Nazi Fibers Make The Fabric Of US And Israeli Societies.

Posted by Antar on January 27, 19102 at 15:44:56:

In Reply to: Manhunt Puts Middle Easterners in More Disriminative Situations posted by Lee on January 27, 19102 at 15:12:29:

Ethhnic cleansing, discrimination, flag waving, national anthems and fatherland
themes justify the ruthless and inhumane practices of both Israeli and US
societies.
:by Chisun Lee

:Village Voice

:Cabbie-passenger relations in New York have never been perfect, what with
:midtown traffic and differences over routes and tips. Since September 11,
:though, a more disturbing stress has emerged for the 90 percent immigrant
:industry of 45,000 yellow-cab drivers.

:"Where are you from?" begins the grilling the overwhelmingly Arab and
:South Asian drivers get from riders, says Mamnunul Haq, driver and
:organizer with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. Given the widespread
:anxiety over beards, head coverings, and certain shades of skin, the
:stakes of daily frictions have risen. According to Haq, "A lot of drivers
:think that if something happens with a passenger, the passenger will
:report them" to authorities looking for more than an expired license.

:The fear might seem silly if it hadn't already come true. Sometime after
:September 11, a Bangladeshi Muslim driver was arrested after arguing with
:a fare who quizzed him on his political views. The passenger called
:authorities, who reportedly found irregularities on some of the driver's
:identification documents. Friends have not heard from him and assume the
:immigrant is in an INS prison, says Haq. It's the worst case so far, but
:numerous tales of passenger harassment and slurs"Osama" is a popular
:onehave the drivers on edge.

:Indeed, it is an irony of the post-September 11 times that suspicion in
:the name of safety has brought only harm to some. Federal authorities have
:jailed over 1000 immigration violators, and tagged for questioning some
:5000 visitors and students, from the Middle East without charging any with
:terrorist activity. Dozens of airport profiling cases and thousands of
:hate incidents have been tallied by Arab and South Asian advocacy groups.
:In all, there is "a cumulative effect of fear and apprehension," says
:Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

:When the feds two weeks ago announced a campaign to rout 6000 Middle
:Eastern deportation dodgers from the countryoverlooking for now the
:308,000 from other regionsthey effectively declared open season. In the
:mounting manhunt, the fate of a few has come to lie in the hands of a wary
:and not always well-intentioned many.

:
:Last week, Attorney General John Ashcroft renewed the administration's
:mantra asking "citizens to be vigilant, to be alert to any possible
:threat." And citizens have been. In the two months after September 11
:alone, the FBI received almost 435,000 terrorism-related tips.

:Besides their leaders' urging, civilians have had millions of dollars for
:inspiration. At an October 10 press conference to unveil a list of
:most-wanted terrorists, Secretary of State Colin Powell said of a
:government cash-for-tips program, "Rewards for Justice is, as we say in
:the military, a force multiplier. It gives us millions of additional pairs
:of eyes and ears to be on the lookout."

:Part of the State Department since 1984, Rewards for Justice loosed a
:publicity blitz in the news media after September 11 to promote a $25
:million reward. "Prevent Terrorism" and "Do You Know a Terrorist?" are two
:PSAs. One poster features a photograph of suspected terrorist Mohammed
:Attaexcept it omits his name, lending his image a generic quality. "What
:Can You Do?" it reads. "He lived among us, attending classes, shopping at
:the mall. . . . Sometimes you spot things that just don't add up. And
:that's the time to give us a call. . . . [I]f you had the power to make
:September 11th just like any other dayyou'd do it, wouldn't you?"

:The program has received approximately 24,000 tips since September 11.
:Some leads have been "significant," says program spokesman Walt Deering,
:although "we get a lot of emotionally disturbed people." Still, he says,
:"all it takes is one." The 1993 World Trade Center bomber, Ramzi Ahmed
:Yousef, was fingered by an associate for a reward of $2 million.

:In late November, Ashcroft tossed a carrot to foreigners in the U.S.
:"[T]he United States welcomes any reliable and useful information that
:they can provide," he said. "In return, we will help them make America
:their home." (Critics denounced the offer as sugar-coating ethnic
:profiling. Some suspect worse: The reward for one noncitizen, who
:approached the FBI "because he thought he had information they would like
:to hear," was getting thrown in INS detention himself, says a New
:York-based lawyer.)

:
:Soliciting leads from the public is a widely accepted part of good law
:enforcement. But FBI spokesman Steven Berry tells the Voice that the
:nearly half-million tips about terrorism have not yielded any suspects.
:Indeed, the one man charged in connection with September 11, Zacarias
:Moussaoui, was already in jail when the attacks occurred.

:Yet while no terrorists have been found, the manhunt has put over 1000
:Arabs and South Asians in jail. Most have noncriminal violations that
:might once have been overlooked, like having overstayed a tourist visa or
:not taken enough college credits to maintain a student visa. Often they
:are in regular prisons, cuffed at the wrists and ankles in the limited
:time spent outside of cells, allowed one phone call a week or month.

:Attorneys and families have had trouble just finding them, since the
:Justice Department has refused to reveal the identities and whereabouts of
:most. But several lawyers and advocates for detainees say they are fairly
:certain of one thing, that authorities didn't find them all on their own.

:"It's not always clear to us where the tip came from, [but] it would seem
:somebody snitched," says Bryan Lonegan, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid
:Society in New York. He describes several cases in which Middle Eastern
:men were picked up at work or home, where their presence was known
:principally to coworkers, landlords, or neighbors. "I never got a sense
:with any of these cases that there was a [random] raid," he says.

:Criticism directed at the Legal Aid Society reflects the bias dogging
:immigrants these days, Lonegan says. The frequent accusation is, " 'You're
:representing terrorists,' " he says. "No, we're representing immigrants."

:That lack of distinction in the public's mind is no accident, say critics
:of policies that target particular groups. The drive to persecute
:immigrants is clearly compensating for a failure to prosecute terrorists,
:says Juliette Kayyem, a terrorism expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of
:Government and a former member of Congress's terrorism commission.

:"Because it's so easy, immigration will be a way to show we're doing
:something," she says. "My personal opinion is, that's because John
:Ashcroft is desperate."

:Indeed, the Justice Department did not say any of the 6000 Middle
:Easterners it wants to deport are involved in terrorism. Nevertheless, the
:official statement read, "Terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda within the United
:States are a continuing threat to Americans. We will continue to focus
:investigative, intelligence-gathering and enforcement operations on
:individuals in the U.S. from countries with highly active Al Qaeda
:networks to protect Americans."

:Such government policies "may lead your average American to think, 'Oh,
:Mr. So-and-so, who's Arab or Muslim, whom I don't like very muchI should
:report him to the INS,' " says Tim Edgar, legislative counsel to the ACLU.
:"I guess I can't be opposed to vigilance," he says, "but there may be
:actions taken by those with mixed motives."

:Already, several such actions have been reported around the country. In
:one of them, a New Yorker named Jack Barresi falsely told the FBI that his
:fiance's boss, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani ancestry who manages a discount
:store, had told him, "I can't wait for you Americans to die." Before
:Barresi was found out, "[FBI] agents thoroughly investigated the manager's
:background, subjected him to extensive questioning, [and] discussed
:whether he would undergo polygraph testing," according to a court document
:submitted by the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, which won Barresi's
:January 2 conviction.

:One lawyer who knows of the case says a noncitizen accused of the same
:remark could have gone to prison. Many standard legal safeguardslike the
:right to know one's charges and accuserwere eliminated for immigrants in
:1996, after Timothy McVeigh's terrorist act buoyed politicians looking for
:an excuse to link evil with the Middle East.

:Legislation after September 11 raised the walls around INS detainees
:higher. Ashcroft has, for instance, routinely stayed immigration judges'
:release orders, keeping immigrants in prison even when they have agreed to
:leave the country.

:Given the daunting possibilities, immigrants from suspect nations feel
:fenced in by fear, say community advocates, assuming the slightest
:transgression or misunderstanding could plunge them into a real-life
:nightmare.

:
:The irony is, groups under scrutiny today might have found sympathy in the
:Bush administration before September 11. Dozens of jailings on false
:accusations and secret evidence following the 1996 anti-terrorism law had
:the Muslim and Middle Eastern communities up in arms. In a televised
:debate with Al Gore, Bush said, "We've got to do something about that."

:It was a vague statement, but it won him an estimated 70 percent or more
:of the typically Democratic Muslim vote, adding millions to his column in
:a famously tight race. But while a pre-September 11 congressional bill to
:abolish secret evidence survives, observers doubt such remedies will come
:soon.

:"The hope is, enough vocal criticism of the route the administration is
:taking will create some checks," says Kayyem. But "there's not a lot of
:love right now for Arab or Middle Eastern immigrants," and "there's
:absolutely no political will" left around keeping the government from
:doing with them what it will.

:Nor is litigation an easy way to protect abused immigrants, says Edgar of
:the ACLU, which is itching to mount a precedent-setting challenge to
:defend the rights of detainees. But, he says, restrictive anti-terrorism
:legislation demands a case with just the right mix of circumstances.

:For now, then, there is no guarantee against a foreigner's unfair
:persecution or imprisonment based on biased, false, or simply overzealous
:accusations. It is a peculiar and precarious situation, in which the fate
:of a few hinges largely on the mercy of othersat a time when mercy is not
:the main message.

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