Just two weeks ago I wrote about Sami Al-Arian for Human Events, but a laudatory article in the New Duranty Times has led me to revisit the Rumpled Academic this week:
Is jailed Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian the innocent victim of a government vendetta? That’s what the New York Times would have you believe: the Gray Lady reported Friday that the former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian faces new charges, and stated that “the Justice Department and some independent terrorism investigators have long accused Mr. Al-Arian of being the main North America organizer for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for some of the more deadly suicide bombings against Israeli targets and which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.”However, the Times will have none of it, and wants to make sure you don’t, either: “Mr. Al-Arian’s supporters, though, say that he is nothing more sinister than an outspoken Palestinian activist, and that the Justice Department has tried to exploit the post-Sept. 11 mood in the United States to punish him for that, using legal maneuvering to keep him behind bars.” Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar quotes Al-Arian’s defense attorney, Jonathan Turley, saying: “The government has shown a willingness to go to the most extreme lengths to prolong Mr. Al-Arian’s incarceration.”
Is Al-Arian really a modern-day martyr, a sacrifice to the war on terror? Well, the Times did not see fit to print the fact that in reality, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to a charge of “conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds to or for the benefit of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a Specially Designated Terrorist” organization. His plea states that, “Defendant is pleading guilty because defendant is in fact guilty. The defendant certifies that the defendant does hereby admit that the facts set forth [in the plea agreement] are true, and were this case to go to trial, the United States would be able to prove those specific facts and others beyond a reasonable doubt.” What’s more, Al-Arian acknowledged that he was “pleading guilty freely and voluntarily…and without threats, force, intimidation, or coercion of any kind.”What kind of work did Al-Arian do for the PIJ? The Investigative Project reports that “Alisa Flatow was a 20-year-old Brandeis student studying in Israel when a suicide bomber blew up a bus she was riding on in 1995. It was less than three months after Al-Arian wrote his letter praising the double suicide bombing and seeking support ‘so that operations such as these can continue.’”
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, for years now liberals have lionized Al-Arian as the victim of a right-wing witch hunt. The New York Times was among the leaders of those calling for his canonization early on. In March 2002 Nicholas Kristof asserted in the Times that “the point is not whether one agrees with Professor Al-Arian, a rumpled academic with a salt-and-pepper beard who is harshly critical of Israel (and also of repressive Arab countries) -- but who also denounces terrorism, promotes inter-faith services with Jews and Christians, and led students at his Islamic school to a memorial service after 9/11 where they all sang ‘God Bless America.’ No, the larger point is that a university, even a country, becomes sterile when people are too intimidated to say things out of the mainstream.”
Ah. How could a rumpled academic who denounces terrorism and promotes inter-faith services be bad? He’s just a free spirit repressed by vicious right-wingers! Oh, and by the way, what did Al-Arian say that was out of the mainstream? Nothing much -- just a few bouts of exuberance like “Death to America, death to Israel, jihad, jihad, jihad!”
For this Phil Donahue fawned over Al-Arian on his TV interview show. “So, one more time, sir,” he fawned, “and I know that you’re probably getting tired of these same questions -- ‘death to Israel’ did not mean you wanted to kill Jews, do I understand your position?” After Al-Arian assured him of his pacifistic intentions, the awesomely gullible Phil worried for Al-Arian’s safety: “You are swimming upstream, professor, and this must be quite a shock to you. I know that your life has been threatened. I assume you have security.”
According to whichever liberal you happen to hear, Bill O’Reilly kicked this right-wing witch hunt into high gear during a wild interview on The O’Reilly Factor on September 26, 2001. “If I was the CIA, I’d follow you wherever you went,” O’Reilly told his guest, refusing to let Al-Arian off the hook about evidence that the professor was involved with jihadist individuals and organizations.
Eric Boehlert of Salon magazine was eager to slay the dragons of hysteria and bigotry that were besmirching the reputation of this harmless rumpled academic. His January 19, 2002 article was entitled “The prime-time smearing of Sami Al-Arian” and carried this subhead: “By pandering to anti-Arab hysteria, NBC, Fox News, Media General and Clear Channel radio disgraced themselves -- and ruined an innocent professor’s life.”
One might have thought that this kind of thing would end after Al-Arian pleaded guilty, but no such luck. Sami Al-Arian looks to be well on his way to becoming the new Alger Hiss. It didn’t matter to Hiss’s supporters how many people died miserable deaths in the Gulag their hero helped support, and it doesn’t seem to matter to Al-Arian’s friends at the New York Times how many innocent civilians the rumpled academic’s friends have blasted to bits on the streets of Tel Aviv.
Al-Arian has said: “Let us damn America, let us damn Israel, let us damn them and their allies until death.” These days, that’s the kind of talk that makes you a hero to the New York Times and the American Left.
Mr Spencer
Further to
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/020757.php#comments
More on the Quilliam Foundation
Amazingly, within 24 hours of the anouncement of the Quilliam Foundation, it will be interviewed on BBC's flagship Newsnight programme. From the Daily Telegraph
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/elle/april_2008/quilliam_foundation.htm
This has all the hallmarks of a well organised programme, with the BBC being "advised" to push it. Reuters, AP etal, all have picked it up. For a couple of guys just setting up an organisation, to worldwide exposure within 24 hours - Thats some going unless it has serious support.
Muslim websites have picked it up, and surprisingly, given the opportunity to go along with this Taqqiya, have rejected the Quilliam Foundation's attempt to interpret the tenets of Islam in the way suggested by Quilliam Foundation. Moreover, Quilliam Foundation's sponsor Jemima Khan, was not an optimum choice. Read on
http://www.quilliamexposed.blogspot.com/
http://forum.mpacuk.org/showthread.php?p=499472
http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/blog/2008/03/muslim_council_of_britain_atta.html
We will hear more from this organisation - a lot more.
While Muslims and leftists may buy Al-Arian as a "damsel in distress" the average American can see through the hype.Al-Arian is a convicted criminal who lied repeatedly in interviews about his ties to terrorists. There's also the matter of tapes the government obtained of Al-Arian laughing after hearing about a suicide bomb attack with body parts raining down. Can anyone imagine King or Ghandi laughing at the murder and maiming of innocents?Among those disgusted by Al-Arian is the judge in his case who noted Al-Arian's callous lack of regard for the lives of innocents. The judge wrote of Al-Arian's failure to warn Israel of planned terror attacks when a warning could have saved lives.Yet Muslim and the NYT still attempt to defend this animal.
"The New Alger Hiss"
-- title of the article above
Connoisseurs may recall the discussion at this site, several years ago, that developed from Robert Spencer's parody of an e. e. cummings poem, and then a comment upon it by Mr. Bob Owens, who mentioned an "Underwood" typewriter, and then, what with one thing and what with another, the passionate postings led to the Underwood typewriter of Alger Hiss, and the Pumpkin Papers, and Osip Mandelshtam, and things like or unlike that. We were young in those days, and just wanted to have fun.
The main colloquy follows:
You know, with all those years he wrote poems on that old Underwood, you'd have thought Cummings would have taken the time to get that shift key fixed...
[Posted by: Bob Owens at July 22, 2004 12:50 PM]
Mr. Owens has referred very beautifully to E. E. Cummings' old Underwood, thereby picking up the theme adumbrated in a posting under another item (Warnings to Christian Missionaries), which mentions -- not the first time -- the role in spreading the gospel of the Reverend Horace Underwood, Presbyterian missionary and founder of Chosen Christian College, now -- under a different name -- one of South Korea's leading universities.
Perhaps future occasions will permit the appearance of Ben Jonson's "Underwood" or Mandelstam's line "gde-to shchelknul Undervud" ("somewhere a typewriter clickclacked" -- for in Russia in that period, the brand "Underwood" generically stood for "typewriter"), or the actual, tiny, modest Underwood of Venustiano Carranza, that Kerensky of Mexico's first post-revolutionary government, that sits in the museum dedicated to V.C., with all of his artifacts, in sunny Veracruz. An Underwood makes the whole world kin.
E. E. Cummings' own Underwood may well have click-clacked, with or without the CAPS key, in the house he was born in, on the corner of Irving and Scott Streets, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and from which he would have been able to see, from his own upper-floor window, just across Irving, the house of a certain Professor William James, whose "Varieties of Religious Experience" would, I think, have accomodated the belief-system of Islam only with great difficulty.
[Posted by: Hugh at July 22, 2004 1:24 PM]
Hugh, my friend,
This is interesting. I would have thought Mandelstam used a Woodstock, like Alger Hiss.
Cordially,
Robert
[Posted by: jihadwatch at July 22, 2004 1:29 PM]
Robert--we could both be right.
Mandelstam did not reveal the brand of typewriter he used -- just that in his poem, "somewhere an Undervud (i.e. a typewriter known in Russia by that famous brandname, on the model of xerox for all copiers) clickclacked." I'm sure you didn't mean to imply that Mandelstam was, like Alger Hiss (I think his wife Priscilla did the typing), a Russian spy. Russian yes, spy no. It is conceivable, as you suggest, that Mandelstam himself, though he referred to an "Undervud" (Underwood) might have chosen it because the scansion demanded three syllables, and he himself, if the poem was written after 1915, when the first Woodstock went on the market, might have used one. So, as I say, we might both be right. Or all three of us, because Mr. Owens started the associational ball rolling and coming to rest only -- now.
But what if Mr. Owens just plucked "Underwood" out of the air? Cummings was born in 1894; the first Underwood was on the market in 1895; other models followed in 1912 and 1922. It was very popular. The first Woodstock appeared in 1915. By that time Cummings had graduated from Harvard, and would spend only one more year in Cambridge getting his M.A. before becoming an ambulance driver.
If Cummings was typing on that typewriter while looking out the window at the house of his neighbor William James, it would have to have been before 1910, the year William James died. Mr. Owens suggested the Underwood and it is plausible indeed; that company had much of the market, which is why, in distant Russia, it had become generic for "typewriter."
If Mr.Owens had suggested that Cummings should have gotten the Caps key on his "Woodstock" fixed, that might have set another associational train of thought, or at least a determined I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can choo-choo, right out of the roundhouse and onto the mental tracks. Instead of "Underwood" by Ben Jonson, that little train would have recalled another of his works, "Timber, or Discoveries." The "Woodstock" brand could have also evoked Queen Elizabeth I's poem "Written With a Diamond on a Window at Woodstock" and Bob Dylan, with his flight-from-Woodstock concerts on the Isle of Wight, and the Isle of Wight would have led to the vectensian verse of Keats, including the line "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" and the mention of both Keats and Bob Dylan would lead have evoked Christopher Ricks (who at times uses the "too-clever-by-half" method of criticism that is being imitated, just for fun, in this note), and then the part played by the Isle of Wight in the famous decapitation of Charles I, in January 1649 would come up, and then...
Well, don't blame me. Blame Mr. Owens. He started it.
In any case, one hopes that what began all this, the perfect reworking, through rewording, of e.e. cummings by Mrs. Obelix into a poem that appositely expresses the crazy will-to-not-believe of many, will be printed out by jihadwath visitors, for handy distribution to all those who continue to deny that for which the evidence is far more overwhelming, even, than the evidence supplied by those Pumpkin Papers, typed by Priscilla Hiss in 1938, on that Underw --- ooops, I mean Woodstock.
[Posted by: Hugh at July 22, 2004 3:52 PM]
This is the same New Duranty Times who lied about "the massacre of 45 Kosovar Albanian men in Racak by the Serbs" in its bloodthirsty January 18, 1999 editirial that called for war on the Serbian people. The Suzberger Goebbelses got their wish: their Hitlerian Gleiwitz lie was used as an excuse by NATO to bomb and destroy Serbia and to brutally eradicate Christianity from Kosovo.
That same year, the God-accursed New York Times did a hatchet job on an innocent man and good American citizen Wen Ho Lee. But hell, do Sulzberger Goebbelses jump to the defence of the leader of the genocidal Islamic Jihad. Well, they are consistent, backing every evil in the world.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.
This is the same New Duranty Times who lied about "the massacre of 45 Kosovar Albanian men in Racak by the Serbs" in its bloodthirsty January 18, 1999 editirial that called for war on the Serbian people. The Suzberger Goebbelses got their wish: their Hitlerian Gleiwitz lie was used as an excuse by NATO to bomb and destroy Serbia and to brutally eradicate Christianity from Kosovo.
That same year, the God-accursed New York Times did a hatchet job on an innocent man and good American citizen Wen Ho Lee. But hell, do Sulzberger Goebbelses jump to the defence of the leader of the genocidal Islamic Jihad. Well, they are consistent, backing every evil in the world.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.