Myths About the ISM
Aussie Dave | Dec 13, 2005 | 4 comments
Three myths for the price of one:
Myth #1: They are truthful, upstanding people.
Security forces arrested a British national, apparently a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement, who entered Israel in August with a changed name to avoid detection by Israeli border control, it was revealed Monday.
Myth #2: They do not support terror.
The man, Andrew MacDonald, had previously visited Israel in 2003 and was expelled by the Interior Ministry after soldiers arrested him while holed up in the home of a suicide terrorist. MacDonald changed his name and sneaked back into Israel this summer.
Myth #3: They are against violence and only engage in ‘passive resistance’.
Security forces detained him in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood Hebron in early November after he assaulted a member of the security forces. He was released, but was detained again on November 25.
About the Author
An Australian immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave has been blogging since early 2003.Filed Under: General
So what else is new. Little else can be expected from those who prop up the egos of some of the world’s most bloodthirsty, prejudiced and backward people.
One of the Canadian hostages, James Loney, was on his third trip to Iraq. According to a friend, he had felt a call from God to act as a human shield for peace. He made his first trip at the end of 2002, when he lead a team proposal to act as human shields. They were welcomed by Saddam Hussein as a useful propaganda tool, but they never did carry out their mission. Instead, their vehicle rolled over in a freak road accident that killed one elderly Canadian. A Peacemakers spokesman knows who to blame. “The tires were faulty. They were made in the U.S.,” he told me. “So was the car.”
Mr. Loney has also worked in the West Bank, where the Peacemakers are allied with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group. Its volunteers often act as human shields between Palestinians and Israeli troops. Although it calls itself a peace group, the ISM describes suicide bombers as “martyrs,” and its officials are on the record as saying that Israel has no right to exist.
The ISM is a magnet for young, idealistic Westerners. One of them is Harmeet Singh Sooden, another Canadian hostage. He volunteered with the ISM earlier this year before getting involved with the Peacemakers. This alliance explains why you saw Palestinian clerics in Ramallah calling for the release of the hostages. Both men were planning to go back to Palestine. Mr. Loney had intended to spend Christmas in Bethlehem – perhaps indifferent to the irony that almost all the Christians who once lived there have felt compelled to leave.
Although the hostages said they were aware of the risks they would be taking in Iraq, they thought their anti-American politics would act as an insurance policy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Last week, a German aid worker was also kidnapped and threatened with death. The fact that Germany opposed the Iraq war didn’t seem to mean anything. Germany’s new Chancellor, Angela Merkel, declared: “This government, this parliament, will not let themselves be blackmailed.” Our own Prime Minister couldn’t muster up such moral ferocity. Instead, he repeated the piety that “these people are in the country on a humanitarian mission.”
The Peacemakers may believe in a culture of peace, but the insurgents don’t. Peace is the last thing they want in Iraq. And as we wait and hope that they release their hostages, we should pray that the Peacemakers will be luckier than Margaret Hassan.
ISM
By Lee Kaplan
EXCERPTS
This June I attended a “training session” of the International Solidarity Movement … The ISM was set up by the Palestinians after Arafat broke off the Oslo peace talks and launched the second intifada. Its organizers were Ghassan Andoni, a physics professor from Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, and Palestinian activists George Rishmawi and George
Qassis. The idea was to bring in international volunteers, mostly radical students from the United States, Canada and Europe, as “nonviolent peace activists” …. If the volunteers were injured or arrested, the international repercussions would be detrimental to Israel…. The operation costs the Palestine Authority very little since many of the radical volunteers pay their own transportation costs and live in the homes of Palestinians … .
. . .
Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf of the ISM
The most visible American figure in the International Solidarity Movement is Adam Shapiro, a Brooklyn Jew and college radical,who became a human shield for Yasser Arafat when the Israeli army surrounded Arafat’s Ramallah compound following the massacre of 30 Israelis …at a Passover seder,
shortly after the Intifada was launched. When I interviewed him last year, Shapiro told me …he does not consider himself a Jew. He is married to Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American activist from Michigan whose father holds Israeli citizenship. …. In articles on the ISM website where they discuss their goals of dismantling Israel by supporting Palestinian terrorists they use euphemisms such as “legitimate resistance” or support
for “legitimate armed struggle” while claiming that they are nonviolent. The ISM uses as its motto “by any means necessary.”
Such means include the hiding of terrorists like Shadi Sukiya, who was arrested in an ISM office in the West Bank. An arms cache was also found in an ISM office. Two suicide bombers gained entry for their murderous agendas under the auspices of the ISM. These Pakistani Muslims from Great Britain
entered Israel through Jordan as clients of the Alternative Tourism Group, an operation set up by Andoni to aid ISM volunteers coming to Israel. They then met with the ISM at their offices for an entire day in Gaza before proceeding on to Tel Aviv where they bombed a popular beach bar, Mike’s
Place, killing three people.
… ISM has developed an extensive presence in the United States, while operating under several organizational names …. One of these entities, Al Awda (the Return in Arabic), is also known as the Palestine Right to Return
Coalition (PRRC). It is led by Mazen Qumsiyeh, a Yale geneticist. There are Al Awda chapters all over the United States, particularly in the vicinities of U.S. college campuses. Other ISM groups under the name SUSTAIN (Stop U.S. Taxpayer Assistance to Israel Now) operate in Los Angeles and New York. In New Jersey, the ISM supporters call themselves Palsolidarity. When the volunteers go to the Middle East to aid the PLO they go under the umbrella name of the International Solidarity Movement When they hold events in the U.S. and Canada they call themselves the Palesyine Solidarity Movement.
… Adam Shapiro told me that the ISM has Palestinian “handlers,” or undercover supervisors at all demonstrations against Israel. These supervisors direct attacks against the separation fence that is being built to keep suicide bombers and armed terrorists from infiltrating into Israel
… . One of the handlers leading the current attacks on the security fence at the start of this summer’s campaign is a veteran of the Marxist terrorist group PLFP named Hisham Jam Joun. The ISM website, http://www.paLSOLIDARITY.ORG ,
openly proclaims that the organization is “Palestinian-led.”
I signed up for the ISM training session, after seeing their Internet announcement calling for volunteers for their new campaign, …”Freedom Summer 2004,” ,,,
The phone number… put me in touch with Paul LaRudee, a 68 year-old retired Berkeley professor who, along with his Lebanese wife, has been a leader of the ISM movement in the Bay Area. LaRudee assured me that they welcomed
everybody, no matter how old or inexperienced. “Most of our volunteers are in their sixties,” he said. I was advised if I wanted to train with the ISM
I needed to attend an orientation lecture at The New College of San Francisco … by an Arab-American named Jess Ghannam, a psychoanalyst and professor at the University of California Medical School.
. . .
… June 12th, I arrived for … training. The session was held at 2263
Mission Street in San Francisco, …a rundown area of the city … .
About ten of us showed up coynting both volunteers and trainers. …we had to go through a simulated interrogation by an “Israeli border guard”
impersonated by a woman named Jamie …a social worker for the city of San Francisco.
… We learned later that she was an ISM veteran, having been a volunteer in Israel two years earlier as a member of San Francisco’s Jews For A Free Palestine (JFFP) and would be going again this summer.
. . .
After everyone passed through the interrogation ritual, the gate was secured with a big padlock so nobody could get in or out. …
. . .
Jamie then handed out ISM training manuals, big thick white notebooks containing eight sections, a text designed for would be infiltrators andsubversives. Inside were articles authored by radical groups like the War
Resisters League, Act Up, Direct Action and a several “anti-global” organizations. There were also internal ISM documents. They contained valuable information on how to disrupt the Israeli law enforcement and defense officials … . Jamie admonished us, “You see what it might be like
when you try to enter Israel. Don’t bring your manuals with you!”
Mahera
We then introduced ourselves. The first … was Mahera, a
Palestinian-American woman in her late twenties who … would also betraining us.
Mahera …works for the San Francisco office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). I learned later that our orientation lecturer, Jess Ghannam, was on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco chapter of the same organization, … a non-profit civil rights advocacy
group for Muslims and Arab-Americans. Glancing through my manual I noticed it referred us to “the ADC reader.”
. . .
… the group was told that the ISM is a Palestinian-led movement … under the leadership of the Palestinians who had professional handlers to oversee what we would be doing. Once we were in the West Bank there would be veteran
ISM leaders to guide us, but that the Palestinian handlers had ultimate control.
Scott… Scott identified himself as Jewish and even claimed to have family in Israel. He said he was a supporter of Israel until he attended classes in Middle East Studies at Stanford University. “I used to support Israel until I took some classes with Joel Beinin …” he volunteered. Beinin is a former president of the Middle East Studies Association and a self-proclaimed Marxist and supporter of the Palestinian struggle to liberate Israel by dismantling the Jewish state.
. . .
Hanoi ArleneArlene, a 62 year-old Jewish woman from Oakland, was more vocal than the others. She told us that she had a lifetime of activism. …She told us that she was estranged from her parents and had used the excuse of their funeral to get into Israel the last time she was there. Despite her age she was ready to do things to attack the Israeli soldiers such as throwing tear gas canisters back at them during riots and putting sugar in the gas tanks of their security vehicles. … “We’re going to win,” she glowed. “Like Dr. Ghannam said at the lecture the other day, the demographics are on our side.”
… Jamie shared with us … methods used by previous ISM volunteers to fool the Israeli border police. “Make a reservation in a hotel in Israel even if you don’t use it.” “Bring guidebooks for Israel that look dog-eared … Give them the name of a hostel if you are young enough, these will fool
the border guards.”
Quote from ” ISM activists use Birthright to get to Israel”, Haaretz
16, July ’04: “The ISM website advises potential volunteers ‘to have a really good story about why you are coming … [and] play it as though your visit is for other , Israel-based reasons, like tourism, religion, visiting an Israeli friend, etc.”]
Mary Erwin
… “If you use the name of someone in Israel as being the reason for your visit, they will call that person. Make certain you have a story thought out who that person is.” If that person were an Israeli leftist, the task was a lot easier. Mary Erwin, another trainer from Oakland, interjected …that our allies from the Israeli anarchist and communist movements were ready to
lie to the border guards when called on the phone. … “If the border guards become suspicious, an Israeli contact will be set up to lie and say you are visiting them,” Mary summarized. She mentioned the leftist Israeli group B’tselem as providing such false witnesses. Among its leaders is Anat Biletzski [Chair, Board of Directors], the former head of Israel’s Communist Party.
…inside Israel we were told we could make our way to the West Bank even though we were also informed that to go there is illegal. Jamie told us to email ourselves instructions so we would not need our manuals. We were assured the “ISM corps” was working on legal proposals to challenge the Israeli government at every turn if illegal entrants were discovered. “We
are asking also if people are willing to resist if they are caught and told they will be deported.” …
We were also given alternative ways to get into Israel besides through Ben Gurion Airport. “You can take a taxi from Amman in Jordan to the Allenby Bridge (Jordan’s border entry). Even if you are turned back from that entry, you can go to the other border crossing because they usually don’t know you
were turned away from another one first,” Jamie counseled. “Rehearse your story,” she continued. “They will interrogate you also when you leave. If they interrogate you, you can miss your plane. Don’t buy anything because it
will give them things to look through.”
As for luggage, she told us if could pass as students we should just use a backpack. “A duffel bag on wheels does well at the airport. Remember that Israel needs tourists. Their economy is in shambles and they are anxious for tourism. And they are not organized.”
” …. If they ask you questions such as ‘What are you doing here? Don’t you know there’s a war?’ you should reply, ‘I thought it was better now.’ …If you are Jewish, know your Hebrew name … Wear your Star of David especially if you are Jewish.”
…on the West Bank and under the Palestine Authority we were to attend another mandatory two-day training session where we would be assigned to “affinity groups.” She then began making a bulletin board of how we were to function by setting up rules. The first rule was “Confidentiality.” Volunteers would be assigned to unknown affinity groups where they would
function as teams to disrupt the Israel soldiers in military zones.
. . .
Brian Malovany
When one of the trainees asked if we as ISM volunteers favored a two-state solution to secure peace, Brian Malovany, another senior trainer from
Oakland … explained, “The idea of a two-state solution is pretty much dead.” … “There can only be one state called Palestine,” explained Molvany echoing the line of Hamas and other terrorist organizations. “And the Right of Return is non-negotiable. If people ask you about a two-state solution just tell them it’s a human rights issue. .. do not dictate to the
Palestinians what they should not do.”
I asked Molvany, “But what if we see kids throwing stones at tanks or putting themselves in danger. Shouldn’t we tell them not to and urge them to
stay away?”
Brian Malovany responded: “We can’t tell kids not to throw stones! It’s not our place to tell them what to do.” Obviously the same rule applied to suicide bombers as we were advised that we might be used as human shields
inside houses slated for demolition … .
…I looked at my manual and found this ISM wisdom:
“Some pacifists are uncomfortable with property damage. For myself…I see
it as a great tool.”
“[Some] settle for tactical nonviolence, but given the right historical circumstance, armed struggle would be justified…”
“When VIOLENCE is mentioned, say RESISTANCE or RESISTANCE TO INJUSTICE.”
“When TERRORISM is mentioned, emphasize STATE TERRORISM.”
“Instead of OCCUPATION say MILITARY OCCUPATION to make people think the
occupation is a MILITARY DICTATORSHIP.” …The page this appeared on was
supplied by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, yet another purportedly
Muslim “civil rights group” … .
. . .
… we were given the activities schedule for the “Freedom Summer”
anti-Israel campaign (see the ISM website for details). It included marching
onto an Israeli army base to free captured terrorists and trying to tear down the security fence. Violent attacks by the “nonviolent” ISM had already
begun when we met. Every member of our group knew that what they were really being asked to do was illegal.They just didn’t care
… the ISM manual stressed that the volunteers were not in any real danger from Israeli security forces and advised them to inconvenience and disobey them in every way possible. The manual also advised those who were arrested
to contact the Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild, an
organization created by the American Communist Party with a half century of
legal experience in supporting Communist and totalitarian causes.
A list of instructions was given on how to deal with possible arrests … .
If a Palestinian was arrested for something serious like throwing a Molotov cocktail, we were told to show “prison solidarity” with him. We were told that international demonstrators usually get released quickly by the police once they reach the police station. But if we refused to leave without our Palestinian companion, the police might release him also just to get rid of
all of us.
Not once all day, in any way, did members of our group – trainers or trainees – express a negative word about suicide bombings, or the shooting of women and children by Palestinian terrorists. But we were told repeatedly not to tell the Palestinians how to “resist.”
Subject: The ISM-London Bombing Connection
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19145
By Lee Kaplan and StoptheISM.com
Among the less publicized details of the July 7th Londonbombings is the connection of one of the possible terrorists, Muhammad Sadique Khan, to the preeminent group of the pro-terrorist “solidarity” movement, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
Consider the available information: Khan is suspected of delivering the explosives that were used to carry out the Londonattacks. Recent evidence shows that the explosives used in the Londonsubway attacks were found by British and Israeli intelligence officials to be remarkably similar to those used in a 2003 bombing of the “Mike’s Place” pizzeria in Israel. Related to this, Israel National News recently reported that British and Israeli intelligence reports show that Khan, who had a British passport, arrived in Israel on February 19, 2003, and stayed for only one day. During his stay, he may have met with Asif Hanif and Omar Sharif. Both of the men, with the assistance of Hamas, would later become suicide bombers. Hanif and Sharif traveled from Britainto Israelunder the auspices of the ISM’s Alternative Tourism Program. One of their final acts, just prior to departing on their murderous mission, was to meet with ISM activists in Gaza. This connection is only one measure of the unheralded threat posed by the self-proclaimed “peace” group, ISM.
At present, Israelis the only nation to have recognized the danger the ISM presents to Western democracies. Sadly, it took a tragedy and a maiming injury as the last straw for the Israelis finally to start clamping down on ISM activities within their borders. These were, respectively, the death of an Ethiopian Jewish Israeli soldier, killed by a rock hurled during a “peaceful demonstration” conducted by the ISM in the villageof Bi’lin; and another Israeli soldier, who lost an eye to a stone thrower shielded by the ISM elsewhere in the West Bank.
On July 19th, 130 ISM anarchists from around the world were stopped at the Jordanian border and refused admittance into Israel. My organization, Stop the ISM, had advised Israeli authorities months in advance that an ISM-sponsored “Caravan for Palestine” was in the works. For once, Israelacted proactively and stopped these radicals from entering its borders. They have learned the hard way that ISM members intend to create havoc and provide cover for terrorism, vandalism, and violence under the guise of being “peace activists.” The organizers had their passports specially stamped by Israeli authorities, meaning that they cannot use them to enter Israelfor five years. Meanwhile, the ISM caravan went back to Syria.
Why Syria? Syria is the main support base for Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the PLO’s Communist Party wing. The PFLP’s General Command affiliate is believed to have between 500 and 1,000 members there as well, maintaining offices in Damascusand the Yarmouk refugee camp outside the Syrian capital, as well as several major military bases around the country. That the ISM caravan turned around and headed to Syriais telling: it hints at a possible collaborative connection between the PFLP and the ISM.
That would not be altogether surprising. After all, the ISM was created with the assistance of PFLP activists, with the blessing of the late Yasser Arafat, during the second Intifada in 2001. Significantly, the PLO is not a single organization. Rather, it is an umbrella group of organizations sharing the same ultimate goal: the dismantling of Israel. While Hamas (one wing of the PLO) blows up innocents in Israel, Fatah (another wing) pretends to be the negotiator and peacemaker so as to exact concessions. The PFLP is one of the more violent factions of the PLO and has also inspired other groups in the PLO umbrella such as the “Democratic” (as opposed to Communist) PFLP and the PFLP General Command. The largest segments of the PFLP are communists/anarchists who have allied with American and European anarchists.
Like the PLO itself, the PFLP organizes an international conglomerate of smaller radical communist/anarchist cells on behalf of the PLO, particularly on U.S.college campuses. No central organization exists in any one place: Al Awda (Arabic for the right of return); SUSTAIN (Stop U.S. Taxpayer Assistance for Israel Now); Middle East Children’s Alliance; Duke Divest; Students for Justice In Palestine; the Alternative Palestinian Agenda; and many differently named groups prevent our government from defining any centralized authority. Its leadership and guidance comes from the PFLP, with the aid of Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and other terrorist groups. Whatever the names used, the central goal of the ISM is the destruction of the democratic state of Israeland its replacement with an Arab-dominated state, “by any means necessary.”
Similar motives propel the ISM. Among some ISM members’ long-term goals is dismantling the democratic, capitalist government of the United States. This was confirmed at the Duke University National Palestine Solidarity Movement Conference in 2004. At that event, Abe Greenhouse — an ISM activist from RutgersUniversitywho smashed a pie in the face of former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky — explained that the International Solidarity Movement‚Äôs activities are the training ground for the American Anarchist Movement. Stop the ISM once intercepted an ISM message discussing effective methods of public relations. One proposal was that the American branch of the ISM should adopt the moniker ISM-USA, in order to invoke patriotic sentiments. The proposal was roundly rejected: the discussants decided they hate the United States too much to feign patriotism.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the ISM has never been shy about making common cause with terrorists. A parallel example may help shed light on the ISM’s sinister motives. In July, Ali Al-Timimi, a Virginia-based imam, was sentenced to life in prison by a U.S.federal court for inspiring and urging his Islamic students to train as jihadist warriors. His disciples trained in the United Stateswith paintball weapons. The purpose of that training was to go to Afghanistanand fight American soldiers. Even as he was conspiring to kill Americans, however, Al-Timimi maintained that he was against violence and terrorism. The ISM favors a kindred strategy, deploying its dissembling rhetoric in precisely the same way as Al-Timimi. Listen to Paul LaRudee, the Northern Californiahead of the ISM. LaRudee’s recent interview with an al-Jazeera interviewer on public radio was a classic form of ISM doublespeak—affirming a commitment to non-violence while cutting a loophole for terrorism. Explained LaRudee:
We believe in the application of international law. Although we are totally dedicated to nonviolence, we recognize not everyone in the Palestinian community is dedicated to nonviolence and under international law we recognize that violence is necessary and it is permissible for oppressed and occupied people to use armed resistance and we recognize their right to do so.
International law, of course, proscribes blowing up women and children on buses or in subway trains in Jerusalemand London. The fact that LaRudee is a piano tuner by trade and not an international attorney does not allow him to plead ignorance. It was LaRudee, after all, who once boasted of sleeping in the bed of a suicide bomber. Then, too, it is LaRudee who recruits ISM “volunteers” to go to the Middle Eastand provide cover for terrorists. (This writer has attended ISM training sessions where ISM volunteers are trained to provide cover for stone throwers of the PLO.)
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Paul LaRudee of Norcal ISM
Huwaida Arraf, one of the leaders of the ISM (even though they always claim they have no leadership), has been even clearer in elucidating the ISM’s policy toward terrorist groups. At last October’s national Palestine Solidarity conference at Duke University, she was recorded as she explained that the ISM engages in “collaborative efforts” with Palestinians aimed at “encouraging more people to believe again that civilian resistance can overcome an international military force.” Stipulating that, “We only engage in and actively support the unarmed resistance,” Arraf admitted that in actuality the group goes much further:
There are elements out there that try to say, you know, we support terror. We don’t refuse to work with anybody. So, often times I am asked if, you know, “What’s our position on Hamas or the Islam Jihad?” We’re willing to work with anybody, but we’re not willing to engage in military assistance. We’re not going to win that way, but Hamas are some of the key forms of organizers, the PFLP, anyone who wants to organize and help us in our struggle really is our friend and we’ll work with.
All this is in accordance with the ISM’s policy of obstructing the demolition of bomb making factories by the Israeli army. The reason: they double as the homes of known terrorist groups. Nor should one make much of the ISM’s claims that “peace” will come with the end of the Israeli “occupation.” Having attended ISM meetings, both undercover and openly as a reporter, I can attest that the word “occupation” is used to describe all of Israel and its Jewish population, the American liberation of Iraq—and, incredibly, even the United States government itself.
So what does the U.S.government make of the ISM’s activities? There are laws on the books about conspiring to break laws against allies like Israeloverseas and consorting with terrorist organizations. And yet, with the exception of Sami al-Arian’s high-profile arrest as the U.S.head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, few terror-supporters have actually been brought up on charges. (Indeed, Stop the ISM was created to remedy this paucity of prosecutions.)
Part of the problem is that our government looks upon ISM activities in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as separate from our fight with terrorism. The same PLO leadership that receives U.S. tax dollars to ostensibly create another Middle East democracy works in the same coalition as the ISM to perpetuate unending war with Israel and dismantle that state to set up another Muslim Arab theocracy.
Every ISM rally for “Palestine” is also a rally against U.S.forces and goals in Iraq. The ISM openly supports the Ba’ath Party terrorists who kill U.S.troops, Iraqis, and even children. With its ceaseless demonstrations, divestment programs at colleges and churches, fundraising to send money abroad that is never accurately accounted for, and the enlistment and training of college radicals as “volunteers” to assist terrorist goals overseas, the ISM is not a “peace” movement but a war movement adept at subterfuge and subversion. What’s more, it can count on a broad base of financial succor: The “solidarity” movement benefits from Saudi largesse and has learned to exploit such left-wing funding sources as the Ford Foundation, the Davis-Putter Scholarship program, Echoing Green, and other foundations.
Those funds, in turn, bankroll some of the most extremist elements of the “solidarity” movement. Take Fayyad Sbaihat, the lead organizer of the Palestine Solidarity Movement on U.S.campuses and a chemical engineering major at the Universityof Wisconsin. The government knows that all of Fayyad Sbaihat’s brothers are members of the PFLP. Jetting all over the United Statesand Canada, he organizes yearly conferences at major universities. At one campus in Canada, Hisham Jam Joun, a PFLP trainer, was flown in to lecture to conference attendees. Although the U.S. State Department considers the PFLP an illegal terrorist group, nothing has been done to curb the recruitment efforts of its ISM allies at American universities (although the government insists that it is “watching” the PFLP).
Then there is George Rishmawi, a Canandian-Palestinian who was one of the co-founders of the ISM with Adam Shapiro, husband of and pictured above with the previously mentioned Huwaida Arraf. Rishmawi has home bases in Pasadena, California, as well as the West Bank, where he works to get students college credit in Arabic for their ISM activities. Rishmawi also supports the PFLP mantra of dismantling Israeland has been a communist/anarchist revolutionary for years.
Huwaida Arraf is an American citizen of Palestinian-Arab ancestry from Michigan. Her father has Israeli citizenship as an Arab-Israeli, so she can travel to Israel. There she goes to the West Bank and, as an ISM leader, provides cover for the PLO, vandalizes the Israeli security fence, or stands between Israeli soldiers and those who throw stones (like the one that killed an Israeli soldier). Arraf has been in and out of Israeli jails because Israel’s democratic government is just as befuddled as America’s when it comes to defining lawful dissent as opposed to intentional subversion that jeopardizes the lives of law-abiding citizens. Only recently, Arraf refused to be released from jail “in solidarity” with a PLO terrorist who was jailed along with her at one of the ISM’s activities in the West Bankvillageof Bi’lin. That too is part of the ISM’s training: to be arrested with violent criminals, then refuse to leave jail unless they are accompanied by the terrorists brought in with them. She was offered freedom with the proviso that she stay out of the West Bankfor 15 days. She refused before eventually relenting. Doubtless she will not be kept away for long.
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Adam Shapiro/Huwaida Arraf
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George Rishmawi
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Fayyad Sbaihat
The relative impunity by which activists like Arraf seemingly aid the terrorist cause demands action from authorities. Some proactive steps are in order. Fayyad Sbaihat and George Rishmawi are not American citizens. Huwaida Arraf is a U.S.citizen. However, if she and other ISM activists collaborate with terrorists, that would be against the law of the United Statesand subject to prosecution. Federal law (18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b) ) stipulates that aiding terrorists by giving them any form of lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, providing safe houses, or false identification is illegal. Arraf, heedless of the law, has already told her acolytes at Duke University that the ISM is willing to do—and already has done—many of these things: In the past, the ISM has prevented the Israeli army from demolishing bomb-making factories and weapons smuggling tunnels located in Palestinian homes. Hisham Jam Joun was flown in to Canadafor a Palestine Solidarity Conference and the former PFLP terrorist who served in Lebanon also trains ISM volunteers in the West Bank. How much longer can it be before our security services take action?
If the United Statesgovernment can give a life sentence to Ali Al-Tamimi for training paintball warriors in the War on Terror, why are the so-called “solidarity” foot soldiers still free to invade U.S.campuses, enlisting college students as “volunteers” to go the West Bankand assist Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP? And why are they doing this with the aid of college administrators who, evidently, know no better in time of war? Why aren’t the leaders of the ISM in the United Statesindicted for aiding and abetting terrorist organizations?
Wiser to the ways of ISM activists, Israelis starting to arrest or deport ISM members and ban their activities. Our own government might be wise to follow in their footsteps.
If you’d like to volunteer to help Stop the ISM, please email us at StoptheISM@att.net.
1 – Macdonald changed his name legally, and entered the country on a legal passport. Nothing dishonest or illegal.
2 – He was not arrested “while holed up in the home of a suicide terrorist”. He and a fellow Human Rights Observer (HRO) were chained to a pole in a house of people related to the terrorist yes, this is admitted. What you so candidly leave out is that this building was about to be demolished by the Israeli army and these two HROs were giving the family time to get away before the army turned up with their bulldozers. You see, it seems to matter to the security forces a bit more if they kill a westerner rather than a Palestinian.
This was an innocent family (we do believe in that whole “innocent before proven guilty” thing don’t we?).
Criminal behaviour is this?
3 – He “assaulted a member of the security forces”? A little research would show you that the judge that let him go had “contempt… for the police” involved in this case.
Check this actual report (i.e. not one that has severe tinges of libel) -
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=643632
4 – Trying to publish defamatory comments about a man and an organisation using only half the available information is tantamount to malicious.