By NOOR ELASHI
http://www.counterpunch.org/elashi03232010.html
A
decade before my father received a 65-year prison sentence, he handed me an
unusual book, one that ultimately shifted the way I perceive the world. It was
titled Magic Eye, and it contained pages of what seemed like simple multicolored
patterns. But each page had a hidden gift, a sensational truth. By diverging
your eyes, my father told me, you’ll see an unexpected image. It seemed to
challenge everything I’d ever known. I stared at the flat, distorted artwork
until it transformed into a faded silhouette and then a three-dimensional shape
like a group of dolphins or a rose-filled heart. Years later, as I flip through
the pages of my family’s narrative, I see images that are far less whimsical,
and indeed, painful.
Last week, U.S. attorney Jim Jacks filed a motion asking the federal judge of
the Holy Land Foundation case to transfer my father—Ghassan Elashi, the
charity’s co-founder—and his colleagues to a prison that closely monitors its
inmates. If transferred to either of these so-called “Communication Management
Units” in Terre Haute, Indiana or Marion, Illinois, my father’s phone calls
would be more limited than they are now, in Seagoville, Texas. His letters would
be monitored, his visitation time would be reduced to four hours a month and his
conversations would be restricted to English, which is his second language.
Perhaps this may seem like an illustration of an effective justice system at
work. But if one diverges his or her eyes, the camouflaged truth will slowly
unfold, until it comes into focus. I, for one, see a hazel-eyed girl with pale
skin and soft dark curls losing her home uponIsrael’s creation in 1948. The
young woman, now my paternal grandmother, often tells me about her banishment
from Jaffa, a once vibrant Palestinian city known for its orange groves and
turquoise beach. I also see a man who was expelled from his native Gaza City in
1967 and was not allowed to return. I grew up hearing stories from this man, my
father, about the plight of Palestinians, whom he called “a voiceless
population” suffering from occupation, starvation, demolished homes, uprooted
trees, constrained movement and a devastated economy.
As I look deeper, I see the Holy Land Foundation rise to stardom in the eyes of
human rights activists worldwide who had witnessed this charitable organization
alleviate poverty in Occupied Palestine through bags of rice, boxes of medicine,
conventional humanitarian aid. I see my family scrutinized throughout the 1990s
due to agenda-driven reports linking my father to terrorism—reports written by
individuals who saw the HLF’s strength as a threat, for they wanted Palestinians
to remain weak and desolate. I see President Bush shutting down the Holy Land
Foundation three months after Sept. 11, 2001, calling the action “another
important step in the financial fight against terror.”
I see my father and his colleagues tried in 2007 and almost vindicated. I see
him tried a second time and convicted in 2008, thereby receiving a life-long
sentence. In both trials, prosecutors argued that the HLF gave money to
Palestinian zakat (charity) committees that they claimed were controlled by
Hamas, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization in 1995. To prove
this, prosecutors called to the stand an Israeli intelligence agent testifying
under the pseudonym of Avi who claimed he could “smell Hamas.” The prosecutors
intimidated the jury by showing them scenes of suicide bombings completely
unaffiliated with the HLF, and they used guilt by association by linking my
father and the other defendants to relatives who are members of Hamas. The
defense attorneys’ argument was simple: The Holy Land Five gave charity to the
same zakat committees to which the American government agency USAID (United
States Agency for International Development) gave money. Furthermore, none of
the zakat committees included in the HLF indictment were named on any of the
U.S. Treasury Department’s lists of designated terrorist organizations.
Nationally respected human rights law professors such as David Cole have
associated the Holy Land case with McCarthyism, and other experts have called it
a miscarriage of justice. The book that my father gave me had this subtitle: A
New Way of Looking at the World. If one looks at our world with a fresh pair of
eyes, he or she will see that Jim Jacks’ request for harsher prison conditions
is unnecessarily cruel, and that supporting the appeal process is the only way
to achieve justice. He or she will also see that the Holy Land Five arepolitical
prisoners, and that we live in a twisted time, a time when humanitarians are
pursued relentlessly for political purposes.
Noor Elashi is a Palestinian-American
and writer based in New York City.