State Terror: Official Israeli Policy

ThePeoplesVoice

Israeli state terror targets Palestinians ruthlessly. Incidents include crimes of war, against humanity and genocide, land theft, institutionalized racism, oppression, intimidation, militarized occupation, and contempt for all rule of law principles and democratic values.

Political prisoner Ahmad Saadat is right saying "Zionist war criminals are the ones who must be prosecuted." More on his day in court below.

He's General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and a recognized and admired national leader. In 2002, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a range of "security related" political offenses.

None have legitimacy. No legitimate court would recognize them. They include membership is a so-called forbidden organization, various alleged security related offenses, and "incitement" for condemning Israel's murder of his predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa.

On August 27, 2001, two (Boeing produced) Israeli attack helicopters fired rockets at his Ramallah office and assassinated him. Over 50,000 mourners attended his funeral. The PFLP renamed their armed wing the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades.

He believed legitimate resistance includes armed struggle. Asked about risks he and others took, he said:

"We all are targeted as soon as we begin to be mobilized. We do our best to avoid their guns, but we are living under the brutal Zionist occupation of our lands, and its army is only a few meters from us. Of course we must be cautious, but we have work to do, and nothing will stop us."

He, Saadat, Ghassan Kanafani, PFLP founder George Habash, and countless less well known freedom fighters never gave an inch in struggling for right over wrong. Nor do current PFLP leaders and other like-minded Palestinians.

Saadat and other resistance leaders are targeted for their prominence. In Saadat's case, it's also for belong to a so-called prohibited organization.

PFLP
was founded on December 11, 1967. It courageously resists Israeli oppression. It seeks long denied liberation.

It accuses Israel of "brutal aggression against our people - murder, destruction, assassination, house demolitions, the uprooting of trees, land expropriation, settlement expansion, the continued construction of the Apartheid Wall, a suffocating political and economic siege, torture, and massive oppression."

It supports right over wrong. Israel calls PFLP members terrorists. They're heroes.

For over 40 years, Saadat was targeted ruthlessly. He's been arrested numerous times, tortured, imprisoned on false charges or none at all, kept in punishing long-term isolation, and brutalized other ways. He calls himself "a prisoner for freedom."

"Our people are stronger than the occupation and its mockery of legality," he states. On September 9, he appeared in Jerusalem's Magistrate's Court. He's imprisoned for political, not legitimate, reasons.

"I will not recognize the legitimacy of this court which is attempting to perpetuate the occupation of our Palestinian land, and is itself one of the fronts of Zionist terrorism against our Palestinian people, and a tool of repression against Palestinian prisoners," he said.

His appearance related to a private lawsuit. Shurat Ha-Din (the Israel Law Center) filed it in America. It's a pro-Israeli front group. It calls itself the "bane of anti-Israel groups throughout the world." It terrorizes through irresponsible lawfare.

It viciously targets anyone challenging Israeli lawlessness. It intimidated insurers to deny coverage for humanitarian boats to Gaza. It pressured Greece and other governments to prevent them from departing their ports.

It holds Saadat, the PFLP, and other prominent Palestinian organizations financially liable for dual Israeli/Western citizen deaths. Doing so is laughable on its face.

Earlier, it tried to force political prisoner Marwan Barghouti to testify at Jerusalem hearings. He's lawlessly imprisoned like Saadat and thousands of other Palestinians.

Saadat appeared in court for the first time since held in solitary confinement for over three years. Doing so constitutes torture. International law prohibits it at all times, under all circumstances with no allowed exceptions.

He was steadfast saying:

"I say nothing to this court, as I earlier said nothing to this court, which is known to have my name."

He replied to being excluded from Israel's October 2011 prisoner exchange, saying:

"The freedom of the homeland is more important and more dear than my personal freedom, which is inevitable."

At the hearing's close, he added:

"If the United States is so interested in human rights and fact-finding they should carry out their investigations into finding the murderers of American solidarity martyr Rachel Corrie who was killed by the forces of the Occupation, instead of attacking the resistance and calling it 'Terrorism.' "

"Resistance is legitimate, will continue, and will grow as long as the occupation exists. The Palestinian people will continue to resist until freedom, liberation and independence, and the return of all the Palestinian people to their homeland, Palestine."

"The justice of our cause and the steadfastness of our people and determination strong, is stronger than the occupation, and its mockery of courts and legality, no matter how severe the restrictions on the freedom of our people, freedom is inevitable."

Saadat's brutalizing treatment reflects his importance and courage. He won't yield to Israeli state terror. Addameer lawyer Mahmoud Hassan said Israel's Prison Service Guards forced him from Shata Prison to court against his will.

During his own trial, he refused to recognize an illegitimate military court. He won't role over to injustice now or ever. He'll accept life in prison or death instead.

On September 9, he refused to state his name or answer questions. "I say nothing to this court, as I earlier said said nothing to this court, which is known to have my name," he said.

He called for Israeli and US officials to be tried for crimes of war and against humanity.

His wife Abla, son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter came to see him. Guards prevented any physical contact.

Addameer called Saadat's trials, and others like them, "part of Western and Israeli efforts to criminalize the legitimate resistance to the occupation and label it as 'terrorism,' and constitute blatant transgression of international law and the principles of international humanitarian law."

Earlier, Saadat said:

"I too possess a will obtained from the justice of our cause and the determination of our people to reject any decision from this 'kangaroo court,' and to preserve a logical and cohesive balance, and to continue my determination to resist your occupation alongside the sons and daughters of our people, in spite of the limited space that you impose on my already-limited movements as a 'prisoner for freedom!' "

Justice Department Prepares for Ominous Expansion of "Anti-Terrorism" Law Targeting Activists

Truthout
Saturday 11 December 2010

by: Michael Deutsch, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

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.