Defend Jennifer Peto, a Brave Canadian Critic of Zionism
By Jay Knott / Dissident Voice / December 14th, 2010
Canada is mostly a diluted version of the USA. But Canadians are justly proud of their country’s resistance to the abrasive style of American politics. In one respect, though, it is more extreme than the United States – it is the only country with a more fanatical Israel Lobby.
When the University of Toronto recently accepted a Master’s thesis critical of Jewish privilege, the Lobby, the media, and politicians, immediately condemned it as ‘hate’. Some of these legislators declared the University should not have awarded the M.A. to Sociology and Equity Studies student Jennifer Peto, an unprecedented interference of the government in academic freedom.
When a Jewish anti-Zionist like Peto is physically threatened by Zionists and denounced by politicians, the first thing is obviously to defend her and her freedom of speech. But there is a danger in giving extra credit to her argument because it has come under such vicious attack from the Lobby.
The extreme reaction of the Lobby to any criticism has the effect of encouraging narcissism in critics, especially Jewish ones – there is nothing like persecution to make people self-righteous, and Zionists know this better than anyone! To be a Jewish critic of Zionism in a Western country today is less risky than to have joined the white anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, who were on the receiving end of letter-bombs as well as abuse. Still, Peto is a brave woman, and her thesis honestly describes her difficult break with her Zionist upbringing.
Her thesis, ‘The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education’, is a development of the tradition of left-wing criticism of various kinds of ‘privilege’ – white, male, etc.1 She reviews How Jews Became White Folks.2 She thinks that race is socially constructed: “race, whiteness and ethnicity produce, and are produced by, nationalist discourses.” She uncritically repeats the idea that Israel is a US ‘client state’ but admits “the discourses that are used in defence of Israel are different than those used to excuse or deny American, Canadian and other Western imperial violence.” It’s not that complicated. Never mind ‘discourses.’ Is it in the interests of the other Western capitalist countries to give unconditional support to Israel, or not? In short, she has no critique of Jewish power.
Peto states, “My work is based in the understanding that Zionism – the belief that Jewish people have a right to a nation-state built on top of the ruins of Palestine – is a racist, imperialist ideology that can only effectively be challenged through anti-racist, anti-imperialist theory and activism.” I argue the exact opposite – I want to challenge her and the left in general to ask why this approach was so effective in the case of South Africa, and so ineffective against Israel. She has nothing to say about ‘the chosen people’ and the festivals which celebrate massacres of gentiles – she makes no attempt to answer the question “is Zionism an expression of Judaism”? She explicitly says, “Jews of European descent now enjoy white privilege,” which implies a) they didn’t used to enjoy privilege at all, and b) the privilege they now enjoy is not specifically Jewish. She compares Canada’s history of ethnic cleansing with Israel’s. This is not how to undermine Zionism.
A thesis is not a political manifesto, but obviously, Jennifer Peto is an activist, and her paper’s argument leads to certain conclusions, certain tactics, for the growing campaign to reduce uncritical support for the apartheid state in the rest of the world. Therefore, I think it is appropriate to criticize it from a tactical point of view.
My argument is, quite simply, that left-wing anti-oppression politics is inadequate for combating Zionism. Telling the white European majority of the Western countries that Jewish privilege is essentially a variant of their own is not only false, it leads logically to solidarity with Israel. Surely it would be more effective to point out that most Americans have no interest in supporting Jewish supremacy, rather than telling them they are ‘complicit’ in racism? Concern with the history of white European racism assisted the dismantling of apartheid in Africa, desegregation, affirmative action, busing and African-American studies, but it doesn’t lead to opposing the Jewish apartheid state.
The Palestine solidarity movement should be trying to drive a wedge between supporters of the Jewish state and everyone else. This involves emphasizing the differences between the former and the latter, putting forward the overwhelming case that a) Israel is morally worse than all the other Western countries, and b) most of their inhabitants, rich or poor, have no reason to support it. It implies showing, in complete contrast to the dogmas of modern leftism, how Western countries are the most egalitarian societies which have ever existed – except Israel. Trying to fit opposition to Zionism into the general framework of opposing oppression in general doesn’t work. For example, feminist and gay politics don’t aid opponents of Jewish apartheid; its defenders point out that Israel is by far the most liberal country in the Middle East. Analyses derived from Marxism are also unhelpful; Western support for Israel is not based on material interests, and the conflict in Palestine is about race, not class.
- Instead of trying to fit the square peg of opposition to Jewish ethnocentrism into the round hole of political correctness, we should list the ways in which Jewish power is more powerful than white supremacy:
- 1. The open advocacy of white power – in any country – is taboo – no politician in the world does it
2. The open advocacy of Jewish power – in Israel – is mandatory for all Western politicians
3. The Western countries boycotted, and caused the end of, white apartheid, thirty years ago
4. The Western countries support Jewish apartheid today, uncritically and very expensively
5. Desmond Tutu has stated that Israeli policies are at least as bad as apartheid
6. Apartheid South Africa fought for US interests against Soviet-backed forces
7. Apartheid Israel has never fought for US interests
8. There has been no violence against Jews in any Western country for sixty-five years – unless you count Palestinian resistance, which is the result of Jewish supremacy
9. When US colleges, co-operatives and other bodies initiated a boycott of South Africa over thirty years ago, no white supremacists tried to stop them
10. When, today, US colleges, co-operatives and other bodies tentatively discuss a boycott of Israel today, right-wing Jewish activists issue lawsuits and stage protests, and left-wing Jewish activists try to undermine their efforts from within, complaining of ‘oppression’ and ‘anti-Semitism’
Jewish power is so much more important than white privilege that I argue that concern with the latter works, consciously or otherwise, to the benefit of the former. Critics of white privilege, for example critical race theorist Stanley Fish, often claim that Zionism is not a form of racism, by emphasizing how Jews have suffered at the hands of white supremacists.3 Peto boldly challenges the use of the holocaust to reinforce Jewish self-righteousness. She describes The March of Remembrance, a Zionist project aimed at making gentiles aware of the holocaust, but, because of her perspective, she doesn’t go so far as to see it as part of the culture of ‘white guilt’. I would criticize it as such, and advocate, and organize, open discussion about the holocaust and the rest of the larger Holocaust of World War II. Canada’s laws against questioning aspects of the Shoah are a clear expression of Jewish privilege. Opposing that privilege by defending freedom of speech means trying to overturn those laws as much as defending Jennifer Peto and her comrades against Jewish power.
- Jennifer Peto (2010) “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education,” Master of Arts thesis, University of Toronto.
- Karen Brodkin (1998). How Jews Became White Folks: and what that says about race in America. Rutgers University Press.
- Stanley Fish (1994). There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing, Too. Oxford University Press.
Two more leftwing activists summoned to a meeting with Israel’s General Security Service
Promised Land | December 13th, 2010
Two Israeli activists that take part in protests in the West Bank have been summoned to informal investigations by Israel’s General Security Service, the Shabak (formally Shin Beit). According to the two, they received phone calls inviting them for what was described as “a talk” with a GSS investigator named Rona.
A few months ago, Yonatan Shapira, a former IDF pilot, was summoned for such a meeting in Tel Aviv with a female investigator calling herself Rona. According to an account Shapira published, the “talk” turned out to be a political interrogation, in which Shapira was asked about his participation in demonstrations in the West Bank and other activities, but was not accused of any illegal actions.
Last week, an activist in Anarchists against the Wall, a leftwing group whose members take part in unarmed demonstrations in the West Bank, was invited to a similar meeting in a police station on Dizengof Street, Tel Aviv. According to his account, he was told by “Rona” that his actions are known and are not considered illegal by the GSS. However, he was warned that “if they do turn illegal, we [the GSS] will be there.”
Today, another Anarchists against the Wall activist received a phone call from “Rona” inviting him to talk to her. The activist asked if this would be a formal interrogation, and if so, said he would like to be summoned by an official subpoena, in writing. According to the activist, “Rona” answered that this was not the case, and the conversation ended.
Police Demolish Seven Homes In Lod
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – December 14, 2010
The Israeli Police demolished on Tuesday seven Palestinian homes in Lod city after forcing the residents out. The police claimed the structures were built without obtaining the needed construction permits.
Seventy residents were rendered homeless and are currently living in tents. The demolished homes belong to members of Abu Eid family.
The furniture and belongings of the families were taken by the police to a location still unknown to the residents.
The residents demanded that authorities delay demolishing their homes so they can pursue legal action, but the so-called “The Lands Of Israel” Authority rejected their request, and claimed that the land was rented out to the family in 1950, and that the contract had expired.
Local sources reported that the Police prevented local residents from entering the area, and that one of the soldiers cocked this Kalashnikov rifle telling the locals that he is there “to perform his duty”.
“I can only deal with you using this!” the soldier said while pointing his rifle at the residents.
His provocation led to clashes between the soldiers and dozens of residents, no injuries were reported.
The Popular Committee in the area held a meeting with the locals and decided to install tents to temporarily house the residents.
Furthermore, the Committee prepared plans to rebuild the demolished structures.
Obama’s Show Trials
Why prosecute a terrorism suspect if life imprisonment is the only possible outcome?
Jacob Sullum from the January 2011 issue of Reason
In October a federal judge threw out a key witness against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the former Guantanamo inmate who is accused of participating in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The witness, who was identified through Ghailani’s coerced statements, was supposed to testify that he sold the defendant the TNT used to blow up the embassy in Tanzania. But U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that the testimony was too closely tied to information the CIA had obtained from Ghailani while holding him at a secret prison where he says he was tortured.
Conservatives who think terrorism suspects should never receive civilian trials said the exclusion of this testimony showed they were right. So did civil libertarians who argue that the federal courts are perfectly capable of handling terrorism cases. But whether or not the system is working, Kaplan’s ruling suggested it is ultimately irrelevant.
“It is appropriate to emphasize,” Kaplan wrote, “that Ghailani remains subject to trial on the pending indictment, that he faces the possibility of life imprisonment if convicted, and that his status as an ‘enemy combatant’ probably would permit his detention as something akin to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end even if he were found not guilty in this case.” Barring a formal surrender by Al Qaeda, these “hostilities” will continue indefinitely, so detention for their duration amounts to a life sentence—the same punishment Ghailani is apt to receive if he is found guilty.
If Ghailani is convicted, in other words, he will be imprisoned for life, and the same thing will happen if he is acquitted. Even with the benefit of the Fifth Amendment’s ban on coerced self-incrimination and the exclusionary rule, Ghailani has zero chance of regaining his freedom. So what exactly is the point of the trial?
In a New York Times op-ed piece published after Kaplan’s ruling, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, an assistant attorney general during the Bush administration, noted that “trials are perceived to be more legitimate than detention.” But Goldsmith, who favors military detention of suspected terrorists, added that “a conviction in a trial publicly guaranteed not to result in the defendant’s release will not be seen as a beacon of legitimacy.”
Asked whether Ghailani will be returned to military custody if his trial does not turn out the way the government wants, Attorney General Eric Holder dodged the question, saying, “We intend to proceed with this trial.” Holder’s coyness was not really necessary, because the administration already has publicly stated that it reserves the right to detain terrorism suspects who are acquitted.
“If you have the authority under the laws of war to detain someone,” Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson told the Senate Armed Services Committee in July 2009, “it is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.…If there’s an acquittal…we would have the ability to detain him.”
One reason for nevertheless going through the motions of a trial, Goldsmith suggested, is the possibility of capital punishment. But the Justice Department is not seeking the death penalty in Ghailani’s case, and in any event President Barack Obama claims he can kill suspected terrorists without permission from a court.
Under his policy of “targeted killings,” Obama can authorize the summary execution of anyone he unilaterally identifies as a member or accomplice of Al Qaeda, including American citizens. Since this administration, like the last one, views the entire world as a battlefield in the war on terrorism, that means enemies of the state can be killed anywhere at any time—except, presumably, if they have been taken into custody and are being prosecuted in federal court.
Which suggests a third option for Ghailani, in addition to life imprisonment upon conviction and indefinite detention upon acquittal. The government could simply let him go—and then kill him.
Senior Editor Jacob Sullum (jsullum@reason.com) is a nationally syndicated columnist.
AGAINST CRITICISM
By Paul Balles | Intifada – Palestine | 13 December 2010
“Arrogance diminishes wisdom” – Arabic proverb
Joseph A. Klein
Last month, Joseph A Klein wrote an article for the Canada Free Press criticising the Obama administration for joining the UN Human Rights Council. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/29644
The Council had met and found fault with a number of human rights violations by America. For this, Klein verbally bashed the Council. Klein is author of the book Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom.”
Having “studied the United Nations for many years” Klein says he “watched it degenerate into an anti-Western echo chamber that does more harm than good.”
The point of Klein’s writing is that the UN is wrong because of its criticism of the US and Israel.
The US and Israel share two shameful traits: both abhor criticism, and both divert attention from their own faults when criticised by levelling the same criticism at others.
“In my new book, Lethal Engagement,” says Klein, “I focus on the perfect storm revolving around the increasing Islamicization of key UN bodies – particularly the ones that produce influential international norms.”
In short, criticise Israel for any of its misdeeds–destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure, imprisoning thousands of Palestinians, starving and slaughtering Gazans–and Klein will shift to an unrelated issue.
Klein complains that “Obama wants to engage with our enemies like Iran and Syria while coming down hard on one of our closest allies, Israel.”
Thus, Klein (and others) will criticize Obama, but to find fault with America or Israelis is to be dubbed unpatriotic, Islamic extremist, or anti-Semitic.
While most people’s ire is aroused by criticism from outsiders (aliens, expats, foreigners) there are often good reasons for outsiders to be critical.
Attorney, commentator and author of How Would a Patriot Act, Glenn Greenwald pointed to several understandable reasons for external criticism in his books and articles.
“We systematically torture Muslims and then cover it up and protect our torturers while preaching accountability and the rule of law; we condemn deprivations of due process while maintaining and expanding lawless prison systems for Muslims…”
That being factually accurate, it’s understandable why those who have suffered under our double standards denigrate their abusers.
Greenwald notes how our critics react predictably to our hypocrisy: “We demand adherence to U.N. dictates and international law while blocking investigations into U.N. reports of war crimes and possible ‘crimes against humanity’ by our allies;…”
If that weren’t enough, Greenwald reminds us that “we righteously oppose aggression while invading and simultaneously occupying numerous countries, while threatening to attack still more, and arming countries like Israel to the teeth to wage still other attacks….”
Americans think that any criticism of America is unjustified, primarily because much of the evidence fails to make it to the media and because they rebel at criticism.
To resist criticism and denigrate honest critics is a sign of impending downfall from the pollution of conceit.
English actress Ellen Terry appropriately observed that “conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress.”
To return to Joseph A. Klein’s gripe, he bemoaned the members of the Human Rights Council including, “among its own proud roster of members, such countries as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia.”
Then, to shift the focus from American abuses, Klein groaned that “These serial human rights abusers exploit the UPR process to heap praise on each other and whitewash their own abysmal records, while scoring propaganda points against Western democracies for falling short of perfection.”
In making that comment, he just did what he complained that members of the Human Rights Council do. Heaping praise on America, he attempts to score propaganda points by denigrating others.
Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years.
Stage-Managing the War on Terror
Ensnaring Terrorists Demands Creativity
By Stephan Salisbury | TomDispatch | July 6, 2010
Informers have by now become our first line of defense in our battles with the evildoers, the go-to guys in the never-ending domestic war on terror. They regularly do the dirty work — suggesting and encouraging the plots, laboring as bag men to move the money, fashioning the bombs, and eliciting the flamboyant dialogue, even while following the scripts of their handlers to the letter. They have attended to all the little details that make for the successful and now familiar arrests, criminal complaints, trials, and (for the most part) convictions in the ever-distracting war against… what? Al-Qaeda? Terror? Muslims? The inept? The poor?
The Liberty City Seven, the Fort Dix Six, the Detroit Ummah Conspiracy, the Newburgh Four — each has had their fear-filled day in the sun. None of these plots ever came close to happening. How could they? All were bogus from the get-go: money to buy missiles or cell phones or shoes and fancy duds — provided by the authorities; plans for how to use the missiles and bombs and cell phones — provided by authorities; cars for transport and demolition — issued by the authorities; facilities for carrying out the transactions — leased by those same authorities. Played out on landscapes manufactured by federal imagineers, the climax of each drama was foreordained. The failure of the plots would then be touted as the success of the investigations and prosecutions.
A band of virtually homeless and penniless men in Florida, we were told, were planning to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. They just needed the right combat boots to pull it off, and a little free money.
A cell of New Jersey roofers, handymen, and cab drivers was scheming to use a laminated pizza delivery map to guide them through a devastating attack on Fort Dix, the enormous military base in Burlington County, south of Trenton.
Ex-cons in Detroit, mostly known for patronizing a weekly soup kitchen to stave off hunger, were also planning to set up their own country in Michigan under Islamic law.
And a band of Orange County New York parolees and former drug peddlers placed bombs at two Bronx synagogues and was preparing to launch missile attacks on military cargo planes at Stewart National Guard Air Base in Newburgh.
In the Liberty City Seven case, which revolved around two informants paid in excess of $130,000 for their services, the government tried the hapless defendants three times before finally wresting a conviction from a jury. One defendant was acquitted at the first trial, another in the third, and five were eventually convicted of at least some terrorism-related charges. In the Fort Dix case, jurors were shown horrific films said to be on a computer owned by one of the defendants, who claimed an FBI informant demanded more and more videos for viewing.
Another defendant actually called the Philadelphia police, mid-plot, and said he was being pressured to commit radical acts by what turned out to be an FBI informer. Prosecutors dismissed this as an obvious decoy maneuver. The key informer in that case — the FBI eventually paid two people to spy on the group — an Egyptian on probation, received $236,000 for his services.
Most recently, this duplicitous landscape of war-on-terror “success” has been illuminated yet again by the case of four alleged Newburgh, New York, conspirators — the Newburgh Four — and in the botched arrest and fatal shooting (a first for federal authorities) of an African American imam in Detroit, leader of the so-called Ummah Conspiracy. As the details have slowly emerged, these two cases offer vivid examples of how government-scripted many of the terror plots “uncovered” in the U.S. in recent years have turned out to be. Each case, in fact, offers a window onto a stark world in which nothing is what it seems to be.
The “Un-Terrorism Case”
In the years following 9/11, when I was reporting my book, Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, many defense and immigration attorneys I interviewed insisted that the mere mention of “terrorism” has often been enough to knock down any and all defenses. In the Newburgh conspiracy, however, the federal judge, Colleen McMahon, has shown a more questioning attitude toward what, in a May 28, 2010, pre-trial hearing, she took to calling the “un-terrorism case.”
After their May 2009 arrests, the four Newburgh conspirators were portrayed as Jew-hating Muslim converts who intended to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes based at Stewart Airport in Newburgh. “It’s hard to envision a more chilling plot,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder at the time, describing the defendants as “extremely violent.”
The men were indeed arrested only after placing bogus bombs (courtesy of the FBI) near two Bronx synagogues. New York Police Chief Raymond Kelly said the plotters believed “it would be alright” to kill Jews. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement noting that the uncovered plot cooked up by “the jihadist terrorists” showed “that the dangers from such fanaticism have not passed and that American Jews must maintain their vigilance.” New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg reiterated that vigilance remains a necessity for all concerned.
With their anti-Semitic bona fides established and the men caught in the act, all that seemed left was a perfunctory trial, followed by life in prison for James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen. A decade earlier, Cromitie had been arrested for dealing drugs behind a school. Payen, a Haitian immigrant, is a crack addict and certified paranoid schizophrenic, often found living on the street; his earlier deportation had been on hold due to his mental instability. Onta and David Williams, not related, had pasts pocked by drug busts and spotty work at minimum wage jobs scrounged from Newburgh’s depressed economy. All four men were black.
Almost immediately, however, questions about the conspiracy began to arise. For one thing, the FBI informer who broke the case was a Pakistani named Shaheed Hussain, who arrived in Newburgh in the summer of 2008 driving a flashy Mercedes, showing lots of money, and promising jobs to down-and-out African American hangers-on at Masjid al-Ikhlas, Newburgh’s main mosque. Convicted in a fraudulent driver’s license scheme in 2002, he agreed to work undercover for the FBI shortly afterward to avoid deportation and turned out to have been an informer in a previous terrorism case in Albany in 2004.
The Albany case, in which an imam and a pizza shop owner were convicted of money laundering as part of a phantasmagorical scheme to kill a Pakistani diplomat with a missile, was bitterly contested by defense attorneys. They claimed that the elaborate plan had been concocted by Hussain himself. The jury didn’t buy it, convicting both imam and pizza shop owner.
The Newburgh case shares much with the Albany case, especially a fondness for baroque plotting, the flashing of great wads of money in front of needy people, and the aggressive use of an informant by the FBI in a house of worship, in this case Masjid al-Ikhlas. The intricate plotting and the use of an informer made it into the criminal complaint, but all that flashing money didn’t. There was no mention of the enticing job offers made by the seemingly well-to-do informer. Nothing about his offer of a $250,000 payment for carrying out the plot. Nothing about the BMW he pushed on Cromitie, who didn’t even have a driver’s license. Nothing about the $25,000 he was ready to pay anyone willing to act as a “lookout.”
Maybe Cromitie wasn’t the brightest hustler in town, but he was quite capable of grasping the significance of such sums of money in distressed Newburgh. He assured Hussain that dangling cash would lure participants, no matter what. “They will do it for the money,” he said. “They’re not even thinking about the cause.”
Nor did the complaint mention, as the defense now maintains, that even the anti-Semitic talk was triggered by the informant. He baited the defendants, telling them that Jews were responsible for the U.S. wars in the Middle East and for other acts of violence against Muslims. Cromitie had an unexpected reaction during one of these conversations, according to government transcripts. “I’m not gonna hurt anybody,” he said, after being badgered about possible attacks. “The plane thing… is out of the question.”
On the streets of Newburgh, relatives and neighbors say that they have never heard the four men even mention Jews or jihad, let alone link the two together in murderous rants. Lord McWilliams, the severely ill brother of David Williams, called such a characterization “crazy.” Hussain, he insisted, had promised his brother so much money that he would have been able to pay for the liver transplant that Lord desperately needed.
In fact, more substantial members of the mosque had pegged Shaheed Hussain as an informer almost the moment he arrived, but had no idea what to do about him. “Maybe the mistake we made was that we didn’t report him,” Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, imam at Masjid al-Ikhlas, told congregants shortly after the May 2009 arrests. “But how are we going to report the government agent to the government?”
The Ummah and the Death of an Imam
Money also played a role in the deadly Detroit case involving 53-year-old Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, born Christopher Thomas, and gunned down during a sting operation run by the FBI in a Dearborn, Michigan, warehouse on October 28th of last year. For at least three years, FBI informants had filed copious reports on the conversations and activities of Abdullah, as he ministered to his largely indigent congregation at Masjid al-Haqq, a mosque so poor it could not even pay property taxes in disintegrating Detroit. Al-Haqq was evicted from its long-time home on Michigan Avenue early in 2009 and moved its operation — a soup kitchen and religious services regularly attended by several dozen largely African American families, ex-convicts, former addicts and alcoholics, and homeless men and women — into a house on Clairmount Street on Detroit’s west side.
It is from this pathetic building, surrounded by an increasingly vacant and collapsing neighborhood, that the FBI contends Abdullah was plotting rebellion, hiding weapons, and planning efforts to move stolen goods. A 43-page criminal complaint describes Abdullah as “a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting primarily of African Americans” whose “primary mission is to establish a separate, sovereign Islamic state (‘The Ummah’) within the borders of the United States, governed by Shariah law.”
The complaint opens with page after page of over-the-top political trash talk, provided by three informants listening to (and sometimes recording) Abdullah’s sermons and conversations, tying the imam to H. Rap Brown, a 1960s radical and a former leader in the Black Panther Party now serving life in prison for the shooting deaths of two Georgia state troopers. According to the complaint, Abdullah was rarely without a gun or knife. He daydreamed about cop killing, engaged in elaborate revolutionary plotting, and enthusiastically told anecdotes about past violent encounters, largely with police. In effect, the complaint conjures up an old-time boogeyman: the angry, gun-toting Black Panther given over to “anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric” — now dressed up with sympathy for Osama bin Laden.
But in its efforts to be all-inclusive, the complaint also features an extraordinary section that describes an FBI informant offering Abdullah $5,000 “to pay to have someone ‘do something’ during the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit.” The imam rejected the offer. “Abdullah said he would not be involved in injuring innocent people for no reason,” the complaint blandly states. So much for entrapment on the political front.
Despite page after page of braggadocio from Abdullah, following the rebuff over Super Bowl violence, no further effort was apparently mounted to entice him into a terrorist “plot.” The complaint outlines no grounds for charges of treason, none for terrorism, and nothing even for a charge of material support for terrorism (that reliable catch-all used to ensnare dozens of American Muslims and institutions and even human-rights groups). Despite the heavy emphasis on descriptions of violent radicalism, the criminal complaint ultimately accuses Abdullah and several congregants of the pettiest of fencing operations — 54 powertools, 46 TVs, and the like — involving small amounts of money ($100, $200, $500).
FBI agents worked out a simple but comprehensive sting. Undercover operatives rented a warehouse and offered the imam and his congregants money for help in moving batches of furs and small electronic items. Money, goods, trucks, warehouse, and plans were all supplied by covert federal agents, and all activities were reported, virtually in real time, by informers close to Abdullah and inside the mosque.
Then, as the sting unfolded on October 28th, Abdullah was gunned down by FBI agents as they sought to round up the purported members of the fencing operation. No one else was harmed. The FBI claimed Abdullah fired first, killing a police dog, which was taken by helicopter to a veterinary hospital. After he was shot, the imam was handcuffed behind the back and dragged from the warehouse into a trailer full of TVs and other “stolen” goods. Presumably, at this point he was dead, though no information has been released describing his condition or the circumstances of his removal from the warehouse. Abdullah’s body was photographed in the trailer and picked up by the Wayne County medical examiner, who then declined to release autopsy findings. The head of the local FBI office claimed that he was “comfortable with what our agents did” to protect themselves.
This whole murky incident with a still unfolding aftermath has caused deep anxiety and not a little anger in Detroit’s African American and Muslim communities. Why was the imam shot in the back? Why was the dog given emergency medical treatment and the imam handcuffed and dragged around? Was he dead when the shooting ended? Did he even have a gun?
Was Abdullah’s death an instance of score settling for his unrepentant association with Rap Brown, known as Jamil Abdullah al-Amin since the 1970s? In a conversation I had recently with a black leader in Philadelphia, he said that rumors are spreading on the street of nationwide interrogations of African American Muslims who, in the past, associated with al-Amin. (In Philadelphia, a mosque founded by civic-minded entrepreneur Kenny Gamble, well known for his efforts to assist the black community, has been attacked by anti-Islamic groups for its purported association with “The Ummah.”)
Members of Abdullah’s congregation and prominent Muslims in Detroit told me that Abdullah was indeed incensed by the poverty and racism he saw all around him and could indeed deliver harsh attacks on the government — but that hardly distinguished him in a city as ravaged and beaten down as Detroit. Moreover, those who knew Abdullah insist that they never heard him promote any violent separatist effort on behalf of any organization.
National Islamic organizations, such as the Muslim Alliance in North America, insist as well that “The Ummah” is nothing more than an association of largely African American mosques. (“Ummah” is an Arabic term that refers to the Muslim community.) The alliance calls the FBI description of the Ummah “an offensive mischaracterization.” (Abdullah El-Amin, an imam at the largest African American Detroit mosque, told the New York Times that he had heard Abdullah discuss a separatism that would be “sort of like the Pennsylvania Dutch have their own communities and stuff.” There are similar comments from Abdullah in the criminal complaint.)
In any event, the indictment that followed Abdullah’s death, naming 11 of his congregants and associates, makes no mention of radical politics or the shadowy “Ummah” or “offensive jihad” — all highlighted in the earlier criminal complaint. The 11 were indicted as petty criminals, charged with selling and receiving stolen goods, tampering with vehicle identification numbers, and weapons offenses.
Many officials and organizations, including Congressman John Conyers, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, the local chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil-rights and advocacy organization, the ACLU, and the NAACP, have called for an investigation of the killing — calls unanswered so far by the Obama administration. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is reviewing the case. The state attorney general named a prosecutor to look into the matter after the FBI refused to hand over documents to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office because, the bureau said, the documents were “classified.”
In early June, Cyril Wecht, a well-known forensic pathologist asked by CAIR to review the autopsy findings (they were finally released in February), said Abdullah’s face was pierced by wounds and lacerations consistent with a dog attack. His jaw was fractured. Wecht also said there were two gunshot wounds in Abdullah’s back, not one. This prompted Wayne County Medical Examiner Carl Schmidt to defend his findings and accuse Wecht of emotionalism, according to a Detroit Free Press report. “We don’t always say what others would like us to say,” Schmidt commented. “We can only describe what we see.”
As the wait for reviews and investigations and answers drags on, the immediate area served by Abdullah’s mosque — blighted, black, and destitute — frays further, and is in danger of losing a small but critical social and economic resource. Abdullah ran a well-attended soup kitchen for years, worked to rid the neighborhood of gang violence, and sought to provide support for the poor, the homeless, and ex-convicts. His family and his depleted mosque are now struggling to keep the house of worship and soup kitchen going. Mosque attendance has plummeted and contributions, never robust, have evaporated; law-enforcement investigators continue to fan out through the community.
“People are still scared,” said Omar Regan, one of Abdullah’s 13 children, who makes his living as an actor, comedian, and motivational speaker based in Los Angeles. “They are still interrogating people. The more people push about injustice, the more they harass Muslims in that area [of Detroit]. My father took care of all these people. They leaned on him. He was a reason a lot of them didn’t commit suicide. They came for food. For shelter.”
Regan is incensed that the FBI provided the money to acquire stolen goods, the actual goods as well, and even the warehouses to store them in, while working out plans for moving the goods through informants and undercover employees clustered around Luqman Abdullah and the Masjid al-Haqq mosque. And now Omar Regan’s father is dead.
“It’s the FBI setting the whole thing up,” he lamented. “How can that be legal?”
It’s a question more and more people are asking as the war on terror grinds on, now directed by the Obama administration. If nothing else, the cases of the Newburgh Four and the Detroit Ummah Conspiracy show that street-smart accused conspirator James Cromitie knew what he was talking about when he said that chronically poor people will “do it for the money” and “don’t care about the cause.”
This simple fact underlies both the Detroit and Newburgh cases. The FBI contends that the Detroit sting was not about terror, but about mundane criminal activity. If that’s the case, why was the criminal complaint larded with characterizations of Luqman Abdullah’s supposed violent political views? What relevance does H. Rap Brown, now in prison, have to moving stolen goods in Dearborn?
Beyond that, what justification do federal authorities have for characterizing “the Ummah” as a threatening separatist movement? Many Muslim leaders argue that such a characterization is a fantasy akin to tales spun by the FBI’s most imaginative informers. Both Newburgh and Detroit are, indeed, instances of “unterrorism,” as the Newburgh judge said of the “plot” before her. Yet both are starkly framed by the on-going war on terror, both involve elaborate set-ups arranged by federal informers and covert agents, and both ensnared inept, virtually destitute black people scrambling to get by in post-racial America.
It remains to be asked: How expansive will the stage become for creative informers and their government directors now working the theater of the Great Recession?
Stephan Salisbury is cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His most recent book is Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland (Nation Books). Catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Salisbury discusses how terror cases are created via entrapment and informers by clicking here, or to download to your iPod, click here.
[Note on sources: The criminal complaint for the Detroit Ummah conspiracy can be found in pdf file format by clicking here.]
Justice Department Prepares for Ominous Expansion of “Anti-Terrorism” Law Targeting Activists
By Michael Deutsch | t r u t h o u t | 11 December 2010
In late September, the FBI carried out a series of raids of homes and antiwar offices of public activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Following the raids, the Obama Justice Department subpoenaed 14 activists to a grand jury in Chicago and also subpoenaed the files of several antiwar and community organizations. In carrying out these repressive actions, the Justice Department was taking its lead from the Supreme Court’s 6-3 opinion last June in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project, which decided that nonviolent First Amendment speech and advocacy “coordinated with” or “under the direction of” a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as “terrorist” was a crime.
The search warrants and grand jury subpoenas make it clear that the federal prosecutors are intent on accusing public nonviolent political organizers, many of whom are affiliated with Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), of providing “material support” through their public advocacy for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The Secretary of State has determined that both the PLFP and the FARC “threaten US national security, foreign policy or economic interests,” a finding not reviewable by the courts, and listed both groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTO).
In 1996, Congress made it a crime – then punishable by 10 years, which was later increased to 15 years – to anyone in the US who provides “material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization or attempts or conspires to do so.” The present statute defines “material support or resources” as:
… any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safe houses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel and transportation except medicine or religious materials.
In the Humanitarian Law Project case, human rights workers wanted to teach members of the Kurdistan PKK, which seeks an independent Kurdish state, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which sought an independent state in Sri Lanka, how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes and obtain relief from the United Nations and other international bodies for human rights abuses by the governments of Turkey and Sri Lanka. Both organizations were designated as FTOs by the Secretary of State in a closed hearing, in which the evidence is heard secretly.
Despite the nonviolent, peacemaking goal of the Humanitarian Law Project’s speech and training, the majority of the Supreme Court nonetheless interpreted the law to make such conduct a crime. Finding a whole new exception to the First Amendment, the Court decided that any support, even if it involves nonviolent efforts towards peace, is illegal under the law since it “frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends,” and also helps lend “legitimacy” to foreign terrorist groups. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts, despite the lack of any evidence, further opined that the FTO could use the human rights law to “intimidate, harass or destruct” its adversaries, and that even peace talks themselves could be used as a cover to re-arm for further attacks. Thus, the Court’s opinion criminalizes efforts by independent groups to work for peace if they in any way cooperate or coordinate with designated FTOs.
The Court distinguishes what it refers to as “independent advocacy,” which it finds is not prohibited by the statute, from “advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization,” which is, for the first time, found to be a crime under the statute. The exact line demarcating where independent advocacy becomes impermissible coordination is left open and vague.
Seizing on this overbroad definition of “material support,” the US government is now moving in on political groups and activists who are clearly exercising fundamental First Amendment rights by vocally opposing the government’s branding of foreign liberation movements as terrorist and supporting their struggles against US-backed repressive regimes and illegal occupations.
Under the new definition of “material support,” the efforts of President Jimmy Carter to monitor the elections in Lebanon and coordinate with the political parties there, including the designated FTO Hezbollah, could well be prosecuted as a crime. Similarly, the publication of op-ed articles by FTO spokesmen from Hamas or other designated groups by The New York Times or The Washington Post, or the filing of amicus briefs by human rights attorneys arguing against a group’s terrorist designation or the statute itself could also now be prosecuted. Of course, the first targets of this draconian expansion of the material support law will not be a former president or the establishment media, but members of a Marxist organization who are vocal opponents of the governments of Israel and Colombia and the US policies supporting these repressive governments.
In his foreword to Nelson Mandela’s recent autobiography “Conversations with Myself,” President Obama wrote that “Mandela’s sacrifice was so great that it called upon people everywhere to do what they could on behalf of human progress. … The first time I became politically active was during my college years, when I joined a campaign on behalf of divestment, and the effort to end apartheid in South Africa.” At the time of Mr. Obama’s First Amendment advocacy, Mr. Mandela and his organization the African National Congress (ANC) were denounced as terrorist by the US government. If the “material support” law had been in effect back then, Mr. Obama would have been subject to potential criminal prosecution. It is ironic – and the height of hypocrisy – that this same man who speaks with such reverence for Mr. Mandela and recalls his own support for the struggle against apartheid now allows the Justice Department under his command to criminalize similar First Amendment advocacy against Israeli apartheid and repressive foreign governments.
Israeli Troops Kidnap Former Palestinian Minister in Jenin
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – December 11, 2010
Palestinian sources reported Friday that Israeli soldiers kidnapped former Minister of Detainees, Wasfy Qabha, while heading to visit his family in Barta’a village, near the northern West Bank city of Jenin. He was moved to an Israeli hospital later on due to a sharp increase in his blood sugar level.
Fuad Al Khoffash, head of the Ahrar Center for Detainees Studies and Human Rights, stated that, under an illegal Israeli military order, Qabha is not allowed into his own village, but was allowed into the village last week after his father died.
The Israeli Authorities granted him forty days, but on Friday morning Qabha was stopped at a military roadblock at the entrance of his village and the soldiers kidnapped him.
Due to his health condition, he was moved to Al Khodeira hospital, inside the 1948 territories, and a decision for his arrest was issued by the army.
His wife told the Ahrar Center that soldiers, manning the Barta’a roadblock, detained him for two hours and ordered her to leave the area.
He is currently at the Khodeira hospital, and his family was officially notified that he is “under arrest”.
Al Khuffash stated that Qabha was imprisoned by Israel for a total of seven years, and that several months ago he was released from an Israeli detention facility after spending a three-year sentence.
There are eleven elected legislators and ministers currently imprisoned by Israel.
Al Khuffash voiced an appeal to human groups and the International Red Cross to intervene and ensure the release of Qabha, especially due to his health condition.
UN concerned over illegal exile of Jerusalem lawmakers
Palestine Information Center – 11/12/2010
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM– UN special coordinator for the Mideast peace process Robert Serry expressed concern on Saturday over illegal Israeli court rulings to exile Arab MP Mohammed Abu Tir and other public officials from the occupied city of Jerusalem.
The court has been unjustly holding Abu Tir in detention since March 6 on grounds of illegally residing in the city of Jerusalem according to Israeli regulations.
Serry, reporting Israeli violations in Jerusalem and occupied territories, defended the right of Arab lawmakers from Jerusalem to remain in the city they were born in, calling on the Israeli government to refrain from taking any proactive steps against them.
Jerusalem MPs and one former minister, who have been sitting in at the Red Cross headquarters in Jerusalem for the 163rd straight day to protest Israeli threats to exile them, received a delegation from the UN for the fourth time during their camp-out to discuss the UN’s instability in living up to its responsibilities towards the occupied lands and their inhabitants, a failure that has caused tensions in the city to flare and encouraged Israel to increasingly break international law.
Among the delegates were Deputy Special Coordinator Maxwell, Director of Political Affairs Samer Abu Jabara, and former Director of Regional Affairs Anwar Al-Darkazalli.
The UN delegation assigned liability to Palestine’s de facto government chaired by Mahmoud Abbas in demanding the immediate convening of a UN Security Council session in coordination with the Arab League to adopt a resolution forcing Israel to back down on the ruling to exile the group of Palestinian lawmakers from Jerusalem.
Indian envoy ‘frisked’ at US airport
Press TV – December 9, 2010
Indian Ambassador to the United States Meera Shankar
India is to file a diplomatic complaint with the US after its ambassador to Washington was singled out and frisked at a US airport.
The incident took place on December 4 at the Jackson-Evers International Airport when the Indian envoy to the United States, Meera Shankar, was about to board a flight to Baltimore after attending an event at Mississippi State University.
The Indian Embassy in Washington has strongly protested the incident.
Shankar was pulled out of the security line and frisked at the airport. She was subjected to a hands-on search despite staff being told about her diplomatic status, Press Trust of India news agency quoted an Indian Embassy official as saying.
“This is unacceptable to India and we are going to take it up with the US government and I hope things could be resolved so that such unpleasant incidents do not recur,” India’s Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna told reporters in New Delhi.
The incident has also embarrassed the university officials who invited Shankar to give a speech for an international studies program.
“It was a wonderful program, maybe the best we’ve had, (but) this stupid incident ruined the whole thing. She said, ‘I will never come back here,'” said Janos Radvanyi, chair of Mississippi State University’s international studies department.
“We are sending her a letter of apology.”
A US Transportation Security Administration spokesman said, “Diplomats are not exempt from the searches and that Shankar was screened in accordance with TSA’s security policies and procedures.”
Shankar suffered a similar experience in September when she was patted by a security officer at a Chicago airport, AFP reported.
US immigration authorities in the O’Hare Airport in Chicago questioned the visiting Indian Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel in September after his name and birth date matched with that of another Praful Patel, who is on the United States watch list.
See also:
Sari-clad India ambassador gets pat-down at Miss. airport
AP | December 8, 2010
… The Clarion-Ledger newspaper of Jackson quoted witnesses as saying Shankar was told she was singled out for additional screening because of her dress. She had on a sari, which drapes across the body and is worn by many Indians… Full article
Peace Group not Allowed to Operate Stand at Ben-Gurion Airport
By Alessandra Bajec – IMEMC & Agencies – December 08, 2010
The group Artists Without Walls was denied authorization to set up a stand run by Jews and Arabs ‘who would be open to dialogue with passengers about coexistence.’ in Ben-Gurion airport on Tuesday, Ha’aretz reported.
Artists Without Walls, a joint Palestinian-Israeli peace group, had its request to run a stand at the passenger terminal at Ben-Gurion International Airport like the one operated by the Chabad movement rejected.
The Israeli representative of Artists Without Walls, Eitan Heller, addressed a letter to Israel Airports Authority saying the stand planned by the peace group would “serve free coffee and be managed by Jews and Arabs, who would be open to dialogue with passengers about coexistence and tolerance.”
Heller said having noticed, on his regular journeys abroad, the presence of the Chabad stand, where passersby are asked to put on phylacteries. While claiming to have nothing against Chabad, he stated: “But I cannot understand why a specific religious group has its own stand in an open area in an international air terminal,” he said. “This is a phenomenon I have not experienced anywhere else in the world.”
One of the world’s largest and best-known Hasidic movements in Orthodox Judaism, Chabad maintains thousands of institutions around the world providing outreach and educational activities for Jews.
Ben-Gurion airport manager, Shmuel Kandel, explained in his rejection of the peace group’s request that Chabad provides a service to “religious consumers and travelers who want to avail themselves of this service.” Kandel concluded his response by saying that Chabad “is aware of its obligation not to approach passengers, and airport inspectors make sure this is the case.”
“Artists Without Walls” is a permanent forum for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians engaged in all fields of arts and culture, who strive to develop a better and more ‘human’ understanding between the two people through nonviolent and creative actions.
Through the joint peace group, several Israeli artists have been able to visit Ramallah for the first time, initiating a process of dialogue with Palestinian artists whom they did not know. Likewise, Palestinian artists have had the opportunity to visit their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Iraqi Interior Minister demands execution of al-Qai’da suspects
AI – 3 December 2010
Amnesty International today strongly condemned a call by the Iraqi Interior Minister for the swift execution of 39 alleged al-Qai’da members as they were paraded before journalists, handcuffed and clad in orange jumpsuits.
“For Jawad al-Bolani to abuse his position as Interior minister by parading these men publicly and calling for their execution before they have even gone to trial, flagrantly flaunting the requirement for defendants to be presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court, is absolutely outrageous,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“It makes a complete mockery of any suggestion that these suspects will receive a fair trial, and sets a most ominous precedent for others.”
Jawad al-Bolani said at a press conference in Baghdad on Thursday:
“Today, we will send those criminals and the investigation results to the courts that will sentence them to death. Our demand is not to delay the carrying out of the executions against these criminals so that to deter terrorist and criminal elements.”
According to media reports he also said that most of the 39 suspects had rejoined al-Qai’da linked groups after being released from Iraqi prisons administered by the USA. One of them was identified as Hazim al-Zawi, al-Qai’da in Iraq’s third-highest leader.
Amnesty International highlighted serious concerns about human rights abuses suffered by the many thousands of detainees in Iraq, many of whom were transferred from US to Iraqi custody in the months up to mid-July 2010, in its report New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful detentions and torture in Iraq, published in September.
The report detailed how many detainees were arbitrarily held, sometimes for several years without charge or trial, and often tortured to obtain forced confessions.
“We have been saying for a long time that ‘confessions’ in Iraq are regularly extracted under torture, so any ‘confessions’ these 39 suspects have made, which may be used in their trial, must be thoroughly investigated to ensure that they have not been made under duress, torture or other ill-treatment,” said Malcolm Smart.
“What chance can there be for any defendant to receive a fair trial if so senior a government minister shows such contempt for the rule of law?”
Amnesty International has called on the Iraqi government to ensure that these and other detainees awaiting trial must receive fair trials that conform to recognized international standards.
The organization said it recognizes that the security situation in Iraq remains precarious and that it is the government’s duty to protect its population, including members of religious and ethnic minorities. However this must be done with full respect of human rights and the rule of law.
Amnesty International has on numerous occasions strongly condemned human rights abuses committed by armed groups in Iraq.
Amnesty International said it opposes the death penalty unconditionally as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.
The organization has called on Iraq to end executions as a step toward complete abolition of the death penalty.
Read More
Thousands of Iraqi detainees at risk of torture after US handover (Report, 12 September 2010)
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‘Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison’: A Tale of Two Diaries
By Jill Erzen | The Defender | October 13, 2026
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private diary reveals a “mind-numbing” contradiction between what the former top U.S. infectious disease official knew about COVID-19 and what he told the public, senior White House adviser Peter Navarro, Ph.D., said last week on “American Thought Leaders.”
In his new book, “Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison,” due out Oct. 20, Navarro compares Fauci’s private entries to his own pandemic-era diary, and uses what he calls “a tale of two diaries” to argue that Fauci should face criminal prosecution.
“I show, actually, how a prosecution can and should happen … at the state level, most likely,” Navarro said. “He should wind up in prison, and we’ve got the receipts in this book to put him there.”
Navarro said Fauci repeatedly acknowledged important facts in private, then publicly pursued policies that contradicted those facts — with devastating consequences.
“What he says many times privately in his diary is so at odds with both his public behavior and public statements that it’s mind-numbing,” Navarro said.
Navarro examines the lasting damage caused by lockdowns and other pandemic policies, and the ongoing toll of long COVID.
His book also addresses questions about vaccine safety, including why healthy young people faced COVID-19 vaccination mandates despite concerns about myocarditis, and why women were not warned about miscarriage risks linked to the shots. … continue
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