[Ppnews] The Case of the Holy Land Five

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/
March 23, 2010


My Father's Unjust Incarceration


The Case of the Holy Land Five

By NOOR ELASHI

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 father­Ghassan 
Elashi, the charity’s co-founder­and 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 
terrorism­reports 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 are political 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.




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