Nabila Harb/ Co-editor of FAV
Free Arab Voice . February 26, 2007
Over a decade ago, the U.S. government passed legislation that allowed it to create a ‘blacklist’ of organisations it deemed to be ‘terrorist’ in nature. Many organisations and groups placed on the list over the years are legitimate resistance groups. Palestinian resistance groups like Hamas, among others, have been defined as ‘terrorist organisations’ and pursuant to this legislation, any charitable act towards any one somehow connected to one of these organisations is deemed to be a crime.
When the legislation first passed, I wrote a long article for the Free Arab Voice delineating the dangers of this legislation and its far-reaching implications. Later, shortly after the attacks of 11 September 2001, I wrote another article on the subject. Unfortunately, events have shown that my predictions were entirely realistic.
These articles can be found at:
http://archivefav.blogspot.com/
http://www.freearabvoice.org/issueWarAgainstFreedom.htm#p1
Sending blankets to an orphanage run by Hamas, for example, could be considered a crime under this legislation and indeed, an individual was arrested and charged for doing nothing more than that. Now, a group of Zionists are attempting to widen the application of the law by suing Arab Bank, claiming that sums paid to the families of martyrs in charitable acts constitutes ’support of terrorism’ and demanding a huge sum of money for themselves in a civil action.
It is important to stress the fact that the current action is civil in nature, which means that the Plaintiffs desire to profit financially from their allegations of ’support of terrorism’ on the part of those who refuse to bow to the Zionist definition of the role that it plays in the world.
This outrageous allegation did not receive the contemptuous response it deserved from the presiding judge, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon. Instead of throwing the case out of court, Gershon is allowing the case to proceed under the spurious argument that ‘Arab Bank supplied necessary financial services to the organisations and administered the ‘martyr’ benefit plan… the financial services provided by ArabBank, and the administration of the banefit plan, are alleged to have provided substantial assistance to international terrorism.’
In practical terms, all this means is that Arab Bank paid charitable sums to the mothers and widows of martyrs and injured Palestinians, that it helped to distribute funds to Palestinian families who had lost their primary wage-earner and source of support a means to survive.
The current case is Oran Almog et al v Arab Bank. The Plaintiffs’ allegations and claims read like a chapter from a Zionist propaganda text.
The legal arguments of the Plaintiffs are derived from designation of specific political organisations including Hamas, the PIJ, the AAMB and the PFLP as ‘terrorist organisations’. The 1995 legislation and legislation enacted pursuant to it created ‘terrorist titles’ such as ‘Specially Designated Terrorist Entity’ , ‘Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and finally ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity (SDGT).
The ‘crime’ that is alleged is a ‘mission to topple and eradicate the State of Israel, murder or throw out the Jews, and liberate the area by replacing it with an Islamic and/or Palestinian state…’ . The plaintiffs argue that these organisations are acting ‘in support of terrorism’ by providing financial support to the relatives of ‘martyrs’ and those injured in or imprisoned for perpetrating attacks.
The alleged ‘terrorism’ consists of a mission to liberate Palestine and ‘topple’ the Zionist entity, but there are no allegations that any of the named organisations ever had any programme to ‘topple’ the U.S. government nor indeed to commit any actions whatsoever within the U.S. It is a flagrant misuse of the American justice system to support Zionist interests. Any equation of Zionist interests with American interests is spurious and cannot be supported in law or in any consideration of justice and peace.
Unfortunately, the judge who has allowed the case to continue through the American judicial system apparently sees no discrepancy here between political organisations that are concerned only with actions against a foreign government and a case that is supposedly concerned with the American civil law of torts.
No Palestinian resistance organisation EVER has threatened the internal security of the United States. These organisations constitute legimitate resistance organisations against foreign Occupation. This in contrast to the Zionist Mossad, which does contitute a ‘global threat’, operating throughout the world, conducting sophisticated spying operations (against its ‘allies’ and enemies) as well as killing any one it deems to be a threat irrespective of the location of that individual.. The Palestinian Resistance is resistance against an illicit Occupation.
The so-called ‘actionable claim of the Plaintiffs is as follows:
‘Plaintiffs allege that Arab Bank administered the financial infrastructure by which the Saudi Committee distributed a comprehensive benefit of $5,316.06 to designated famiilies of Palestinian martyrs and those wounded or imprisoned in perpetrating terrorist attacks.
As a lawyer correctly stated: ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter � that holding is binding on this court.’ Kevin Walsh of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene and MacRae, a lawyer for the defence in this case. The Zionists are foreign invaders in Palestine. Every resistance act, according to them, even that of a child who throws a stone at a tank and heavily-armed soldiers, is designated as a ‘terrorist attack’ by the Zionist propaganda machine.
‘More than 1600 plaintiffs, consisting of United States and foreign nationals, bring claims for damages against Defendant Arab Bank, for knowingly providing banking and administrative services to various organisations identified by the U.S. government as terrorist organisations… The U.S. nationals assert claims under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) U.S.C. 2331 et seq. The foreign nationals make similar factual allegations, but assert violations of the law of nations and base jurisdiction on the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATS) 28 U.S.C. 1350. Both the U.S. nationals and the foreign nationals also assert federal common law claims, namely assisting in the intentional injury of others, reckless disregard of injury to others, wrongful death, survival, and negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Defendant moves to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.’
All this legal jargon, however sophisticated in its terms, simply serves to disguise the fact that there is NO actionable case here. It is outrageous to claim that foreign Zionists have any claim whatsoever in an American court. The fact that the claim is based on some alleged oblique relationship between sums distributed to widows and orphaned children and ’support of terrorism’ is even more outrageous.
In a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last year, obiter dicta suggested that only the foreign victims of the most egregious human rights violations such as genocide or slavery, would be eligible to file suit under the Alien Tort Claims Act. The Supreme Court suggested that one standard should be whether or not the lawsuit is based on violation of ‘norms’ accepted by ‘civilised nations.’ If the U.S. considers itself a ‘civilised nation’, then it must accept that its own history is based on acts of Resistance during the Revolutionary War not dissimilar from the Palestinian struggle for liberation from a foreign Occupation. The Alien Tort Statute, by the way, is 217 years old. It was not designed to protect an occupying foreign power from the legitimate acts of resistance of a native population. Furthermore, in this instance, the Zionist plaintiffs do not even attempt to claim that the defendant actually committed any act apart from the distribution of charitable sums. In such a case, how can any action even be brought pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute?
N.B. ‘Obiter dicta’ are statements made by judges in the course of rendering their judgement that while they do not constitute binding precedent, nonetheless are considered to have considerable ‘persuasive authority’ in future cases. The Supreme Court often uses a specific case as an opportunity to give its general opinions about the topics involved in the case at hand. These ‘obiter dicta’ act as guiding principles in determining whether a future case even is actionable. In other words, the judge in the Almog case did not even look at the precedents, preferring to support Zionism without having any legal basis for her decision.
In this context, it is worth noting that the Zionist entity operates according to military Occupation laws in dealing with the land it occupied in 1967. The Defence Emergency Regulations created by the British during the Mandate are used now by the Zionists. Ironically, in 1946, the Hebrew Lawyers Union condemned these laws, stating that: ‘The powers given to the ruling authority in the Emergency Regulations deny the inhabitants of Palestine their basic human rights. These regulations undermine the foundation of law and justice; they constitute a serious danger to individual freedom, and they institute a regime of arbitrariness without any judicial supervision.’ A Zionist who later became a Minister of Justice for the Zionist entity, Yaakov Shapira himself stated: ‘The regime built in Palestine in the Defence Emergency Regulations has no parallel in any civilised nation. Even in Nazi Germany there were no such laws… Only in an occupied country do you find a system resembling ours.’
Yet these same Defence Emergency Regulations were incorporated into the laws of the Zionist entity and actually have been augmented by further oppressive provisions.
Under these laws of military Occupation, a military commander (at present the Military Governor) can, at his sole discretion and without judicial review:
Imprison people indefinitely;
Prohibit travel within or outside pre-1967 Occupied Palestine and the territories occupied since 1967;
Expel any individual permanently;
Restrict any person to his/her home, locality, village or town;
Forbid any one to make use of his/her own property;
Order the demolition of homes;
Impose police surveillance on any individual and order him/her to report to a police station several times a day;
Declare any area closed as a security zone, whether it be a farm owned by a family, an inhabited village, refugee campe or tribal lands;
Censor all media, requiring all articles, leaflets and books to be approved, and banning their distribution;
Raid people’s homes and confiscate entire libraries;
Forbid the gathering of ten or more people for the purpose of discussing politics;
Forbid membership in an organisation.
Further military edicts appended to the Regulations forbid the planting of crops (tomatoes and aubergines specifically), the planting of any fruit tree, any repairs to a house or structure, and the digging of any wells for drinking water or irrigation, unless written permission is given. Incidentally, written permission has not been given to a Palestinian for the digging of any well in years, despite the fact that illegal Zionist settlements have diverted existing water sources, thereby depriving Palestinian homes and villages of their water. Any Palestinian actions against this brutal and oppressive foreign Occupation constitutes legitimate resistance.
The Plaintiffs are attempting to profit from legitimate acts of resistance committed during the Second Intifada, and allege that the Palestinian acts were unprovoked acts of aggression in defiance of the Oslo Agreement. In fact, throughout the period when the Zionists supposedly were bound by the Oslo Agreement, they continued to appropriate huge amounts of land contrary to international law and continued to force Palestinians into exile. Nor did the killing of Palestinians by the Zionist military ever cease.
Despite this writer’s conviction that the Zionist entity is totally illegal and that there is no distinction between land occupied in 1948 and land occupied in 1967, it is the Zionists rather than the Palestinians who failed to honour the Oslo Agreement.
Regrettably, the District Court Judge obviously had little knowledge of the history of Palestine and did not scrutinise the legal basis for this ridiculous lawsuit, choosing instead to be influenced by the spurious arguments of the Plaintiffs.
For a start, if ‘genocide’ can be alleged anywhere in Palestine, it is the Palestinian people who are the victim, not the Jews, who cannot be defined legitimately either as a ‘race’ or as a ‘religion’. Secondly, the population has a right of resistance to foreign invasion under international law. The Zionist entity is a foreign Occupying Power in Palestine. Moreover, the United Nations has passed numerous resolutions denouncing the Zionist military Occupation of Palestine.
Thirdly, the history of the conflict between the Palestinian people and the Zionist invader is a history that shows a huge preponderance of loss on the Palestinian side, a loss not only of land and homes but of life and furthermore it can be proven that this has occurred pursuant to a political programme of ethnic cleansing and genocide called Zionism.
Recently, the Zionists have committed 248 ‘targeted murders’ of Palestinians. In the process, they killed 198 bystanders, defining it as ‘collateral damage’. That is the real terrorism. State-sponsored terrorism is the entire basis of the Zionist Occupation of Palestine.
The Zionists who have brought this unconscionable legal action to court apparently not only believe that the idea of a ‘wholly Jewish state’ built on the foundation of the bones of Palestinian martyrs is worthy of their support and furthermore believe that the families of Palestinians who have been martyred do not deserve to live. They argue that any charitable payments made to the bereaved are to be defined as ’support of terrorism’, thereby producing further proof that the Zionist programme against the Palestinian people is one ultimately of careful genocide.
After all, it is similar to the strategy that forces pregnant women to wait at chequepoints rather than allowing them to reach hospital in order to give birth. It is the same strategy that deprives Palestinians of their livelihhoods by not allowing them to reach their jobs, through policies of ‘closures’ and curfews and chequepoints. It is the same strategy used to build a wall to separate Palestinians from their homes and livelihoods permanently after bulldozing their houses and imprisoning or murdering the heads of their households.
If one is to punish terrorism by striking at its financial infrastructure, an appropriate target for legal action surely would be the U.S. ‘State of Israel Bonds’ organisation, a self-confessed ‘Development Corporation for Israel’.
The very foundation of the ‘Israel Bonds’ organisation was terrorist in nature. Ben Gurion conceived of the idea in order to bankroll Zionist terrorism in Palestine. Sales of ‘Israel Bonds’ in the first year were $52 milliion.
In a report by this Zionist terrorist organisation in 2007, it stated: ‘Today, Israel has again turned to the Bonds organization as the nation copes with the war against Hezbollah and its aftermath. … Israel Bonds has already taken enormous steps to keep the economy stable. In August, the Bonds organization held solidarity meetings across North America , producing millions of dollars in new funding. In the coming weeks and months, Israel Bonds will accelerate efforts on every level to ensure that Israel�s economic needs continue to be met.’
Although this organisation has been operating since 1950, organisations have been in existence since 1901 for Zionist ’support of terrorism’. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was established in 1901 and the Palestine Land Development Company (PLDC) was founded in 1908. These organisations were created solely for the purpose of supporting the Zionist programme to dispossess the Palestinian people of their homeland. Another overseas fundraising mechanism named ‘Keren Hayesod’ was established for the same purpose.
The systematic killing and dispossession of Palestinians from their homes was the basis of the Zionist programme from its inception. Ben Gurion stated: ‘The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples. . . We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is MORE than a state, government and sovereignty.’ He also wrote: ‘With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] …. I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.’ Later he wrote: ‘It is impossible to imagine general evacuation without compulsion, and brutal compulsion.’ (See ‘Righteous Victims’ by Benny Morris. The first quote is from Ben Gurion’s diary entry of 12 July 1937. All quotes are taken from declassified Zionist documents.)
Moshe Sharett, first foreign minister of the Zionist entity, wrote: ‘We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture ….. Recently there has been appearing in our newspapers the clarification about ‘the mutual misunderstanding’ between us and the Arabs, about ‘common interests’ [and] about ‘the possibility of unity and peace between two fraternal peoples.’ ….. [But] we must not allow ourselves to be deluded by such illusive hopes ….. for if we cease to look upon our land, the Land of Israel, as ours alone and we allow a partner into our estate- all content and meaning will be lost to our enterprise.’
In August of 1948, Yitzhak Avira, in charge of the destruction of the Palestinian village of Huj, wrote to Ezra Danin, a member of the ‘Transfer Committee’: ‘Recently a view has come to prevail among us that the [Palestinian] Arabs are nothing. Every [Palestinian] Arab is a murderer, all of them should be slaughtered, all the [Palestinian] villages that are conquered should be burned . . . I . . . see a danger in the prevalence of an attitude that everything of theirs should be murdered, destroyed, and made to vanish.’
Danin’s response: ‘War is complicated and lacking in sentimentality. If the commanders believe that by destruction, murder, and human suffering they will reach their goal more quickly—I would not stand in their way. If we do not hurry up and do [things]—our enemies will do these things to us.’
Detailed accounts of Zionist massacres from the 1940s onwards can be found at:
http://www.soundofegypt.com/palestinian/adult/massacres.htm
Declassified Zionist documents quoted above can be found in: ‘Righteous Victims’ by Benny Morris and ‘The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities’ by Simha Flapan. I am giving Jewish sources here rather than Palestinian sources because it is more compelling if they convict themselves ‘out of their own mouths’.
This is the work funded by the Jewish National Fund, the Palestinian Land Development Committe and the ‘Israel Bonds’. The invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was bankrolled by these organisations as was the Zionist invasion of Lebanon last summer.
In fact, a recent report by the U.S. government shows that the Zionist entity violated American laws in its use of cluster bombs in Lebanon both during the 1982 invasion and its invasion last summer.
In the summer of 2006, more than 1,200 Lebanese civilians were killed, and one million others displaced as a result of the Zionist month-long offensive. Zionist forces dropped up to a million cluster bomblets in populated areas in southern Lebanon, 90% of which were fired in the last three days of fighting.
‘What is shocking and completely immoral is 90% of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution,’ said the UN humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, referring to the UN-brokered ceasefire that ended fighting on 14 August.
Even a commander of the Zionist occupation forces’ MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) unit declared that: ‘We covered entire villages with cluster bombs, what we did there was crazy and monstrous.’
Apart from the more egregious crimes against humanity, the U.S. government report shows that the Zionists committed violations of an U.S. statute governing arms sales, the Arms Export Control Act.
The twin pillars upon which the Zionist programme was founded were the dispossession of the native Palestinian population and its replacement by a foreign Jewish population. In Palestine at the time of the inception of the Zionist programme, the native Jewish population consisted of 5% of the total population. Jews who subsequently ‘emigrated’ to Palestine did so in order to promote its Occupation by a foreign power. The European Jews who formed the terrorist organisations such as the ‘Stern Gang’ and the ‘Haganah’ had no legitimate claim to Palestine and certainly no right to dispossess and murder its inhabitants. Furthermore, any individuals who go to Palestine under Zionist auspices to further the Zionist goal of creating a ‘wholly Jewish state’ are guilty of a continuing conspiracy to commit genocide against the Palestinian native population. If they even can be termed ‘civilians’, which is moot, given the Zionist requirement that every one serve in the armed forces, they are NOT innocent civilians. The Plaintiffs’ description of Jewish ‘civilians’ therefore is a misrepresentation of fact.
Moreover, Americans who support the Zionist entity through their financial or political contributions are guilty of ’support of terrorism’.
It can be shown that the money supplied to the Zionist entity by ‘Israel Bonds’ is used to fund the Zionist military occupation as well as other Zionist acts of aggression and terrorism.
The ‘Israel Bonds’ are marketed by a firm in the U.S., the DCI or Development Corporation for Israel, which in turn is owned by a ‘non-profit organisation’, the American Society for the Resettlement and Rehabilitation of Israel. Since 1950, the year of its creation, the corporation has sold an estimated 8.6 billion (U.S.) in bonds worldwide. About 85% of sales are in the U.S.
These bonds are ‘privately placed’, which means they are sold directly to individual investors and cannot be traded on the open market. Under U.S. Securities Laws, DCI and other private placement dealers are able to avoid many of the disclosure requirements imposed on companies that trade in the public financial markets.
Bond proceeds are used to fund roads, factories and other ‘projects’ in Occupied Palestine. These ‘development projects’ include the creation and support of new and existing illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza as well as schemes to bulldoze and dispossess more Palestinians throughout the homeland.
Moreover, bond revenues are transferred from the Zionist governments development account to its ordinary budget, to be spent on the military, the Zionist intelligence services and other agencies, according to the statistical abstract published each year by the Zionist entity.
In other words, there is clear and compelling proof that these bonds support state-sponsored terrorism in the form of the policies of the Zionist entity. Such policies include but are not limited to murder and genocide.
All Zionist fundraising organisations in the United States and abroad unconditionally support Zionist aims and programmes in securing a ‘wholly Jewish State’ by any means whatsoever.
Here is stark evidence of foreign terrorist organisations operating throughout North America to provide funding for its state-sponsored terrorism against the Palestinian people. Let us not forget either that Zionist terrorism is not limited to Palestine but operates across the globe in the form of unilateral military strikes against sovereign nations such as the strike against a nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 and a proposed strike against Iran in 2007. Pursuant to the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), the Zionist entity should be designated as a Specially Designated Terrorist Entity (SDT) and further designated a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO). In fact, it truly meets the requirements to be categorised officially as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity (SDGT). It is submitted that a legal action should be undertaken not only against the terrorist ‘State of Israel Bonds’ but against every Zionist Bank.
At the same time that an American judge has allowed a case against a bank distributing charitable sums to the widows and families of martyrs, Zionist organisations are mounting a new campaign for support of illicit Jewish settlements.
The Amana organisation which defines itself as the ’settlement movement of Gush Emunim, with the primary goal of developing communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, the Galilee and the Negev’ is launching a campaign to sell ’second homes’ in Occupied Palestine to American Jews.
In their advertisements, they urge American Jews to purchase a second home in an illegal settlement, declaring it to be a ‘zero risk venture’. They advertise that: ‘Your investment is insured, protected and 100% legal.’
As the government of the Zionist entity actually does not authorise new construction projects in the West Bank at this point, Zionists who proclaim themselves as citizens of that entity are wary of investing their money in the area. Yesha and Amana therefore decided to market their political programme to Americans in the guise of creating a ‘dream home’ in the hills of Palestine: a cottage in Kiryat Arba or a villa iin Karnei Shomron. The houses are priced from $94,000 to $170,000.
A Yesha Council leader, Pinchas Wallerstein met with Jewish community leaders in January 2007 in the U.S. to pitch his idea of organising groups or individual investors who might be interested in the region.
‘They were afraid at first,’ Wallerstein admitted, ‘They asked a lot of difficult questions about what will become of the houses if it is again decided to evacuate part of the Land of Israel. They were concerned but very receptive to our offer.
Following their initial visit to the U.S., the Amana organisation decided to participate in a housing fair in New Jersey, where they will endeavour to market homes in these illegal settlements.
The fair will be held in Teaneck, New Jersey on Sunday, 25 February 2007 to sell these homes in violation of international law.
According to their marketing advertisement: ‘You too can own a home and strengthen the Zionist dream.’
The ‘Zionist dream’ of making Palestine ‘a land without people for a people without a land’ is founded on dispossession and genocide. Support of Zionism constitutes ’support of terrorism’ under any objective study of the facts.
In the circumstances, it is only further evidence of the stranglehold that Zionist lobbies have on the American government and society that an American judge U.S. can allow a case that designates the charitable payment of $5000. to a widow and her family as an act ’sponsoring terrorism’ while the U.S. government actively promotes the continuing Occupation of Palestine by a foreign terrorist entity and funds that terrorist entity both officially in the form of U.S. government grants and loans that need not be repaid as well as the private funding by its citizens through grants to Jewish organisations. In 1997, the U.S. government sponsored Zionist terrorism daily in the amount of $15,139,178. This amount has increased rather than decreased since then.
One wonders how many of the Plaintiffs who have brought the current action against the Arab Bank support the state-sponsored terrorism of the Zionist entity through their ‘gifts’ of financial aid. The propaganda that extols this outrageous legal action as a ‘victory against terrorism’ continues to portray the Jews as victims in a war that has as its avowed aim a ‘wholly Jewish state’. A ‘wholly Jewish state’ is predicated upon the disappearance or obliteration of the native Palestinian population from the homeland. As the contemporary Palestinian group DAM asks: ‘Min Irhabi?’ Who is the terrorist here?
One final point needs to be stressed: Judge Nina Gershon has allowed the case to progress but the Plaintiffs’ claims and allegations have not been proven in any court of law. The Zionist propaganda relating to this case must be countered by facts, and with a barrage of media publicity making the public aware of the true nature of the continuing Zionist occupation of Palestine as well as the intrinsic legitimate right of any occupied nation to defend itself and resist that foreign occupation.
If we remain silent in the face of this incredible mockery of justice, then we betray our brothers and sisters who have given their lives for freedom and justice. It is our duty to confront these lies and to dismantle the entire structure of Zionist propaganda in order to make it impossible for any one to claim ignorance where the continuing Occupation of Palestine is concerned. The Zionists have profited decade after decade from the Occupation of Palestine. We cannot allow them to make a financial profit from the blood of Palestinian martyrs as well. That is the purpose of Almog v. Arab Bank. It is as simple as that