Sami Al-Arian, a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, is free. He will now be in “home detention.” What does that mean? He can’t leave the house? An electronic bracelet? His calls and computer traffic monitored? It should mean all that, and more.
And after the second trial, or the second sentence if there is one then, then he should be promptly deported to that place whose inhabitants have made it an earthy paradise — Gaza, to live amidst the Gazan Arabs who share so much, in thought, word, and deed, with Sami al-Arian.
As for his daughter who worked for, possibly still works for, John Esposito, anyone employing her — starting with Esposito — should be looked at askance, and more than askance. Why Esposito is not more widely regarded as one would have regarded a member of the Bund during World War II disturbs. In a well-ordered and well-informed society, Esposito and his Arab-funded racket would long ago have been severed institutionally from Georgetown, and he himself would be persona non grata in polite — oh, and impolite — society.
It is useful to remember Judge James Moody”s words to Sami Al-Arian when he sentenced him in 2006:
“Your only connection to orphans and widows is that you create them,” Moody said….
“Dr Al-Arian, as usual, you speak eloquently,” Moody said . “I find it interesting that here in public in front of everyone you praised this country … but that’s just evidence of how you operate. … You are a master manipulator.”
Moody said Al-Arian lied about his leadership role with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and criticized him for calling the work “charity for widows and orphans.”
“This trial exposed that as a lie. … The evidence was clear in this case that you were a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. You were on the board of directors and an officer, the secretary,” Moody said….
Echoing a paid government informant who testified at the trial, Moody told Al-Arian: “Your children attend the finest universities this country has to offer while you raise money to blow up the children of others.”…
The judge concluded his words to Al-Arian by saying that “anyone with even the slightest bit of human compassion would be sickened” by a double suicide bombing at Beit Lid, Israel, in January 1995 that killed 22 people. But, he said Al-Arian “saw it as an opportunity to solicit more money to carry out more bombings,” and wrote a letter to a Kuwaiti legislator.
Evidence at the trial suggested the letter, seized by the FBI from Al-Arian’s home, was never sent. But Moody told Al-Arian it showed his “true attitude.”
At the time of the writing, the judge told Al-Arian, “you continue to lie to your friends and supporters, claiming to abhor violence.”
He concluded: “You are indeed a master manipulator.”
The judge’s words should have been printed in full in The Bandar Beacon and The New Duranty Times. Of course, they were not.
And one wants to learn more about the “finest universities” to which Al-Arian’s children were admitted, and what they studied, and whether the government will tolerate their remaining in this country. Everyone of sense should refuse to do business with any company, whatever the goods or services it provide, that employed or employs a child of Al-Arian, or anyone else holding similar sentiments. This is no different from refusing to buy German goods in 1938, or refusing to buy Soviet goods in 1953. Here, however, the menace is not a single identifiable foreign state, but a belief-system, and its more
“immoderate” adherents. Those who show a dangerous devotion to the cause of Jihad (in the al-Arian case, it was the Lesser Jihad against Israel, designed to preventing that Infidel nation-state from existing on land once possessed by Muslims) are a menace to all Infidels, and should be treated as such. And it is silly to claim, without convincing evidence, that their children do not share such views, and would not be a similar threat.
Besides, the desire of Muslim Arabs to enjoy or even more have their children take full advantage of all that the Western world, and especially that dream-goal of so many Arabs, the United States, is a powerful weapon. If Muslims in this country are given to understand that their entire families can be deported, that may not change their innermost thoughts, but it will elicit from them a greater degree of cooperation, and a lesser degree of swaggering militancy, than has so far been apparent.