The "Civil Right" to Make War on Israel and America

Lee Kaplan

Lee Kaplan is senior intelligence analyst with the Northeast Intelligence Network and a contributor to Front Page Magazine. He is also the national director of Dafka.org and heads Stop the ISM.

The "Civil Right" to Make War on Israel and America

by Lee Kaplan
November 05, 2006

On its website, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) touts itself as an organization set up to protect the civil rights of not only Arab-Americans, but of "all people." In fact, rather than the interests of "all people," the ADC promotes an anti-Israel agenda in the United States and the goals of overseas anti-US revolutionaries, even terrorist groups.

Part of the ADC's goals are to discourage cooperation of Arab-Americans with the FBI after 9/11, to oppose the Patriot Act and to push for a US withdrawal from Iraq. Among its advisors, the ADC lists Paul Findley, an openly anti-Semitic ex-US congressman whose Council for the National Interest (CNI) recently met with Hamas and Hizbullah, and called on the US to "reassess our decision to characterize Hamas as a terrorist organization." Findley touts Jewish conspiracies for 9/11 and the attack on the USS Liberty. His CNI is an offshoot of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a publication funded largely by Saudi Arabia, and an organization and media outlet that promotes activities of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The ADC's advisory board has the names of many other members aligned with the Arab irredentist movement working to dismantle the state of Israel.

In several of my previous articles, I wrote how the ADC offices in San Francisco were used as the main organizational headquarters for training and recruiting ISM "activists" to go to the West Bank and act as human shields for Palestinian terrorist groups. Employees of the San Francisco ADC office were ISM trainers on occasion. Jess Ghannam heads the San Francisco ADC chapter. Ghannam recently led a conference at San Francisco State calling for the dismantling of Israel under the euphemism of "right of return." Other ADC chapters around the country have been involved in helping to organize ISM "orientation and training" sessions that are in fact violations of the Patriot Act and anti-terrorism law (18 USC Code 2339 a and b against "training" individuals to go overseas and destroy property in an allied country).

Huwaida Arraf and Lisa Nessan, both high level activists within the ISM, have each admitted on more than one occasion that the ISM works in cooperation with terrorist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Despite this, the ADC seems to see no problem in sponsoring their recruiting and strategy sessions on US campuses and in local communities.

But the ADC's activities are not only limited to support and logistics for the ISM, an organization that another ISM founder, George Rishmawi, once openly stated was set up to bring internationals to the West Bank and Gaza with the hope they might be killed and create international incidents for Israel that would help the Palestinian cause. At a "San Francisco Intifada Festival" held at Horace Mann Middle School in 2004, an event sponsored and led by Ghannam, a representative of the Abu Sayaf guerillas, an arm of Osama Bin-Laden's Al-Qaeda in the Phillipines, was an honored guest speaker, among other far-left radicals opposed to the capitalist existence of the United States and Israel.

It took me nearly three years - after numerous exposes and evidence presented to the Israeli security authorities about activities and activists within the Holy Land - to demonstrate that the ISM is a deliberate fifth column under PLO supervision. It operates with international anarchist/communist groups to undermine Israeli sovereignty and create problems for the Israeli government.

Every Friday, ISM activists, under the guidance of Palestinian Authority handlers, still incite Arabs in the mosques to march against the security fence, set up to keep out terrorists, and to interfere with the IDF. But Israel finally has had enough and has begun deporting internationals who cannot explain adequately their longterm presence in the West Bank or who have a history of anti-Israel activities here in the US. This includes Americans of Palestinian descent who come in with the ISM to act as a facilitators for terrorist factions by using their US passports.

The Israelis are no longer willing to play that game, especially since the recent kidnappings of soldiers, daily rocket attacks from Gaza, the recent Hizbullah war, and the numbers of Israelis and border policemen who have been injured or even killed by these events. And, ironically, now the ADC is claiming it is a champion of civil rights while trying to use the US State Department as a foil to continue its same activities to get subversives over to the West Bank and keep the conflict roiling.

A recent ISM communiqué published on Indymedia and the ADC website details the ADC's attempt to gather complaints against Israel for controlling access of internationals determined to be risks to national security within the Holy Land. The ADC states it is now working with the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, collecting information on what it calls this "troubling practice" of Israel denying access to foreign subversives in time of war. Of interest is the website where the ADC sends its acolytes to collect information - a website run by the Palestinian Authority. That being the case, the ADC should be required by the US government to register as an agent for a foreign power, since it claims to not only be representing Arab-Americans, but foreigners as well.

The ADC provides complaint forms in PDF format to send to Secretary Rice:

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination (ADC) has noted increased reports which indicate Israel is discriminating against US citizens and other foreign nationals by denying them entry or re-entry into the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel.

The communiqué continues:

In late September, the US Consul General in Jerusalem also acknowledged a noticeable change in the number of Israeli refusals or denial of entry cases. More than 120,000 Arab-Americans are believed to be impacted by this latest Israeli policy and the Consulate is urging people to document this information. Additionally, on October 11, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said, "I will continue to do everything in my power... to ensure that all American travelers receive fair and equal treatment."

Despite this, the ISM missive goes on to tell people to contact Secretary of State Rice and urge her to pressure Israel to allow unfettered access to foreigners. Undoubtedly, Secretary Rice does not know about the ADC's close involvement with the ISM and how acceding to their demands will only serve to aid people who work as a front for terrorist groups in the Palestinian Authority. The goals of these people are not to create a lasting peace in the region between two peoples, but rather to interfere with efforts at controlling the activities of terrorist groups that endlessly roil the conflict.

Send your own messages to Condoleeza Rice and make her aware of the fact that the ADC is just an ISM wolf in sheep's clothing:

Public Communication Division:
PA/PL, Rm. 2206
U.S. Department of State
Attn. Sect'y Condoleeza Rice
2201 C Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20520
202-647-6575
Fax: 202 647-2283