly in Geneva.

1993
Oslo agreement solidifies Israel’s apartheid system and
disenfranchises Palestinian refugees.

2000
Arafat rejects Israel's “generous offer” to imprison
Palestinian natives on isolated reservations.

2002
Israel begins construction of a 650-km Wall to surround and starve
Palestinian population areas.
Israel attacks Jenin refugee camp with bulldozers and buries
Palestinians alive in the rubble.

2003
Israeli bulldozer deliberately crushes and kills 23-year old
American peace activist Rachel Corrie while she takes part in
nonviolent protest to stop the demolition of a Palestinian doctor's
home.

2003-04
Worldwide Boycott of Israeli products, vacations, and investments
gains momentum.

2004-05
Racist Ethnic Ashkenazi Neoconservatives manipulate the USA into
attacking Iraq for the benefit of Israel and to the detriment of the
national interest. Americans die for Israel. American wealth is
wasted for Israel. The increasing debt needed to support Zionist-
dictated policy threatens the economic well being of all Americans.
Now the USA is directly involved in the same sort of criminal
occupation that the State of Israel maintains. Increasing hatred of
the USA spreads throughout the world.

Support the Palestinian Right to Return.

REJECT RACISM. REJECT ISRAEL.
israelinspires-racism.org

Endnotes and References

1902 Muhammad Ali Khalidi details the forced transfer plan in
“Utopian Zionism or Zionist Proselytism? The Journal of Palestine
Studies, 120, Volume XXX, Number 4, Summer 2001, pp. 55-67. A
careful reading of Altneuland by Herzl is also worthwhile. A
carefully prepared edition may be found in 'Wenn ihr wollt, ist es
kein Märchen' from Juedischer Verlag bei Athenaem. Walid Khalidi
reproduces and analyzes the forced transfer text in “The Jewish-
Ottoman Land Company: Herzl's Blueprint for the Colonization of
Palestine, Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1993), pp.
30-47.

1908 Zionist paramilitary groups existed before 1908, but haShomer,
which is the best known, was founded in that year. Asher Ginzburg or
Ahad ha`Am) criticizes them; he even accuses them of 'fundraising,'
creating incidents that could be used in campaigns to solicit
contributions. Rashid Khalidi provides a good discussion in
Palestinian Identity on pp 89-117 of Bar Giora and HaShomer, which
were paramilitaries established to prevent Palestinians from
exercising water rights. Zionism and the Arabs (1882 - 1948) by
Yosef Gorny (p. 100) discusses Ahad ha`Am's opinion of Zionist
attempts to suppress the native population. Dr. B. Hofman discusses
the Zionist militias and their intimidation and terrorization of the
native Palestinian population in Meyn Reyze in Erets Yisroel. Anita
Shapira includes a somewhat mendacious discussion of early Zionist
terrorism in Hereb hayyonah.

1933-39 Because of the close collaboration of Zionists and Nazis
during the 1930s, Hannah Arendt called this period the Zionist phase
of Nazism (viz. Heidegger's Children by Richard Wolin). Edwin
Black's book, The Transfer Agreement, is the standard text on Nazi-
Zionist collaboration. It makes clear that the transfer of funds
from Nazi Germany under this agreement made the Jewish State
possible.

1934 Al-Jabiri, Ihsan, 'La Visite de M. Ben Gurion - la delegation
Syro-Palestinienne Geneve, La Nation Arabe (Nov-Dec 1934), 144-146.
If the Zionists had accepted the offer, at least one million more
European Jews could have survived WW2.

1947-48 The international legal definition of genocide is assumed
(viz. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP2.HTM). Benny
Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, is
the basic text on Zionist ethnic cleansing. The War for Palestine,
Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Eugene L. Rogan and Avi
Shlaim, updates Morris' data and conclusions. The web page,
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/arab_invasion.html, gives a
somewhat inadequate translation of the Arab League's declaration of
reasons for humanitarian intervention in Palestine in 1948. The
Arabic title of the document uses the phrase humanitarian
intervention and not invasion.

1948-56 The web site, http://www.palestineremembered.com, provides a
tremendous amount of data on this issue. Facts on the Ground by
Nadia Abu el-Haj discusses the ideology of destroying the physical
record of the presence of Palestinians as does Meron Benvenisti's
Sacred Landscape: Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948.

1956-67 How Israel Was Won, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli
Conflict, by Baylis Thomas (pp 115-172) provides a reasonable
summary (with citations) of the history of the premeditated
aggressive war by UK, France and Israel's against Egypt in 1956.
Thomas discusses the issue of the 1967 aggression on p. 165, and his
assessment is not much different from what Moshe Dayan has said in
his memoirs and comments on the 1967 war. The web page,
http://www.time.com/time/international/1995/950828/israel.html,
discusses the IDF killing of Egyptian POWs in 1956. The web page,
http://www.mideastfacts.com/pow_ap.html, discusses the IDF killing
of Egyptian and Palestinian POWs in 1967.

1982 Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation provides the standard description
of Israel's aggression against Lebanon.

1988 Arafat's speech to the UN General Assembly
(http://mondediplo.com/focus/mideast/arafat88-en) speaks for itself.

1993 The Oslo Agreement gave the Israeli State the legal basis for
setting up the checkpoint and pass system within the occupied
territories that is so similar to (actually much worse than)
Apartheid South Africa. The Oslo Agreement ignores refugee claims.
Uri Savir's The Process discusses the history of Oslo. The web page,
http://www.cardamon.org/oslo/oslo_documents.htm provides an index of
Oslo documents.

2000 The web page,
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article518.shtml, provides a good
summary with maps of the proposed Palestinian reservations.

2002 The relationship of the Wall to increasing Palestinian hunger
is clear on visiting Palestine. Food must be shipped through the
checkpoints, and the IDF hinders such shipments. But perhaps a more
important issue has been the confiscation of Palestinian farmland
near the Wall and on what is now the Israel side of the Wall.
Palestinians are still mostly an agricultural population. If Israel
takes away their farmland, it takes away their food. Jenin Jenin
starring and directed by Mohamad Bakri addresses the IDF rampage
through Jenin. It is worth noting that Jenin (Biblical `Ein Gannem)
is probably the second oldest city on the planet. The web document,
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/d9jenin.pdf, describes
the attack on Jenin from the standpoint of an Israeli reservist.

2003 Senior IDF commanders seem to have decided to try to drive
internationals out of the Occupied Territories (by treating them
like Palestinians) in order to obtain the freedom to commit greater
acts of terrorism and brutality. In short succession the IDF
murders Rachel Corrie, mortally wounds Tom Hurndall and shoots the
face off Brian Avery (see
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml,
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1358.shtml and
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1332.shtml.

2003-04 The Israeli tourism industry is for all intents and purposes
dead. Investment in Israel has dried up, and Israeli academics are
personae non gratae throughout Europe.

2004-05 Presidential advisers Perle, Feith and Wurmser wrote A Clean
Break:A New Strategy for Securing the Realm
(http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm) as a strategy to serve
Israeli interests. This strategy has become US policy. Either
these advisers cannot distinguish US interests from Israeli
interests, or they can. In either case, their behavior is probably
treasonous, and Bush by accepting this policy recommendation has
effectively renounced his duty to serve the USA and to uphold the
constitution for the sake of Israel. Bush is now guilty of high
crimes and misdemeanors. He should be impeached, convicted, removed
from office, sent to Guantanamo so that he can be interrogated to
determine the extent of his treason.

ISRAEL IS RACIST. Zionism is un-American and racist because Zionism
presumes that the 'national, ethnic or historical rights' of Jews to
Palestine are superior to the human rights (including property
rights and residence rights) of the native population - a statement
of volkisch and colonialist racism. The only workable solution in
Palestine requires without limitation: (1) absolute rejection of
the concept of an ethnicity-based nation state as unethical, (2)
establishment of a nonracial multicultural democracy in Palestine,
(3) a sincere apology from Zionists to the Palestinian people, (4)
complete restitution to Palestinians for their losses, (5) return of
all property to its rightful owners, (6) repatriation of all
Palestinians, who will receive full citizenship in the nonracial
state, and (7) creation of Nuremberg-style tribunals for all
Zionist perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Supporting the
existence of Israel as a State for Jews is a total betrayal of
fundamental American values.

Joachim Martillo

===

Israeli History 101

By Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, PhD

Chaim Weizmann (1874?-1952) was born in Motol, Russia and became a
British subject in 1910. During World War I, Weizmann discovered an
improved method of making acetone and butyl alcohol for explosives
to aid British war efforts. He was thus instrumental in securing
British government commitment to Zionism in the form of the Balfour
Declaration (which was secured in a letter addressed to Weizmann).
He also served as special advisor to the British Ministry of Supply.
For his efforts on behalf of the Zionist project he was rewarded by
becoming first president of the state of Israel.

David Ben-Gurion was born David Green in Plonsk, Russia (now in
Poland). He settled in Palestine in 1906. As chairman of the
Executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine from 1935 to 1948, Ben-
Gurion directed all Jewish affairs to transform the country from
multi-ethnic/multi-cultural area to a Jewish state "to redeem its
Jewish nature". His activities ranged from land development and
settlement of immigrants to secret activities against natives and
later (after the Palestinian revolt of 1936 jolted the British
rulers) against the British. Here is an excerpt from Rabin's memoirs
about Ben Guion: "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us.
Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the
Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture
which said 'Drive them out!'" (Yitzhak Rabin's memoires, leaked
censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times,
23 October 1979; Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after
the completion of Plan Dalet).

Moshe Sharett, 1894?1965, Born in Russia, originally named Shertok.
In 1906 he settled in Palestine where he was active in the labor
movement. In 1933 he became head of the political department of the
Jewish Agency for Palestine. Sharett was David Ben-Gurion's closest
associate in the struggle for an independent Jewish state. In 1948
he was appointed foreign minister of Israel and from 1953 to 1955
served as prime minister. He resigned from the government in 1956.
Sharet sought to strengthen Israel's position by statesmanship
rather than confrontation. His replacement as premier by Ben-Gurion
in 1955 and retirement in 1956 reflected the movement in Israel
toward confrontation that resulted in the 1956 Arab-Israeli War.

Levi Eshkol (1895?1969) was born Levi Shkolnik in Ukraine (then
under Russian control). In World War I he served in the Jewish
Legion, which supported the British forces in Palestine. He moved to
Palestine and helped build up the Haganah, the Jewish underground
organization that helped ethnically cleanse Palestine between 1947-
1949.

Golda Meir (1898-1978) was born Golda Mabovitz in Kiev, Ukraine. Her
family moved to Milwaukee in 1906. In 1921, she and her husband,
Morris Meyerson (the name was changed to Meir in 1956) settled in
Palestine. She once declared "There are no such thing as
Palestinians." Her secret agreements with King Abdullah in 1947 was
instrumental in thwarting the formation of a Palestinian state and
in the Hashemite's control over the area known as the "West Bank"
(see Avi Shlaim "Collusion across the Jordan")

Menachem Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk, Russia (now Brest,
Belarus). In the 1930's, he became active in the Zionist underground
terror movement and moved to Palestine in 1942 whereupon he engaged
in terrorism including bombings in civilian areas. Wanted for murder
by the British mandate authorities. Once called
Palestinians "cockroaches"

Yitzhak Shamir was born 1915 in Ruzinoy, a village in eastern
Poland. His last name was Jazernicki and he changed it. He joined
the Irgun Zvai Leumi, an underground Jewish terrorist group in 1937
and was involved in several terrorist attacks against civilians. In
1940, Shamir joined the more radical Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Israel
Freedom Fighters), or Stern Gang. He was twice arrested for his
terrorist activities by the British and fled to France in 1946. When
Israel was established, he came back and then worked for the Mossad,
Israel's intelligence agency responsible for continuing terrorism
against the native Palestinians.

Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995), was born in Jerusalem to Zionist settler
parents. In 1941, Rabin joined the Palmach, a unit of the Jewish
underground army in Palestine and was deputy commander of the
Palmach in 1947-1948 when the group engaged in ethnically cleansing
Palestinians (as Benny Morris documented expulsion of Palestinians
in the LOd and Ramle areas were carried out under Rabin's command).
Famous as Israeli defense minister in the late 1980s for ordering
troops to "break the bones" of Palestinian demonstrators (mostly
children). Rabin stated that "The Oslo "Peace Process" is "A new
instrument for reaching traditional [Israeli] objectives" (according
to Uri Savir, his chief negotiator, from
http://www.fmep.org/reports/v10n3.html ). Henry Kissinger stated "I
ask Rabin to make concessions, and he says he can't because Israel
is too weak. So I give him arms, and he says he doesn't need to make
concessions because Israel is strong" (quoted in Findley's
Deliberate Deceptions p.199). Yitzhak Rabin, once said (in the
Knesset): "For all its faults, Labor has done more and remains
capable of doing more in the future [in expanding Jewish
settlements] than Likud with all of its doing. We have never talked
about Jerusalem. We have just made a 'fait accompli.' It was we who
built the suburbs in [the annexed part of] Jerusalem. The Americans
didn't say a word, because we built these suburbs cleverly."

Ehud Barak, was born 1942 as Ehud Brog, son of East European
immigrants in Palestine. He later adopted the Hebrew name Barak
[meaning lightning]. He began his military service in 1959. He was a
member of a secret assasination unit that killed a number of
Palestinian political leaders in Lebanon (e.g. Beirut 1976) and
liquidating resistance in teh occupied territories. He was rewarded
by rising quickly through the ranks to become the youngest army
chief of staff in Israeli history.

Ariel Sharon (Arik Scheinerman) was born in British-ruled Palestine
in 1929 from Russian immigrant settlers. In 1953, he was asked to
set up a unit for "preemeptive strikes" across the borders.
This "unit 101" spread terror and murderous violence among the
Palestinian population to force them to flee from their homes and
land near the border. On October 14, 1953, Sharon committed a
massacre in the village of Qibya (then under Jordanianrule). Ben
Gurion lied when he said the massacre was committed by enraged
Israeli villagers (as later documents showed). 69 civilians (mostly
women and children) were murdered. In the early 1970s, his forces
were charged with the task of "pacifying" the recalcitrant Gaza
Strip. He imposed a brutal policy of repression, blowing up houses,
bulldozing large tracts of refugee camps, imposing severe collective
punishments and imprisoning hundreds of young Palestinians. The
whole area was effectively transformed into a jail. He was to become
involved in the settlements project, in founding Likud, and a number
of other "acheivements." He was the archjitect oF Israel's invasion
of Lebanon. His funded and armed a mercenary/proxy Phallange forces
committed the massacres at Sabra and Shatila for which he is being
indicted for war crimes. His crimes continue to date unchecked (both
Amnesty and Human Rights Watch stated that recent actions in teh
past two months amount to war crimes). See
http://www.geocities.com/indictsharon/

Shimon Peres (1923 -) was born as Shimon Perski in Vishniva, Poland
(now Belarus). He and his parents came to Palestine in 1934 (under
British rule). He joined the underground Israeli forces, the
Haganah, and served as a chief of its manpower division in the
1940s. He is the architect of Israel's nuclear program. Appointed in
1953 as dorector general of the ministry of defense, he immediately
started exploring teh nuclear development. In teh late 1950s and
early 1960s, Israel developed its nuclear program primarily with eth
help of France while maintaining the Peres doctrine of "ambiguity."
The US and Britain and other countries looked the other way. He was
awarded (with Rabin and Arafat) the Nobel Peace Prize for their Oslo
accords. The Nobel committee members recently signed a letter
regretting their awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize (based on his
recent actions as member of the Sharon government).

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