Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a Palestinian was sentenced last week to 11 years in prison because he refused to testify against an organization he says is defending the rights of his people.
Ashqar was a part of the political persecution launched by disgraced former US Attorney General John Ashcroft that also included used car salesman Mohammed Salah, of suburban Chicago.
Like Salah, Ashqar was singled out for political convenience. Although neither man had anything to do with allegations of terrorism — a fact proven in their trials — they were instead vindictively punished because of America’s one-sided policies that target Palestinian extremism but ignore pro-Israel extremism that has undermined peace.
Both men defeated the false cases brought against them by Ashcroft, filed in the period of excessive anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hysteria that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Ashqar and Salah are victims of the American political Gulag, which targets anyone who criticizes Israel, moderates and extremists alike, even though their criticism of Israel has absolutely nothing to do with the terrorist threats against the United States.
The prosecutions were popular among uneducated and naïve American citizens who have been the victims of a six decade-long barrage of one-sided propaganda that has exaggerated Israel’s claims to justice while denying Palestinian claims. It allowed Ashcroft and President Bush to pretend as if they were doing something to counter the terrorism threats from Al-Qaeda, even though the terrorism had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda.
Hamas is an organization that has used terrorism to block and destroy every effort to achieve peace in the Middle East, but it has never targeted Americans.
The truth is that the convictions of Ashqar and Salah on flimsy charges of lying to a federal government that has consistently lied to the American people is the height of hypocrisy. The truth is also that while Americans have died in the Palestine-Israel conflict, not all of them have been victims of Palestinian terrorism, the only terrorism that the US Justice Department will pursue.
Despite the laudatory conduct of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who has conducted himself with a sensitivity to most concerns of Arab and Muslim Americans, the case he led is the epitome of American hypocrisy.
Fitzgerald has said that no one is above the law, but the truth is that yes, there are many who are above the law, especially when the cases involve injustices by Israeli extremists against Palestinians.
Just recently, the US Supreme Court ordered the US Justice Department to drop its 20-year-long persecution of eight Palestinians accused in 1987 of supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
For 20 years, those eight individuals were persecuted, harassed, defamed and prevented from living normal lives because of hypocritical and one-sided pro-Israel policies.
In the Ashqar case, Fitzgerald’s underling, Reid Schar, asserted Hamas’ bombings and shootings in the Middle East have killed Americans, “innocent victims caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
But what Reid did not state, because he would be fired for telling the truth, is that the US government has been oblivious to the killings of Americans by Israelis, including the most celebrated case of the killing of Palestinian activist Rachel Corrie, an American citizen who was killed while trying to protest the demolition of Palestinian homes on lands that Israel has confiscated illegally to build illegal settlements.
In the case of several Americans who were killed by Hamas, most were dual nationals who held citizenship both in Israel and in the United States. They were not all tourists, but activists who sought to advocate Israel’s cause, which was their right. Their deaths were wrong and the perpetrators should be prosecuted. But the real issue symbolized in the Ashqar case is not whether or not the killers of Americans should be prosecuted. Those killers must be prosecuted.
The real issue is the hypocrisy that says the murder of an Israeli, American or not, is wrong, but that the murder of an American who is Palestinian or supports Palestinian rights, is not wrong. Every American should be clear that the Ashqar and Salah cases have nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with American hypocrisy, double-standards, a system of injustice and a biased American news media that only sees one side of the conflict and one side of justice.
The issue has never been about stopping terrorism. It has always been about hypocrisy in the fight against terrorism, a hypocrisy that blames all Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, but turns its back on injustices committed by extremist Israelis.
— Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian and author. he can be reached at www.Hanania.com.
