NEWARK (AP) — A Muslim cleric living in New Jersey graphically described on Monday the torture to which he claims he was subjected in Israeli custody. The description came during the final day of testimony as he fought to block efforts by the United States to deport him on grounds that he lied on his residency application.
The detention is at the heart of the deportation proceedings against the cleric, Mohammad Qatanani, a Palestinian who has been the spiritual leader at the Islamic Center of Passaic County in New Jersey since 1996.
United States officials, in rejecting his bid for permanent residency, said that Mr. Qatanani failed to disclose on his green card application a 1993 arrest and conviction in Israel for being a member of the militant group Hamas.
Mr. Qatanani denies the charges, saying he and many other Palestinians were detained, not arrested, by the Israelis at the time. He claims that he was not aware of the conviction and that he was subjected to physical and mental abuse while in detention. Over the past few weeks, a number of character witnesses have testified on his behalf, including a rabbi and several high-ranking New Jersey law enforcement officials.
Lawyers for both sides have until July 31 to submit written summations, and Immigration Judge Alberto J. Riefkohl, who is presiding over the case in Federal District Court in Newark, said he would render a decision in mid-September.
In court on Monday, Mr. Qatanani recounted his time in Israeli detention — describing being tied to a small chair with his hands bound, kept in a freezing cell, and subjected to starvation, violence and threats. Several of his supporters in the packed courtroom began quietly weeping as he spoke.
“Judge, you cannot imagine,†Mr. Qatanani said, his voice breaking. “They say, ‘We will kill your family.’ They say: ‘You know what your family is doing now? We will go to them, we will burn them.’â€
Mr. Qatanani paused to compose himself before telling Judge Riefkohl, “At that time, you feel that death is better than life.â€
During cross-examination, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security — which oversees immigration proceedings — sought to link Mr. Qatanani to terrorist-affiliated groups and individuals.
Alan Wolf, a lawyer for Homeland Security, questioned Mr. Qatanani about his brother-in-law, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, who was a senior Hamas military leader killed by the Israelis.
Mr. Qatanani said that Mr. Abu Hanoud was his wife’s brother, so he knew him but did not participate with him in political activities. Mr. Wolf also pressed Mr. Qatanani about his ties with the former imam of the Paterson, N.J., mosque, Mohammed el-Mezain, who was arrested and is currently facing retrial on charges of funneling money to Palestinian terrorist groups.
Mr. Qatanani said he had never gotten along with Mr. Mezain and was unaware of his activities. He said their differing visions for the mosque led to frequent disagreements that nearly prompted him to resign.
Mr. Wolf also cited excerpts of sermons Mr. Qatanani had given calling Israelis “transgressors,†and questioned whether Mr. Qatanani or the mosque had donated money to various Islamic organizations.
Mr. Qatanani’s lawyer, Claudia Slovinsky, objected several times to the line of questioning, at one point yelling out, “Your Honor, this is slanderous. It is guilt by association.â€
Monday was the fourth and final day of the trial. On the stand, Mr. Qatanani pointed to his commitment to interfaith dialogue, cooperation with law enforcement and the integration of Muslims into mainstream American society.
The streets outside the courthouse were packed with Mr. Qatanani’s supporters, many of whom carried signs calling him a man of peace.
A group of Orthodox Jews stood amid the mostly Muslim crowd, saying they were there to show solidarity with Mr. Qatanani, who they said had championed their effort to get a kosher slaughterhouse in Paterson.
Thanks Kate for keeping us informed on this story.
This is a shame when a known terrorist organization like the U.S. Department of Reich Homeland Security, run by treasonous Judeo-Nazis, accuses this humble cleric Muhammed Qatanani, of supporting terror. Israel is the number one global supporter of state terror and lawless criminality in the world today, and they want to re-make America in their demonic image. Israel is absolutely no one’s friend or ally. It is a rogue, pariah state controlled by sub-human thugs who want to turn all free nations into 3rd world, banana republic-like police states under the paranoid thumb of their constant surveillance. America and its constitutional principles is nearly dead, destroyed from within, as the founding fathers so many times warned of, by seditious dual nationals who pretend to be friends and allies, when they are nothing but a pack of lying con-artists and materialistic opportunists. The elections are all now fixed, the leaders are all chosen or thrown out of office by foreign national controllers, and the complicit, treasonous owners of the mass media are in complete, seditious lockstep with all of this. You want your country back? Take down the cowardly media and its whores first, and move on from there. ALL positions of power and control (political, media, and financial) must be taken back from the treasonous enemy who now works from within, otherwise, when all the American-Canadian blood and money is gone, and this parasite moves on to another host like China (where Rupert Murdoch has already set up shop), America will become like a confused and bewildered corpse, sucked dry in the desert. “What happened, we thought they were our friends?†Goyim suckers!
You asked about the British government and public shaking off the dust of their feet as they left Palestine in 1948. With 20/20 hindsight, many British statesmen said that the Balfour Declaration was a complete mistake, and a road they wished they had never traveled down. Yes, they were very angry and tired of all the Zionist terror crap after thirty years. They were tired of their sons in the army and foreign service being machine gunned, blown up, kidnapped, hung from trees, etc. by Jewish terrorists who had emigrated to Palestine from primarily Poland and the Ukraine. During this whole period of the British Mandate in Palestine, they considered the British (and by association, their American allies) to be the number one enemy of the Zionist “national†mission. This is why there was an underground, or behind the scenes, effort to make alliances with any of the powers who looked like they might end up winning WWII, such as the Italians, the Germans, or the USSR. Yes, that is correct, their first choices of desired allies were Mussolini, Hitler, and finally Stalin. (Israel, the “only democracy in the Middle East,†give me a damn break. From Herzl onwards, they have championed nothing but Jewish monarchical, elitist totalitarianism, although they play the “we’re a democracy†bit, so as to suck money out of America on pretense. They absolutely HATE democracy, human rights, and free speech.) When those three totalitarian powers finally rejected their overtures, and the British told them to go fuck themselves as they were exiting the country, the Zionist ptb still needed a military ally and money supplier, so they finally decided to attach themselves to the only big dumb sucker left – the good ol’ U.S. of A.
It was never about “friendship†or an alliance made on moral principles of democratic government. It was all about finding a sucker, I mean “ally,†who could be used to further their goals of Middle East and global domination. We provide the money, the bodies, and the quasi-legal cover, and they get all the oil of Iraq and Iran shipped by dual pipelines to Haifa. Whoever controls the oil, controls the world. So yes, this disaster known as the Zionist War of Terror, aside from its mission of regional ethnic cleansing, is certainly about oil – Israel’s oil.
All Marines should just put down their weapons and tell the Israeli snipers with the Rafael video rifles in Baghdad who fire at Americans every day from their hiding places, and who strategically place Israeli (not Iranian) made IEDs in front of U.S. convoys, “Fight your own damn wars, you little pussy bitches!†But, of course, they are unable to fight an army of real freedom fighters with real weapons because they have become soft and accustomed to only taking on unarmed Muslim schoolgirls, elderly men, and little kids in the Occupied Territories. Besides, if we made them fight their own bullshit, genocidal battles, they would have to pay for it all, and fighting wars is very, very expensive. Such a deal, Not! We pay and die, and they reap the benefits of the conquest. Now that is truly such a deal!
The old parasite-host analogy, unfortunately, in this case is apropos because, like a parasite, Israel gives nothing of any benefit to its highly naive host, but only takes and takes and takes until the host is dead and sucked dry like a husk. Meanwhile, the U.S., at the behest of this parasite, pisses off the entire Arab world, which actually does provide the West with benefits – the benefits of energy. “Our dear friend and close ally†Israel, on the other hand, every five to ten years, actually launches fatal terror attacks on the citizens and soldiers of its host, steals American technology and sells it to countries like Red China and South Africa, corrupts the political and moral climate of the country, DEMANDS (often through extortion) billions in foreign welfare payments, laughs hysterically at us behind our backs the whole time, and in truth, has nothing but absolute, abject contempt for us.
Israel, as the leaders of the Likud Party are so fond of mentioning, may indeed control America now, but that control is in its final days, for the red-hot, angry sleeping giant of the American people is waking up, and Israel’s little con game is being revealed for all to see. Like other pernicious ideologies, such as Communism, Nazism and Fascism, Zionism will also perish from the pages of history, and for the sake of the American republic, that day cannot come soon enough. May G-d allow us all to witness that blessed day in our time.
marines/retired army col/sacrificing the few for the many
All Marines should just put down their weapons and tell the Israeli snipers with the Rafael video rifles in Baghdad who fire at Americans every day from their hiding places, and who strategically place Israeli (not Iranian) made IEDs in front of U.S. convoys, “Fight your own damn wars, you little pussy bitches!â€
i will be having this conversation with my nephew, the maj-2 tours-pro bush, this 4th of july around the campfire, while he tries to convince me we need the 30-year war....
the marine's dad, the retired Lt. Col. Army (2 tours Viet Nam, anti-Bush) was here this past weekend - we had a good go around. a devout catholic, he quotes loosely from scripture anon; so early in the evening, while we were on the subject of the Dineh in New Mexico versus uranium mining in the context of a "new energy policy" for the US (he's pronuclear), he made the biblical allusion to "sacrificing the few in order to save the many". i bit my tongue. however, after an evening of 9/11 discussion, mostly coming from my spouse who admirably and adamantly commandeered the discussion with demolition-evidence talk and "jet fuel burns no hotter than kerosene and can't melt steel - just check out my blow torch in the garage" rantings, the next morning at breakfast, i leaned over quietly to bro-in-law and put my hand on his shoulder: " Pat, you know how last night you alluded to the bible and sacrificing the few for the many?" quiet nod, intense eye contact. "What would you say if, for instance, our regime - those in power in our US government - used that same premise to justify letting happen or by having participated in the planning of 9/11 in order to gain their war?" no hesitation: "Well, they should be lined up in front of a firing squad and shot dead!"
go figure.
love ya, Laz...lots of truth hugs to you and yours
thanks for sharing. in some
thanks for sharing. in some ways it's easy for people (like your bro in law) to give an honest and heartfelt answer when they see it as a hypothetical. as much as part of me would love to see justice done as efficiently as he suggested, knowing already what is true it becomes more difficult to say "this is how the perps should be dealt with". i think the perps themselves could give a rat's ass about anyone. however i think that there are many who know the perps, who know what they did, and who are sickened by it but at the same time like a battered wife will defend her man because he's all she's got, or because she thinks that is so. it's those folks who i would think are most frightened by the potential of a mass reaction of the sort your bro in law hypothetically had.
let me say that a day does not go by that i need to remind myself that the moral high ground is worth staking, that no matter how much the perps and their ilk see that as our weakness, and that what sets them apart is their "enlightened" machiavellian or nietzschean "superman" mentality where they take their non belief in god to mean that they are answerable to no one, we must resist the urge to become like them, to allow ourselves to be tricked into playing by their rules.
and yet without a healthy respect for, if not fear of, the consequences of their actions, how will the sociopaths who have crawled their way into positions where they can cause great damage get the message that their jig is up, that they are better off scurrying away into the slimy darkness? as long as so many continue to sleep, and by this i mean even those who know the truth but just can't bring themselves to do a single damn thing about it, why would the perps even consider stepping back from the chasm they've opened for us? with so many well meaning truthers in the thrall of bogus heroes like Alex Jones and therefore unbeknowst to them safely tucked away in their playpen of ineffectiveness, should we be surprised that out here in the real world the song and dance continues according to plan with the ritual taunting and prodding of the Iranian bull as the ignorant cry out for its blood?
how DO we do it? how DO we restrain our anger at this intolerable state of affairs where the guilty are doing literally everything they can think of to thwart our efforts to peacefully stop them from tormenting us and doing so much worse to so many more? I guess in the end the worst off will be those to whom the denoument, whatever it may be, will come as a surprise. To me the most important thing has always been first and foremost to know the truth. Doing something about it comes second, not least because it is so much more difficult.
I have little doubt the perps are in the desperate last stages of what they see as their "do or die" moment. When they "do", it will be for all the marbles. When they "do", many truthers will be lost because they will have been by that time successfully primed to react in the worst way possible (imagine when Alex Jones tells all his dittoheads that "this is the big one!") I say this now because there won't be much point in saying it once the fur starts flying. You don't create a fake truth movement for no reason. You do so to set it up for failure. You do so in order to control it, and not for any beneficent purpose.
I have come to have very little faith in the idea that a Jesse Ventura-type is actually ever going to be anything but a palliative for truthers who might otherwise, seeing no progress, do something rash and therefore throw everything off the script. Imagine, for example, if the following had not actually been part of a script--if it was something that had been written in vacuum of control--is not the "fecundity of the unexpected" indeed something to be reckoned with? Given the choice between a fake truth movement and the advice given below with such calculated recklessness, which should we choose? I for one am ready to exhibit some of that purple American fury. The time for red and blue to become one is indeed at hand. Beware, perps, and read what you wrote. Those bells, when they tolled, were tolling for you after all...
Thursday, Sep. 13, 2001
The Case for Rage and Retribution
By Lance Morrow
For once, let's have no "grief counselors" standing by with banal consolations, as if the purpose, in the midst of all this, were merely to make everyone feel better as quickly as possible. We shouldn't feel better.
For once, let's have no fatuous rhetoric about "healing." Healing is inappropriate now, and dangerous. There will be time later for the tears of sorrow.
A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage.
What's needed is a unified, unifying, Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury--a ruthless indignation that doesn't leak away in a week or two, wandering off into Prozac-induced forgetfulness or into the next media sensation (O.J.... Elian... Chandra...) or into a corruptly thoughtful relativism (as has happened in the recent past, when, for example, you might hear someone say, "Terrible what he did, of course, but, you know, the Unabomber does have a point, doesn't he, about modern technology?").
Let America explore the rich reciprocal possibilities of the fatwa. A policy of focused brutality does not come easily to a self-conscious, self-indulgent, contradictory, diverse, humane nation with a short attention span. America needs to relearn a lost discipline, self-confident relentlessness--and to relearn why human nature has equipped us all with a weapon (abhorred in decent peacetime societies) called hatred.
As the bodies are counted, into the thousands and thousands, hatred will not, I think, be a difficult emotion to summon. Is the medicine too strong? Call it, rather, a wholesome and intelligent enmity--the sort that impels even such a prosperous, messily tolerant organism as America to act. Anyone who does not loathe the people who did these things, and the people who cheer them on, is too philosophical for decent company.
It's a practical matter, anyway. In war, enemies are enemies. You find them and put them out of business, on the sound principle that that's what they are trying to do to you. If what happened on Tuesday does not give Americans the political will needed to exterminate men like Osama bin Laden and those who conspire with them in evil mischief, then nothing ever will and we are in for a procession of black Tuesdays.
This was terrorism brought to near perfection as a dramatic form. Never has the evil business had such production values. Normally, the audience sees only the smoking aftermath--the blown-up embassy, the ruined barracks, the ship with a blackened hole at the waterline. This time the first plane striking the first tower acted as a shill. It alerted the media, brought cameras to the scene so that they might be set up to record the vivid surreal bloom of the second strike ("Am I seeing this?") and then--could they be such engineering geniuses, so deft at demolition?--the catastrophic collapse of the two towers, one after the other, and a sequence of panic in the streets that might have been shot for a remake of The War of the Worlds or for Independence Day. Evil possesses an instinct for theater, which is why, in an era of gaudy and gifted media, evil may vastly magnify its damage by the power of horrific images.
It is important not to be transfixed. The police screamed to the people running from the towers, "Don't look back!"--a biblical warning against the power of the image. Terrorism is sometimes described (in a frustrated, oh-the-burdens-of-great-power tone of voice) as "asymmetrical warfare." So what? Most of history is a pageant of asymmetries. It is mostly the asymmetries that cause history to happen--an obscure Schickelgruber nearly destroys Europe; a mere atom, artfully diddled, incinerates a city. Elegant perplexity puts too much emphasis on the "asymmetrical" side of the phrase and not enough on the fact that it is, indeed, real warfare. Asymmetry is a concept. War is, as we see, blood and death.
It is not a bad idea to repeat a line from the 19th century French anarchist thinker Pierre-Joseph Prou-dhon: "The fecundity of the unexpected far exceeds the prudence of statesmen." America, in the spasms of a few hours, became a changed country. It turned the corner, at last, out of the 1990s. The menu of American priorities was rearranged. The presidency of George W. Bush begins now. What seemed important a few days ago (in the media, at least) became instantly trivial. If Gary Condit is mentioned once in the next six months on cable television, I will be astonished.
During World War II, John Kennedy wrote home to his parents from the Pacific. He remarked that Americans are at their best during very good times or very bad times; the in-between periods, he thought, cause them trouble. I'm not sure that is true. Good times sometimes have a tendency to make Americans squalid.
The worst times, as we see, separate the civilized of the world from the uncivilized. This is the moment of clarity. Let the civilized toughen up, and let the uncivilized take their chances in the game they started.
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,174765,00.html