Charges
Dropped Against Last Of
'Los Angeles Eight'
By Michel Shehadeh
16 Novembe, 2007
San
Francisco Chronicle
For
the last 20 years, the U.S. government has accused me of being a terrorist.
Along with six other Palestinians and a Kenyan, we were dubbed the "Los
Angeles Eight" by the media. Our case even made it to the U.S.
Supreme Court.
On Oct. 30 - 20 grueling
years after the early morning raid in which armed federal agents barged
into my apartment, brutally arrested me before my 3-year-old son's eyes,
incarcerated me in maximum security cells in San Pedro State Prison
for 23 days without bond, and attempted to deport me - the government
dropped all charges fabricated against me. The charges involved accusations
of aiding a member group of the Palestine Liberation Organization that
the government alleged aided terrorism. But Los Angeles immigration
Judge Bruce J. Einhorn had ordered an end to the deportation proceedings
against us last January because the government failed to comply with
his order to disclose evidence that supported our innocence. He called
their behavior "an embarrassment to the rule of law."
Why did the U.S. government
spend 20 years trying to ban us from this country? Because we tried
to educate Americans about the situation facing millions of Palestinians
living in apartheid-like conditions under Israeli military occupation.
Because we organized fundraisers to provide Palestinians with humanitarian
support. And because we attended demonstrations to urge a shift in U.S.
policy away from unconditional financial and diplomatic support of Israel.
The government robbed us
and our families of the best and most productive years of our lives.
For more than 20 years, they vilified us in public without recourse.
We'll never be able to entirely erase the negative words and images
they manufactured about us. Our case is a stark example, and is different
only in degree, from what routinely befalls those who call for equal
rights for Palestinians and press for a fair Middle East U.S. policy
consistent with international law. In February of this year, two others
who advocated equal rights for Palestinians - Mohammed Salah and Abdelhaleem
Ashqar - were found not guilty of terrorism charges based in part on
evidence provided by Israel and obtained through the use of torture.
President Carter, university
professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt and Nobel laureate
Archbishop Desmond Tutu face charges of anti-Semitism and shoddy scholarship
meant to intimidate, discredit and silence them.
And it may be surprising,
but I don't hold a grudge. Throughout this 20-year plus ordeal, we never
lost faith that we would win against this political and legal oppression.
Not only because of our innocence, but because of the tremendous, unfaltering
support that we enjoyed all these years across religious, ethnic and
civic communities, and a legal team that did not waver once in its commitment
to justice. This incredible support has taught us more about America
than we could have learned in two lifetimes; the support of such people
who are a living example and a role model for immigrants - to positively
engage with the issues facing the country on a daily basis. Struggling
to make the place a bit better than when we arrived is what made America
home to us. We made that choice, and we're the better for it.
My two American-born sons
learned though this experience the meaning of establishing a strong
grassroots connection and of getting involved with their community.
The words justice, freedom, equality and civil liberties are not words
they learned in school that will become empty clichés as they
grow older. They are concepts that have real meaning to them, that affect
their family and community. They know that they must be vigilantly protected,
especially when the issues they advocate are not popular, or at times
of war, and conflict, when the first causalities are our basic freedoms
- free speech, the right to dissent and to disagree with the government
- the very basis of democracy.
From the beginning, we said
that our case was a political one and that the government made us victims
of a political witch-hunt. We persevered all these years and defeated
the attempt to uproot us from our communities, break our families apart,
and deport us, because we were innocent. Free at last, we are finally
exonerated and it tastes sweet. We will savor the sweetness. And we
will use it to fuel our determination to defend the same issues that
our supporters defended through us: justice, civil liberties, freedom
and immigrant rights. We believe that this is the America for which
we continually aspire, the America that is just, here at home and in
faraway places - with policies based on fairness, equality, and a shared
humanity.
Michel Shehadeh is
a research associate in the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas
Initiative in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.
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