My Father Will Not be Forgotten
22
Dec
Exactly three days following the tenth anniversary of
the Bush administration shutting down the largest Muslim charity in the
United States, the Fifth Circuit Court dismissed the appeal for the Holy
Land Foundation case, affirming the conviction of my father [Ghassan Elashi], the co-founder of the HLF who’s serving a 65-year sentence for his humanitarian work.
On Wednesday, Dec. 7, the three-judge panel, based in New Orleans,
filed their opinion, concluding that “the district court did not clearly
err.”
Upon hearing this news, it initially all rushed back to me at once,
nostalgia on overdrive. I saw the relentless accusations by pro-Israeli
lobby groups, the pressure by pro-Israeli politicians and the defamatory
news reports in the 1990’s. I saw the raid on the HLF in 2001, the
pre-sunrise arrests and “material support” charges in 2004, the first
trial and hung jury in 2007, the second trial and guilty verdicts in
2008, the sentencing in 2009. I saw the plethora of prison phone calls
and visitations. And finally, I saw my father being transferred in 2010
to the Southern Illinois city of Marion’s Communications Management
Unit—what The Nation has called “Gitmo in the Heartland”—and
where my father’s significantly diminished phone calls and visitations
are scheduled in advance and live-monitored from Washington D.C.
The case of the Holy Land Five comes down to this: American foreign
policy has long been openly favorable towards Israel, and therefore, an
American charity established primarily for easing the plight of the
Palestinians became an ultimate target. As my father said during our
15-minute phone call on Thursday, “The politics of this country are not on our side. If we had been anywhere else, we would’ve been honored for our work.”
This month could have marked a milestone. The leaders of our country
could have learned from our past. The day the towers fell could have
been a time to stop fear from dominating reason instead of a basis to
prosecute. The HLF would have continued to triumph, providing relief to
Palestinians and other populations worldwide in the form of food,
clothing, wheelchairs, ambulances, furniture for destroyed homes,
back-to-school projects and orphan sponsorship programs. And more
notably, my father would not have been incarcerated. My family and I
would have been able to call him freely and embrace him without a
plexiglass wall.
Yet my father was charged under the ambiguous Material Support
Statute with sending humanitarian aid to Palestinian distribution
centers known as zakat committees that prosecutors claimed were fronts
for Hamas. He was prosecuted despite the fact that USAID—an American
government agency—and many other NGO’s were providing charity to the
very same zakat committees. Instead of the Fifth Circuit Court taking
this fact into account and transcending the politics of our time, the
language used in the opinion, drafted by Judge Carolyn King, echoed that
of the prosecutors:
“The social wing is crucial to Hamas’s success because, through its operation of schools, hospitals, and sporting facilities, it helps Hamas win the ‘hearts and minds’ of Palestinians while promoting its anti-Israel agenda and indoctrinating the populace in its ideology.”
Even more disappointing is the Fifth Circuit Court’s opinion
regarding one of the main issues in the appeal: The testimony of the
prosecution’s expert witness, an Israeli intelligence officer who, for
the first time in U.S. history, was permitted to testify under a
pseudonym. The opinion states:
“When the national security and safety concerns are balanced against the defendants’ ability to conduct meaningful cross-examination, the scale tips in favor of maintaining the secrecy of the witnesses’ names.”
I refuse to let this language bring me down, especially knowing that
the battle for justice continues. In the next few weeks, defense
attorneys plan to ask the entire panel of appellate judges to re-hear
the case, and if that petition is denied, they will take it to the
Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, my father waits in prison.
This Thursday, when I spoke to him, it had been the first time in
several weeks since he received a phone call ban for writing his name on
a yoga mat, which prison officials saw as “destruction of government
property.” I told him that during the tenth anniversary of the HLF
shutting down, the name of the charity is still alive and that he will
not be forgotten. My father is my pillar, whose high spirits transcend
all barbed-wire-topped fences, whose time in prison did not stifle his
passion for human rights. In fact, when I asked him about the first
thing he’ll do when he’s released, my father said, “I would walk all the way to Richardson, Texas carrying a sign that says, ‘End the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.’”
by Noor Elashi,
daughter of Ghassan Elashi
daughter of Ghassan Elashi
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