Media bias behind political persecutions in American
Mohammed Salah and Abdelhaleem Ashqar both defeated the false charges filed against them by disgraced U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft in the hysteria that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But prosecuters managed to get both political victims by prosecuting them on non-terrorism related charges of "perjury" and refusing to testify in cases involving the Palestinian-Israel conflict. Both men argued that to do so was wrong.
In reality, though, both men were victims of a double standard that is ignored by the mainstream American media. The prosecutors in the Ashqar said that he refused to testify against Hamas, a terrorist organization responsible for the murder of many people including some Americans in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But, the United States has NEVER prosecuted an Israeli responsible for the killing in Israel of Americans who happen to support the Palestinian cause. One of the most notable was Rachel Corrie who was killed by an American-made Caterpillar D-9 Tractor that was destroying the home of a Palestinian civilian to make way for the expansion of an illegal Israeli settlement.
No one has sought to prosecute the soldiers who witnesses said intentionally struck and killed Corrie who tried to stand in front of the Star Wars sized tractor as the home was being destroyed.
Just this past week, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a case dismissed against eight Palestinians who were falsely charged 20 years ago with supporting the terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. For 20 years, these eight Palestinains have been harassed, defamed, denied their rights as citizens and persecuted to the point of having their lives in this country destroyed. Obliterated.
Turns out it had nothing to do with terrorism, like the Salah and Ashqar cases, but had everything to do with politics in the American justice system I call the New Gulag.
You can read my column on the subject at www.ArabWritersGroup.com.
Happy Thanksgiving
Ray Hanania