“I have been in prison since April 16, 2007,” Ghassan Elashi wrote to me early in 2016.
First he was placed in solitary confinement, in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) at the detention center in Seagoville, Texas, for six months. Next he was transported via bus to the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City. After only a few days there, he was flown by a special US Marshal-operated airplane to Atlanta, Georgia, where he remained for about ten months at a medium security facility called USP Atlanta. Then, in August 2008, Ghassan was flown back to Oklahoma City Prison and bused to Seagoville again, where he would remain until the second HLF trial ended in April 2010. By the time the trial ended, he had been in prison for three years already.
After the trial, he was taken to the Communication Management Unit (CMU) in Marion, Illinois. After seven years there, Ghassan was transferred to Coleman, Florida, for about a year and then to McCreary, a high-security federal prison for male inmates in Kentucky. I applied to visit at each of these facilities. After years of denials, I was finally approved to visit him at McCreary. At the time, Ghassan was entering the ninth year of a sixty-five year sentence. He was sixty-three years old.
Three days before I left San Diego, I received an email from Ghassan saying the penitentiary had removed me from his “approved visitors” list.
Ghassan’s father was Medhat Abdul Ghani Elashi. He was born in Palestine in the ancient port city of Gaza in 1923. Coincidentally, this was the same year my father was born, also in Palestine, in the northern port city of Haifa. My father joined the armed Jewish Zionist militia while still in high school. Ghassan’s father graduated from Beir-Zeit University and then worked for the Palestine Bank.
Although our fathers never met, their fates were linked. When the Jewish militia became the Israeli Army in 1948, my father became a career officer. The ethnic cleansing conducted in 1948 by Jewish-Zionist forces in Palestine that turned Ghassan’s father and his family into refugees was a result of the new state of Israel to which my father and his generation of Zionist colonizers dedicated their lives.
Fadwa Hashim Elafrangi, Ghassan’s mother, was born in Palestine in the port city of Yaffa in 1932. Her parents had moved to Yaffa from Gaza a few years before she was born. In 1948, she fled Yaffa, along with her entire family and thousands of others, to escape the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. They sailed south back to Gaza with only a few belongings, expecting to return to Yaffa soon. But very quickly Israel drew a political boundary around Gaza and a few other cities surrounding it. The area quickly became known as the “Gaza Strip.” As more and more refugees fled their homes, the newly created “Strip” became one of the largest Palestinian refugee communities in the world. As part of an agreement between Israel and Egypt, the Gaza Strip was governed by Egypt.
In 1952, Medhat and Fadwa were married. Their son Ghassan was born in Palestine on December 19, 1953, in A’daraj, a suburb of Gaza City.
In 1956, when Ghassan was three years old, Medhat was hired by Riyadh Bank in Saudi Arabia. At first, he shared an apartment with other Palestinian expatriates, but in 1958 his family left Gaza for Saudi Arabia as well. By that point Ghassan had been joined by two younger brothers and a sister.
Ghassan’s father was determined to give his children the best education he could. After Ghassan completed first grade in a private school in Saudi Arabia, he and his younger brother Bayan were sent to boarding school in Egypt for a year, then returned to Gaza to their grandfather’s house to stay until 1967, when Ghassan was nearly fourteen.
Back in Gaza, Ghassan attended Salahudin Elementary School and then Al-Yarmouk Middle School. The former is named after the revered Muslim leader who in the twelfth century liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, and the latter after the battle of Yarmouk, a major battle that took place in the year 636 C.E. between the armies of the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Arab forces east of the Sea of Galilee. The result of the battle was a total Muslim victory, which ended Byzantine rule in Syria. The Battle of Yarmouk is regarded as one of the most decisive battles in military history, and it marked the first great wave of Islamic conquests after the death of Muhammad, heralding the rapid advance of Islam into the Levant.
Young Ghassan
Ghassan himself describes these years spent with his grandparents as “joyful.” His grandfather’s house, he says, was “built in the Arabic style, spacious with an open area in the middle and rooms surrounding the open area.”
The house sat at the edge of a ten-acre orange grove and in the summer the orange blossom fragrance, which spreads throughout the coast of Palestine, would fill the house. In the backyard Ghassan’s grandfather cultivated roses in various bright colors and jasmine and gardenia, olive trees and grapevines and of course the ubiquitous lemon tree, which seems an inseparable part of every Palestinian home.
Ghassan spent his summers “picking wild cherry tomatoes, dill, and green chili pepper, which grew wild all over the ground in the orange grove, right under the trees.” Ghassan would bring salt from the house, and using a clay bowl he would mix these ingredients to make a dip for the fresh pita bread that his grandmother baked.
During cold winter nights, Ghassan and his younger brother Bayan would sit with a farm hand named Alarabi, who worked for their grandfather, listening to ancient Arab fables or stories about the history of Palestine. To warm the room, Alarabi put hot cinders from burning orange tree trimmings in a metal container. Even the mattresses the boys sat on were stuffed with dried leaves from the same trees.
Ghassan vividly remembers standing with Alarabi on the roof of his grandfather’s house one dark night, enjoying the soft sea breeze and the fragrance of orange blossom. Alarabi was smoking a cigarette.
Looking toward the sea Ghassan could see the endless sand dunes that are typical of the southern coast of Palestine. At one point barbed wire cut through the dunes.
“Don’t ever try to cross this barbed wire, or the Yahud will shoot you.” Ghassan had been warned. And indeed Israeli soldiers were under orders to shoot Palestinian “infiltrators” on sight. Ghassan was not even allowed to see what life was like for his countrymen inside occupied Palestine.
The lights of Jewish cities and towns shone beyond the boundaries of the Gaza Strip. “Why are the Arab nations unable to liberate Palestine?” Ghassan wondered aloud.
Alarabi inhaled smoke, then blew it slowly out through his nose and mouth. He put his hand on Ghassan’s head.
“As long as America is helping Israel we will never win.”
Ghassan later wrote to me, “I didn’t know anything about America [then] except that it was far away.”
As a result of the Suez Campaign, a joint Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt that took place in October of 1956, Israel had come to occupy the entire Sinai Peninsula, including the west bank of the Suez Canal and the Gaza Strip. At that time, my own father was already a colonel in the Israeli army. After the Suez Campaign, he was appointed military governor of Gaza. The occupation lasted about six months before, under American pressure, Israel returned the occupied territories to Egypt, including the Gaza Strip.
On the 7th and 14th of March each year, refugees in the Gaza Strip commemorated the Israeli forces’ 1957 withdrawal. Schools were closed, and thousands of people marched through Omar Almukhtar Street, the main street in Gaza. Palestinian flags were raised and people chanted slogans calling for the liberation of Palestine from the Zionist occupiers.
The march terminated at Aljundi Almajhool Square. At the center of this square stands a white statue of a soldier pointing his hand and finger northeast toward occupied Palestine. On it there is an inscription: We Shall Return.
The statue of the Anonymous Soldier, Gaza City
“I recall marching with the crowd and growing aware of the Nakba,” Ghassan wrote to me. By the mid-1960s, when he was old enough to truly understand, the occupation of Palestine and the existence of the state of Israel had been a reality for close to twenty years.
In 1965, the education board in Gaza, which as mentioned earlier was under Egyptian control, introduced a new curriculum that included the history and geography of Palestine. The history covered a period that began prior to the introduction of Islam and all the way to current times. For the first time, Ghassan was taught about the Balfour Declaration, the British commitment to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in what was then Palestine, and the history of encouraging Jewish people to immigrate and colonize the area.
In June of 1967, Ghassan and his brothers, Bayan and Basman, left for Saudi Arabia, intending to spend summer vacation with their parents. Since there is no airport in Gaza the three boys took a cab to Cairo. It was a grueling ride that took more than ten hours in temperatures that exceeded one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, with no air conditioning.
When they reached the Suez Canal, the passengers had to get out of the car and wait for a raft that would take them across the canal. People, cars, and buses, along with camels and other livestock, all disembarked before the three brothers could board the raft that slowly drifted back toward mainland Egypt. Once they had crossed, they got back in the taxi and continued to Cairo. The main roads were crowded with military vehicles taking troops and equipment, making their way toward the Suez Canal and the Sinai Peninsula. The boys’ faces were glued to the taxi’s windows as they witnessed this massive military buildup.
Only days after they arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Israel once again attacked Egypt (as well as Jordan and Syria) and started a war that changed the face of the Middle East forever. Six days later, Palestinians in Gaza were once again under Israeli rule, this time permanently.
“The news coming from the Egyptian radio was distorted,” Ghassan remembers vividly, “making claims that the Egyptian air force was shooting down hundreds of Israeli jets.
“I recall my father sitting by the radio the entire time, hoping like millions of Palestinians around the world that this time the Arab forces would liberate Palestine. I remember him listening to speeches by the charismatic leader of Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser.” Nasser warned that should Israel enter into war with Egypt and the other Arab countries bordering it they would regret it, that the Arab forces were ready to deliver a swift blow to the Israeli Defense Forces and liberate Palestine once and for all.
But after just six days it was confirmed that the Israeli forces had instead delivered a devastating defeat to the Egyptian army, killing thousands of Egyptian soldiers, and that the Israelis had reached the Suez Canal, occupying the entire Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip once again. Jerusalem and the entire West Bank were occupied, and even the Syrian Golan Heights had been taken by Israeli forces.
Most of the world calls this conflict The June War or The Six-Day War. Palestinians call it Alnaksa, “the Setback.”
As I read Ghassan’s vivid descriptions, I couldn’t help but recall my own experience with the war. My father was a general in the IDF. Sounds of joy and victory came from our radio in Jerusalem. The jubilation, sense of pride and destiny, that once again we, the Jews, the children of King David and the Maccabees, had defeated the evil enemy.
From that moment on, Ghassan and his siblings, like countless other Palestinians, were refugees with no home to return to and no country to call their own. Their father, still determined to give his sons the best education possible, decided to send Ghassan and his brothers back to boarding school in Cairo.
Not long after returning to Cairo, Ghassan saw his first photo of the man who for four decades would be the face of Palestine, Yasser Arafat. Arafat was at that time the newly elected leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO.
Arafat brought with him the promise of a resistance that would free Palestine from Israeli occupation through guerrilla warfare. He organized resistance cells inside the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as well as along the border with Jordan, and he excited Palestinian students studying at universities in Arab countries to join the revolution. Egyptian authorities allocated two hours a day, four days a week, for the Palestinian resistance to broadcast news about guerrilla attacks by the Fedayeen, as the fighters used to be called. Ghassan recalls hearing these broadcasts “everywhere.” “They were coming out of loudspeakers from cafes, buses, and from every shop along the streets.”
During what would come to be an eight-year stay in Egypt, Ghassan had to renew his temporary student visa every year. This was not easy for a refugee. He had to get certification from the Cairo-based office of the Egyptian military governor of Gaza to prove that he had been a resident of Gaza City. Every year Ghassan and his brothers would fly to Saudi Arabia to spend their summer vacation with the rest of the family. Before leaving Cairo, they had to get another visa to ensure they could return, as well as one to stay in Saudi Arabia.
In 1972, at the age of eighteen, Ghassan was finally able to visit Palestine thanks to a visa obtained by his aunt. At that time there was no way to cross the border from Egypt, so he had to travel to Amman, Jordan, cross the Jordan River into the West Bank, and then travel by taxi through Israel to reach Gaza. There were no borders as such between Gaza, the West Bank, and the rest of occupied Palestine, or Israel, so once he was in the country, travel was easy.
Walking through the alleys of the Old City of Jerusalem, Ghassan felt as though he was in a dream. As he turned the corner to approach the Holy Sanctuary where the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque sit, he could feel his heart beating faster and faster. As soon as he saw the golden dome he stopped. “This for all Muslims and particularly for Palestinians is a deeply emotional experience,” Ghassan wrote. “Since I was a child I had dreamt about visiting Jerusalem and seeing the golden Dome of the Rock. It was amazing to see the old city of Jerusalem, but not nearly as amazing as it was to step onto the Holy Sanctuary and pray at Al Aqsa mosque.”
Driving south to Gaza, Ghassan saw the coastline that he remembered seeing as a child. The sand dunes were still there, but the landscape of humanity had changed. He saw Palestinians lining up each morning, going through security, and being checked by Israeli border police before entering Israel to go to work in construction, factories, restaurants—or in agriculture, where they would cultivate lands that were once their own.
The year 1972 was marked by a very large wave of immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union. Thousands of Russian Jews came to Israel, including my own grandmother’s two sisters, along with their families. These immigrants were welcomed as full-fledged citizens from the moment of their arrival.
“I was born in this country,” Ghassan reminded me, “but had to get a special visa to visit my family, my birthplace, and the birthplace of my father, grandfather, and ancestors.”
With his aunt, Ghassan traveled through the parts of the country that were occupied in 1948 and became Israel. This “tour” brought them to Yaffa, to the house where his mother had grown up. “The house was occupied by Israeli Jews now. My aunt spoke to them in Arabic and broken Hebrew, telling them that this house belonged to my grandfather and he had lived there twenty-four years before. But the residents did not have any reaction except saying, ‘So what?’”
As a child, Ghassan knew only that America was very far away. In 1978, he himself went “very far away” to attend an ESL school in Cleveland, Ohio. After three months, he transferred to Kent State University for a post-graduate program in accounting.
The atmosphere at Kent State gave Ghassan a sense of freedom. “I felt I could express myself any way I chose, and my choice was to rediscover my roots and my religion.”
Ghassan established the first Muslim Student Organization at Kent State University. He turned the first floor of the townhouse where he lived into a place for congregational prayer for Muslim students on campus. It was open all day, every day.
After a year, Ghassan transferred to the University of Miami in Florida, where he completed his master’s degree in accounting in December of 1981. On this campus too, Ghassan was active on Muslim issues. He led a delegation of Muslim students who lobbied for the school to dedicate a room for daily prayer and a restroom designated to perform ablution before prayer. The campus newspaper found out that Ghassan was an international student from Palestine and interviewed him about his life in America and his ideas for a solution to the still-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He answered that he wanted “one democratic state where both Jews and Arab Palestinians live as equal citizens.”
By 1985, the devoutly religious Ghassan knew two things: that it was time to marry, and that his attempts to find a partner in the US were failing him. His father’s sister invited him to visit her in Amman, promising to introduce him to friends with eligible daughters. A month later he was preparing to return to the United States alone when, at the last minute, he met Majida Salem.
Majida is also Palestinian, born in the town of Yatta, which sits on the hills just south of the city of Al-Khalil, or Hebron. When Ghassan met her, she was working in Amman as a high school English teacher. They married on March 21, 1985, six weeks after they met, and immediately after that they were on their way to Los Angeles.
Majida’s version of the story, which I heard over a full Palestinian breakfast when I visited Ghassan’s home for the first time, is considerably more romantic.
As we sat and ate fresh cucumbers, dukka with olive oil, labne, falafel, and eggs, all wrapped in warm pita bread, Majida described how they saw one another for the first time and she knew he was the man for her. She also told us that after the wedding, once they were on their way to Los Angeles, Ghassan said to her, “Now you will be free to pray and go to the mosque; no one will follow you or harass you for your beliefs.”
Majida and Ghassan have three girls, Noor, Huda, and Asmaa, and three boys, Mohammad, Osama, and Omar. The Elashis made sure that their children had the opportunity to attend Islamic school and to grow up with the teachings of their faith. They also grew up with two loving, committed parents: breakfast was always Baba’s job, the kids told me, and he made the best breakfasts.
While living in Los Angeles Ghassan was involved in establishing a local Islamic society that provided Islamic services to the community, including religious Sunday school. With his brother Bayan, he started a company called International Computer and Communications Inc. The two brothers leased an office and a warehouse, and using their contacts in the Middle East, they started to assemble personal computers in the Middle East, which was a growing market. They also provided consulting and outsourcing services to export computers and communication products and parts, including software. Ghassan took the position of marketing and sales at ICC and started to travel to the Middle East to promote their products and services. Being from the Middle East and speaking Arabic while being based in the United States gave the company leverage that enabled it to grow. They started with annual sales of $300,000 in 1988 and reached close to $5 million in 1995.
Medhat Elashi, who had retired to Gaza in 1985, remained close to his children. In 1990, he died of a heart attack while visiting them Los Angeles. He is buried in the Muslim section of a cemetery in a suburb east of Los Angeles, a long way from Gaza City.
In 1992, the Elashi brothers moved to Richardson, a suburb of Dallas, Texas, and started a new company called InfoCom. They extended ICC’s services and won a few major business deals, including hosting and streaming of the Al Jazeera TV Arabic website. They were successful with no limits in sight as the family settled down in suburban Dallas, becoming part of middle-class America.
But the political climate in the United States was beginning to change: Ghassan, along with his family, friends, and the Muslim community in general, were being targeted by anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate groups, many apparently related to the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League who viewed their existence and their success as a threat.
At exactly 2:50 p.m., the guards at Seagoville Penitentiary blow the whistles that signal the end of visiting hours.
“Visitation is over, inmates on the right, visitors on the left, inmates on the right, visitors on the left.”
Reluctantly, inmates tear themselves from their loved ones. One last hug, one final kiss before they return to their cells and their families return to their cars and make the lonely drive home.
“Ma’a salaame Baba, ma’a salaame,”1 Ghassan Elashi’s family told him.
“Allah Ma’ek Habibi,” 2 he replied.
Ghassan walked over to join the rest of the inmates, all dressed in their oversized khaki overalls and white t-shirts, dragging their feet in plastic shoes. Majida and the children walked to the other side and stood by the wall as they were told. The guards urged on the stragglers.
Omar, the youngest, broke away from his mother and ran to Ghassan.
“Baba!”
Ghassan Elashi with his son Omar
Shukri Abu-Baker was the first of the HLF-5 with whom I communicated, and the first I visited in prison, although that would be much later. He loves to write and he does it well. His words are evocative where mine fail me sometimes, so I asked for permission to reproduce his letters for this book. I keep them all; some are handwritten in beautiful penmanship. I also learned how to use Corrlinks, the Bureau of Prisons email system, to correspond with him.
His letters are remarkably optimistic, considering the indignities he has undergone. He speaks of his family with love, pride, and joy, and of his trials with forbearance.
Shukri Abu-Baker and me
We’re out of lockdown3 this morning. I took advantage of my solitude to finish up some important readings that included revising my memorization of the Quran and an introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The first book I read in my first month of incarceration (I was put in the solitary for the first three months) was Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl. He illuminated his secret to holocaust survival; how to “turn one’s predicament into a human achievement,” and how “man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but to see meaning in his life.” In his treasured book he taught me that “unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment … man’s freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand towards the conditions.”
Dr. Frankl taught me how to suffer and survive suffering. From the beginning of the whole ordeal, I knew it was going to be tough on my family as much it was on me. With Sanabel out there fighting three chronic killers yet holding as strong as she could waiting for her daddy to come home, was heart wrecking. I knew I wasn’t coming home any time soon. Survive prison I must, for when I come out I would hold no grudges, or hate, or resentment. My belief system tells me that whatever comes upon me is a matter already decreed by Allah. He knows better.
I know, Sanabel might not be able to make it till I had the chance to come home. She is rapidly weakening, her lungs functions at 24 percent now. I don’t know for how much longer she’ll be able to wait. Cystic fibrosis and thalassemia-beta and diabetes are at work, but so is her fighting power and her resilience. I know one thing, though. My years in prison won’t go wasted.
I’m growing a little taller and prouder every day. My family is growing a little stronger every day. We all are getting to the point of no return; no more shall we fear the unknown, and no more shall we succumb to the bitterness of injustice. This is how I had conducted myself and this is how I brought up my family. I encouraged my girls to be open minded to the world because this is the only way the world could open up to them. I carry the pain of the Palestinians in me. I have visited the refugee camps in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, and I have stories to tell. It isn’t a pretty sight to watch children climb garbage piles foraging for any edible remains!
I will write you more later, Miko. Enjoy your days under the sun. Surprise your loved ones with an act of love or kindness. Make little things happen in their lives allowing for bigger things to manifest in them.
And always, Let Love Live.
Shukri
5/9/12
Shukri’s father, Ahmad Abu-Baker (colloquially pronounced Abu-Bachir), was born in 1930 in the village of Silwad, Ramallah district, in a part of Palestine that would later be known as the West Bank. Shukri recalls his father speaking little of his childhood, except in vague terms and isolated anecdotes.
When the Nakba took place in 1948, Ahmad believed that Israel would not be satisfied for long with the boundaries established by the United Nations, and he was determined to leave. The West Bank, which came under Jordanian rule as a result of an agreement between the newly established Kingdom of Jordan and the (also newly established) state of Israel, was desolate and poorly managed. There was little work for Ahmad other than farming his father’s olive grove and doing other small jobs in the village. As a teen he sold ice cream in Jaffa. When he was twenty-two he travelled to Beirut and boarded a ship to Colombia. Then, from Colombia, he traveled overland to Catanduva, Brazil, seeking new opportunities.
He began working as a salesman, moving about in the hot, humid weather, selling mostly garments. Once he could afford to purchase a truck he did so and began selling on a larger scale, traveling the two hundred odd miles between Catanduva and Sao Paolo.
It was in Catanduva that Ahmad met Shukri’s mother, Zaira; the two were married in 1957. Jamal was their oldest. Shukri, born in 1958, was their second child. Kamal was third.
In 1964, the family decided to leave Brazil and return home to Silwad in Palestine. Shukri’s youngest brother, Ramzi, was born there and still teases his family about being “the only true Palestinian” brother.
Two years later, Ahmad and Zaira left to seek employment in Kuwait. They took the youngest children, Kamal and Ramzi, with them, leaving Shukri and his older brother Jamal in Silwad with their grandparents, Haj Mohammad and Haja Sadiqa Abu Baker.
In the summer of 1967, Israeli forces invaded the West Bank. Haj Mohammad, like many Palestinians, placed white flags on the roof of his home and then took his wife and the young grandchildren to hide in nearby caves. A year later, Jamal and Shukri traveled to Amman, Jordan, where their father met them and together they travelled to Kuwait. From that point on, Kuwait became the family’s permanent home.
During the 1960s, the Kuwaiti government granted the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) unusual autonomy rights, including the administration of special schools for Palestinian children.
Professor Shafeeq Ghabra of the Department of Political Science at Kuwait University says that Palestinians helped shape Kuwait’s social, economic, and political development. They played a formative role in the development of Kuwait—the length of their residence, the size of the community, their dedication to work in both the public and private sectors, and their consequent entrenchment in the bureaucracy, economy, professions, and the media enabled Palestinians in Kuwait to develop one of the most cohesive and active Palestinian communities in the diaspora.4
Like the vast majority of Palestinians, Shukri lived in Hawally, the suburb of Kuwait City that became the center of Palestinian life. There the Arabic accents outside a bakery on Tunis Street were more Palestinian than Khaliji. Even the pastries displayed inside on huge, round trays were like the ones from Jaffa and Haifa and Nablus.
Shukri’s grandparents’ grave
Before the First Gulf War, Hawally was the largest Palestinian neighborhood in Kuwait. About 400,000 Palestinians lived in the tiny sheikdom, and it constituted one of the largest, richest, and most influential Palestinian communities in the world, second only to those in Jordan and Lebanon.
Shukri loved Kuwait. He loved the pluralism of Palestinian political and cultural life, spanning everything from the author Ghassan Kanafani, who represented the intellectual left, to Sufi Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood. Shukri developed a passion for the Arabic language and for the arts and a taste for activism.
“I was a member of the executive committee of The National Union for Palestinian Students (NUPS), which was predominantly Fatah,” Shukri told me. The PLO headquarters was only a five-minute walk from Shukri’s house. “I would camp there for long hours every time I got the chance in hopes of seeing Yasser Arafat in person.”
Arafat, also called Abu Ammar, visited Kuwait often. Active members of the NUPS like Shukri had notice of his schedule, and Shukri was excited to meet his hero. Arafat, too, was enthusiastic about meeting young leaders like Shukri. They met at least three times, and Shukri listened raptly to Arafat’s vision for the PLO and the services he wanted to provide for displaced Palestinians.
Arafat was known for his good memory and particularly for remembering people he met. He remembered Shukri from the first time he met him, and even though Shukri was not a member of Fatah proper Arafat gave him the nickname Shukri El-Batal (Shukri the Hero) for his outstanding activism and enthusiasm.
“I think he saw that I loved Palestine and I wanted to serve my people,” Shukri observed. “Abu Ammar was very humble; he ate with his hands in the old fashioned Arabic style and invited others to dig in with him. Though I never joined Fatah, I looked up to him.” Many Palestinians did.
In 1977, Shukri graduated from high school and decided to go to the UK to continue his education. He travelled to Sunderland in the very northeastern part of England and enrolled at Monkwearmouth College to study civil engineering. The dark, cold, and dreary climate of northern England was a far cry from the sunny, warm climates he had known in Brazil, Palestine, and Kuwait, but he persevered. At Monkwearmouth he also met another Palestinian who would become renowned for his writing and activism, Dr. Azzam Tamimi. Like Shukri, Dr. Tamimi had lived in Kuwait before coming to the UK to study.
Shukri’s life in the UK was his first direct encounter with Western culture as an adult. He was impressed by the freedom, and he was exposed to people from other parts of the Muslim world, parts he had not yet encountered. While in England, he continued to advocate for Palestine and he began to teach Islam.
In 1980, Shukri came to the United States. He stayed with relatives in Florida, where he completed his studies. Again he became active with Palestinian and Muslim causes and was swept into activism, speaking around the country for Palestine. In 1982, Shukri married Wejdan, and in 1983, while serving as president of the Islamic Society of Greater Florida, he had his first visit from the FBI. “They wanted information about the activities of Iranian students,” Shukri told me.
That year, 1983, was also the year their first child, Zaira, was born. Shortly afterward, Shukri graduated and began working with a variety of non-profit organizations, including the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) in Indianapolis.
MAYA helped students from across the Arab and Muslim world who reside in the United States with cultural, religious, or other needs. The organization held an annual convention around Christmastime each year that would attract thousands of Muslim and Arab students. These conventions focused on the issues most central to Arabs and Muslims, and naturally Palestine was front and center. Religious figures as well as political and civic leaders from around the world would come to speak at this event, and Shukri was right in the middle of it, meeting and networking with everyone. Shukri’s work with MAYA opened up possibilities and connections for him that helped with the success of his later work with The Holy Land Foundation.
He was also involved with the Islamic Association for Palestine, IAP, an organization he had helped found back in 1981. IAP grew quickly, particularly in large cities with significant Arab and Muslim communities who, naturally, cared deeply for Palestine.
“I kept suggesting that we change the name,” Shukri told me, “because I felt that the ‘Islamic’ part of the name was limiting our ability to reach out to people who care for Palestine as an issue but are not religious.”
In 1984, Wejdan gave birth to a boy that they named Mohammad. Sadly Mohammad passed away after only five months.
In 1987, two events were to take place that influenced Shukri deeply and made him determined to dedicate his life to charity. Shukri and Wejdan had another child, a girl they named Sanabel. Later that year the first Palestinian uprising, the Intifada, broke out.
Soon after she was born, Sanabel was diagnosed with two life-threatening diseases: cystic fibrosis and beta-thalassemia. This required her to be constantly under medical care, including lengthy periods of hospitalization. The expense was enormous.
Sanabel was initially hospitalized at the non-profit Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis. This was where Shukri got his first glimpse of the real power and capacity of the non-profit world and the work that is done through charitable giving. As he and Wejdan were trying to do all that was possible to save Sanabel, and receiving the best care possible, the troubling images of the First Intifada were coming from Palestine: children being beaten by soldiers, young Palestinians armed with rocks being gunned down by Israeli tanks.
Shukri credits Sanabel with inspiring his charitable work.
“I want[ed] to do the same for other children around the world, to utilize the tools of charitable giving for children who do not have the opportunities that we had … for Sanabel.”
Shukri’s third daughter, Nida, was also born in a time of tremendous turmoil in Palestine. On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American-Jewish settler who emigrated from Brooklyn to Hebron, took a semi-automatic rifle into the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and sprayed the crowd of worshipers who were praying at the time with live ammunition. He murdered twenty-nine people and injured dozens of others before he was taken over and killed. The following day, on February 26, Nida, which in Arabic means “a call for help,” was born.
I was fortunate enough to meet Shukri’s family, including Sanabel, on several occasions. The first was when I met the HLF-5 families at the Muslim Community Center in Richardson, near Dallas, Texas. A few days after the meeting, on May 23, 2012, Shukri passed on to me an email he received from Sanabel, telling him about the meeting:
Salaam5 Baba,
Today all the families met with Miko … He wants us to tell our stories and he is going to do some research and get some contacts in Palestine to interview the people, see hospitals, schools, and orphanages that received the aid. It’s going to be a big project, but I am soo happy this is going to happen, inshallah.6
… Inshallah, Inshallah this will be a great project. He mentioned you talked to him yesterday and how excited you were. That’s so good; I’m happy you talked to him …
Yallah talk to you tom. inshallah.
Sanabel was like her father—warm, intelligent, and a real fighter—but her life was not easy. She was constantly in and out of the hospital. On May 12, 2013, Shukri sent me the following email:
Sanabel is on her deathbed fighting for her life … Please keep her in your thoughts. Her mission on earth is about finished. She says she won’t go before she can see me. I said, “Baby, I’ll always be with you no matter when or where you go.”
May Allah have mercy on all living things.
Shukri
A few days later, I received another email.
In the name of Allah the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate
Sanabel passed on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 2 AM. She went peacefully and gracefully. She will be buried today.
I praise Allah for what He had allowed me to keep: my remaining daughters, Zaira, Nida, and Shurook and my wonderful wife Wejdan.
The prison authorities did not permit Shukri to leave the prison to see his daughter before she died.
I had already been working on this book for several years before I was actually able to meet Mohammad Elmezain in prison, and the only member of his family with whom I spoke at any length was his daughter Tasnim, but even she could not tell me much about his early life. So I asked Shukri. Shukri sent me one of his long, wonderful handwritten letters in which he told me about Elmezain. Elmezain himself later confirmed what Shukri told me, but there was one passage in Shukri’s letter to which I was able to relate as soon as I met Abu Ibrahim Elmezain:
To see a man [like that] grow old and weak and sick in prison tears my heart to shreds. I wish I could take the remainder of his sentence, add it to mine, and have him go home to his family.
In the summer of 2016, Elmezain was being held at Terminal Island. I mailed him a copy of my book and wrote an introductory letter. In my letter I mentioned that my father too would often be called Abu Ibrahim by Palestinian acquaintances. Abu is part of a kunya, a type of Arabic naming convention that allows one to be known as the “father of” someone. In this case, both my father and the man born Mohammad Elmezain have sons named Ibrahim (the translation of my name in Arabic), so both are known affectionately as Abu Ibrahim.
Federal Correctional Facility, Terminal Island
In response I received a warm, handwritten letter from Abu Ibrahim. He invited me to request permission to visit him and also invited me to meet with his family, both of which I consequently did. Visiting with his children and grandchildren was a delight, but visiting him in a federal correctional facility was heartbreaking.
The port of Los Angeles is eerily quiet on a Sunday morning. As I drove through it on the narrow, winding road leading to Terminal Island, I saw enormous cranes standing idle like giant animals in a sci-fi movie, frozen. Countless containers with names like COSTCO, MERSK, CHIQUITA, and others were piled in order over the immense stretch of land that makes up the harbor and port. The only movement was an occasional eighteen-wheeler driving in or out of the port. The ocean was still and the shades of blue on a sunny winter morning made it a truly stunning sight.
As one approaches FCI Terminal Island, a Federal Correctional Institution, the water is visible only through the dense rolls of razor wire that surround the facility.
FCI Terminal Island is a low security prison, and with just under two thousand inmates it is relatively small. Rules are relatively relaxed, and the guards are visibly less abrasive. One can actually see the world outside the prison, a huge difference between Terminal Island and the other facilities that I visited. On top of that, the food in the vending machines is of slightly higher quality. One can get yogurt and an apple, for example.
Abu Ibrahim’s son, Abu Baker, told me that his father gets tired easily. He suggested I arrive early and that I should expect the visit to only last a couple of hours at the most.
Razor wire surrounding FCI Terminal Island
I arrived at the prison early enough to be seated in the visitation room before Abu Ibrahim was brought in. It was an odd calendar day, meaning inmates with last names from A to M may receive visitors. At 8:00 a.m., I lined up behind a dozen people also waiting to visit inmates, all carrying Ziploc bags with change for the vending machines.
Once you have signed in, you wait again to be taken into the visitation room in groups of ten. When I entered the room, some inmates were already seated and waiting for us, but Mohammad Elmezain, or Haj Abu Ibrahim, was not among them.
I took the chair the guard pointed me to. Nearby, an inmate wearing a kippah chatted in Hebrew with an older couple that I assumed were his parents.
When Abu Ibrahim came out we hugged and kissed and then sat down and talked like old friends. I have met many spiritual figures in my life, mostly men who were connected to martial arts and Eastern religions, men of great stature. Sitting with Abu Ibrahim I felt the warmth, spirit, and strength of ten such men. He is growing old and he is not in good health, but he is not weak by any means. One feels his strength in his warm embrace and even more so in his convictions.
It was a pleasure to meet with Abu Ibrahim and to feel such a connection to him, because he had been a difficult man to get hold of. Since he is the one HLF leader from San Diego, I, and everyone else that I spoke to, assumed it would be the easiest connection to make. In fact, it took about two years before I was able to even meet Tasnim Elmezain, one of Abu Ibrahim’s daughters. During my 2012 meetings with the HLF families in Dallas, Tasnim participated via Skype. I emailed her several times afterward, but somehow, even though we were both in San Diego, we never managed to find a time that was convenient.
Mohammad Elmezain, Abu Ibrahim, and me
After about a year and a half, Tasnim wrote to me saying that the family would prefer not to talk to me after all. I was very disappointed but agreed to respect the family’s wishes and not bother them.
In February 2014, I participated in a panel organized by Students for Justice in Palestine at San Diego State University. Tasnim came to listen and stayed to chat briefly after the talk. Later that day I received a text message from her agreeing to meet with me.
We finally met on Friday, March 7, at 10:30 a.m. I recall the day and time because that night I had to leave for my first visit to South Africa. We sat for about an hour and talked.
Tasnim is a young, proud observant Muslim woman. When we met, she was just about to graduate from college. She wore plain traditional Muslim clothes with no makeup and a hijab. She seemed to me like a strong and determined woman, forthright and at the same time very calm and pleasant. When we began talking about the case, her face wore a serious look that is rare to find on a person so young. She and I were sitting outside at the quad in San Diego State University, and as we sat and talked people kept coming up; it seemed that she knew almost every other person that walked by. When I later listened to the tape of our conversation, I repeatedly heard “hello” and “good morning” and from time to time “Asalaamu Aleikum.” In another time and place, these constant interruptions might have been an irritation, but Tasnim’s friendly smile and warm personality made it very natural.
“I can’t talk to people about the case,” Tasnim began, “Just to get started I need an hour or even more just so they know what I’m talking about.”
“I had no idea anything was going on until our house was raided,” she began. “After 9/11 I was so upset; I couldn’t believe people could do such terrible things. A few months later I heard that they shut down the HLF. I didn’t understand why and nothing clicked until they raided our house.”
I asked her about the men known as the HLF-5.
“They were all teddy bear daddies.”
Mohammad Elmezain comes from the same small historic village as another Palestinian hero, Abu Ali Shahin. When Abu Ibrahim told me his family was from the village of Beshshit,7 I mentioned that I knew Abu Ali Shahin.8 Abu-Ibrahim’s eyes lit up.
“Yes, Abu Ali Shahin! We are from the same village. They ended up in Rafah and we ended up in Khan Yunis.” These are cities in the Gaza Strip where refugee camps were set up.
In the summer of 1948, the cities of Lydda and Ramle fell victim to the ethnic cleansing campaign that was sweeping through Palestine like wildfire, destroying everything in its path. In a matter of weeks, the cities, which at that point had a population of close to a hundred thousand, were all but eliminated. Zionist militias marched through the villages in the vicinity, destroying them one by one. In a documentary that was made about this, one Israeli commander was asked if villages were burned by the Jewish militia. He replied, “Like bonfires!”
Tens of thousands more Palestinians became homeless refugees. Beshshit was one of these villages; many of its residents took refuge in what would come to be known as the Gaza Strip.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the concentration of hundreds of thousands of refugees in the Gaza Strip continued into the early 1950’s. Elmezain’s family was among the countless families that ended up in Khan Yunis, and in 1953, Mohammad Elmezain was among the first generation of Palestinians born there as refugees. His father was a deeply religious man who made a modest living as a barber and circumciser, or Tahar, which in Islam, like in Judaism, is a religious role.
Like thousands of other young Palestinians born as refugees, Mohammad attended a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which the United Nations specifically established to assist Palestinian refugees who were exiled in 1948. He was a studious young man and at a young age was able to recite the entire Quran, which in Islam is regarded a great virtue. When he was nineteen years old, he traveled to Egypt to study at Al-Azhar University, one of the oldest universities in the world, where he received a degree in economics. By the time he went to college, the June War was over and the Gaza Strip was occupied by Israel.
Mohammad Elmezain lived and worked in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates before finally moving to the United States in 1983. In 1985, he received his master’s degree in economics from Colorado State University. He moved to New Jersey in 1989, where he worked as the Imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1999 he settled in San Diego, California, where he planned to raise his young family.
The second time I visited Abu Ibrahim was shortly after Donald Trump was elected President. A ban had been placed on Muslims from certain countries entering the United States, and there was talk of a bill, introduced by Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, to ask the Secretary of State to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an International Terrorist Organization. On that visit, Abu Ibrahim looked at me and proclaimed, “I am Ikhwan, I am a Muslim Brother, I am proud of it, they cannot change who I am.”
In fact, his allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood had already been brought up to try to incriminate him. According to the testimony given by Special Agent Lara Burns during the trial, Abu Ibrahim Elmezain’s phone and fax had been subject to wiretapping from around August 30, 1994 until sometime in November of 2003. She testified that seven thousand pages of summaries were made of these phone calls and faxes.
Josh Dratel, Elmezain’s lawyer, referred Burns on cross-examination to an interview Elmezain had freely agreed to give to her before he was arrested.
Q: “He also told you about the Muslim Brotherhood, correct?”
A: “He admitted he was a Muslim Brotherhood member.”
Q: “It’s not a crime?”
A: “In and of itself, no.”
There is no card or membership fee to be a “member” of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is more a movement than an organization, an allegiance to a religious, spiritual way of life and thinking. The Muslim Brotherhood is highly respected in the Arab and Muslim world, and Abu Ibrahim was not going to let small-minded bigots with shortsighted political agendas change the man that he is.
I will never forget that first time I drove to Terre Haute, Indiana, to visit Mufid. The road goes through miles and miles of cultivated fields, and as I drove I saw the sun setting in the rearview mirror. It was a sight to remember.
I was particularly apprehensive about visiting Mufid Abdulqader. To be honest, I would have to say that it is because his brother is Khaled Mash’al, who for many years was head of Hamas’ political bureau. I didn’t know if that would mean anything in the context of our meeting.
The day I came to visit Mufid for the first time, the visitation room was pretty full. Children were running around, couples sitting close together, old people, relatives of the older inmates, some in wheelchairs. The atmosphere was very different at the Terre Haute medium-security facility than what I had seen when I visited Shukri at the maximum-security facility in Beaumont, Texas. The length of their sentence determines the level of security in which they are imprisoned. Shukri is in for sixty-five years, Mufid for “only” twenty. The presence of the guards is also very different. In Texas, there were more guards, and they were a very unpleasant bunch to say the least—menacing and watchful of every move. In Terre Haute, there were only two guards and they were surprisingly friendly. One of them, a woman, walked around and played with the children. There was a good deal of noise, and the inmates were able to huddle close to their loved ones. In Texas, everyone had to remain seated across from each other, and no touching was allowed.
Mufid is three years my senior. He has large eyes with deep wrinkles around them, a prominent nose, and a finely chiseled face that you can see even through his abundant beard. He is friendly and jovial, and we hit it off immediately.
“Here you have to make your identity clear,” he explained. He let his beard grow in prison and shortened the hair of his mustache, and he wears the white knitted kufi, a large skullcap that gives him the distinct look of a Muslim Sheikh. “You can make your life successful,” he continued to philosophize for a moment, “or you can make it significant.” Even between the prison walls he has made his life significant.
Mufid is a fountain of information about prison life and can code-switch with unbelievable speed, changing his speech patterns to fit his audience. “Don’t be offended when I say ‘White Boy,’” he told me; “it’s how we talk around here. Everyone is identified by their race: White Boy, Black, Arab, like that.” He described the inner workings of the prison, the differences between the CMU (Communication Management Unit), which he sometimes refers to as Block D and sometimes the “Terrorist Prison,” and the medium-security facility to which he had been transferred just a few weeks before I saw him.
Mufid Abdulqader and me
“For seven years I had not seen children running around, I had not heard the voice of a baby cry, or seen a mother pick up a young child.” He hadn’t seen couples embracing one another. The voices of babies and children he had been used to hearing as a father were denied him in the CMU where only “non-contact” visitation is allowed. In the CMU, he had to sit in a room in front of a Plexiglas window. The visitors sit in a room across the glass, and they can only talk to him using a phone. “When my daughter came with my grandson, I asked the guard if she would hold the baby for just a moment, just to allow me to kiss him. ‘It’s against the law,’ she said. Against the law?” Mufid made a disgusted face, his eye brows came together and his mouth frowning. “For me to kiss my grandson is against the law! And now, a few months later I am here—seeing children again, seeing normal human contact for the first time in seven years.”
Mufid was born in the village of Silwad, in the heartland of Palestine. The first time I drove through Silwad, it was a war zone. The Israeli army was everywhere shooting at Palestinians protesting land confiscations and the ongoing occupation. There was smoke from tear gas and from brushfires caused by the tear gas grenades, and the atmosphere was terribly tense.
On an ordinary day, Silwad is one of the loveliest spots in Palestine. Mufid remembers walking for miles to school and back every day, as many Palestinian children in villages did, along beautiful country roads. Even today, one of the most typical sights in the Palestinian countryside is that of children in school uniforms and backpacks walking along the road.
Silwad was a small village then, and Mufid spent many hours playing with friends on its unpaved streets. “We made kites out of brown paper bags. We glued the pieces of paper together with flour mixed with water.” The kids would all meet in the early evening at the top of Mount Ras Ali, the highest point in Silwad, to compete to see whose kite could fly highest.
Ras Ali is one of the highest peaks in the West Bank and affords a spectacular view. It is also known for strong winds. After the competition, the boys would sit together and devour the falafel sandwiches and spinach pies their mothers had prepared for them for lunch.
“We played soccer with balls made out of old clothes since we could not afford to buy a real soccer ball,” Mufid recalls. “Many of us played without shoes, either because we had none or because we were just more comfortable being barefoot; we were tough outdoor kids and we had very thick skin on our feet.” They also used to venture out into the mountains not far from the village. “We would pick fruit from trees: figs, sabra, or prickly pears, oranges, plums, or whatever was in season. We would chase donkeys, mules, stray cats, and dogs in the neighborhood.”
Mufid’s family lived in Silwad until war came in 1967. During the war, Arab radio broadcasts told Palestinians that the Arab armies were winning and that they were liberating all of Palestine. Mufid’s father, Abu Khaled, was in Kuwait at the time, and so Mufid’s mother decided to head for Jordan to wait out the fighting. “Many of our neighbors did the same. I remember them packing and loading whatever they could on trucks that came in to evacuate whoever wanted to leave. I did not understand what was happening. All I knew is that it is time to go somewhere else for safety. I took a final look at my home, not realizing I would never come back.”
Mufid and his siblings sat in the back of a truck packed with other families from Silwad. They could see planes and hear explosions in the distance. Even then, they were told that Iraqi and Jordanian armies were winning and that they could expect to return to their homes in a few days.
Mufid described to me “a trip of horror.” They saw dead bodies strewn on the sides of the road, homes along the way destroyed or burned. As the trucks approached the bridge that connects the west bank of the Jordan River to the eastern shore, thousands upon thousands of people in trucks, cars, and buses as well as on foot were trying to enter Jordan. “Parents looking for their kids, kids crying looking for their parents, it was pandemonium. My brothers and sisters and I hung on to each other and never let go for fear of getting lost. It was a disaster of epic proportions.”
After two days of travel, the family finally made it to Amman, Jordan, where they had relatives with whom they could stay for a while. They expected to return to Silwad within a few days. “But the days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years, and we are still waiting.” It was a disheartening betrayal.
Mufid’s father, Abu Khaled, had been a respected figure in Silwad. In his youth he fought against the British along with the Palestinian hero Abdulqader El-Hussieni. He was a respected local leader and would often be asked to intervene in local disputes. “My father … would always say that the Palestinians are the salt of the earth, and without salt everything on earth would go bad.”
“When I arrived in the USA in March of 1980, all I had were hopes, aspirations, and $1,600,” Mufid told me. He had saved the money while working in Kuwait after he finished high school in 1978. He applied and was accepted to an English language institute in Dallas, Texas, to learn English as a second language.
Looking down to the main road from Silwad
“It was believed that in the US it did not matter who you are. As long as you worked hard, you will be rewarded and success will follow.” When Mufid said these words to me, he was wearing khaki prison overalls and prison-issued slippers. He was not permitted to get up from his chair without asking a guard for permission. “I wanted to go to school and get an education, get married, and have a successful life raising my children like all other people aspire to do. I was told that the USA was the land of freedom.”
Mufid’s family was large and his father could not afford to send him money every month to go to school, so he worked to support himself. Mufid got a bachelor of science and a master’s degree in civil engineering from Oklahoma State University; he is married with three children. Though he is an American citizen, and in many ways symbolizes what it means to be an American, the last thing he told me before our visit ended was, “I never lost sight of who I am. Palestine was always in my heart.”
Mufid’s father passed away in 2009 at the age of 93. More than 25,000 people attended his funeral in Amman. Even though there is a rift between the Jordanian king and Hamas, King Abdullah of Jordan allowed Mufid’s brother, Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al, to come to Amman for Abu Khaled’s funeral. The funeral was held at one of the biggest mosques in Jordan. Representatives of the PLO and a representative of the King of Jordan attended his funeral.
Mufid was already serving his sentence in federal prison so he could not go to say a final farewell to his father.
The stone on his grave says, “Here rests a Palestinian Mujahid and hero, the father of Khaled Mash’al.”
Knowing that three of the HLF-5 were from Silwad, I wanted to visit the place to try to get a better sense of who they were and where they came from. But I wanted to go there with someone who is local. I began talking to Palestinian friends from the villages nearby. In the end, things developed as follows.
It was March 2015 and it was terribly cold in Washington, DC. My friend Iyad Burnat from the West Bank village of Bil’in was on a speaking tour in the United States. After his talk in Washington, DC, a small group of our friends all sat down to have dinner with him. When Iyad went outside for a smoke I joined him to keep him company. The cold DC air was pleasant after sitting inside for so long.
I told Iyad that I was writing about the HLF-5, a case with which many Palestinians are familiar. I told him I wanted to go to Silwad to meet and talk to people there and see the village up close.
“I know some people, but you should contact Kadura Fares. Ask Jamal Mansour and he will put you in touch with Kadura.” Iyad knew that Jamal Mansour and I had been friends for many years.
Kadura Fares is head of the Palestinian Prisoners Association, a former prisoner himself, and one of the most respected names in Palestine. When I called Jamal from Jerusalem a week later, he was happy to set up a meeting at Kadura’s office in Ramallah. Kadura is a wealth of information regarding the Palestinian prisoners issue. He has dedicated his entire life to this, and sadly he is likely to have many more years of work before the Palestinian prisoners are freed from Israeli prisons.
Kadura Fares and me at his office in Ramallah
I told Kadura that my purpose for visiting Silwad was to see the village but particularly to see the homes of Shukri Abu-Baker and Mufid Abdulqader.
Old Silwad main plaza
The drive to Silwad took the better part of an hour. We drove through Ramallah toward Beit-El, the seat of the military occupation in what used to be the West Bank. It is where permits and all other aspects of Palestinians’ lives are managed—or rather, it is where Palestinians’ lives are made impossible. Finally, we emerged into the Palestinian countryside. I absolutely love to drive through the areas of Palestine that have not yet been divided and scarred by Israeli settlements. Thankfully this road was one such area. Beautiful hills were spotted with small villages, grape vines, and olive trees.
“I heart Silwad”
As we entered Silwad, I saw “I heart Silwad” sprayed on one of the houses. Although Silwad holds some ten thousand people, it is still called a village. We had lunch at the only restaurant. There is no hospital; in fact, there is no hospital serving any of the towns and villages around Ramallah at all.
Kadura had asked one of his nephews, Awni, to come with us. Awni is a walking encyclopedia on Silwad history. We started with the Abu Baker home. (In the local dialect, Abu Baker is Abu Bachir.) The house sits right in what used to be the center of the village. The front gate opens toward the mosque and the main village circle, the dawar. “From this house one could see all the important events in the village,” Awni told us.
“The last member of the family who lived in that house was my Uncle Bachir, who was the youngest among his siblings,” Shukri later explained. Bachir died of cancer in June 2015 at his home in Tampa, Florida. The house in Silwad was locked with a padlock on the gate, and the house itself looked as though no one had lived there for many years. Some of the windows were broken, and the garden with its loquat and mulberry trees and grapevines lay in disarray.
Me jumping over the fence of Abu Baker’s home in Silwad
I could not resist jumping the fence to see the yard from the inside. It seemed to me that there was an older section to the house and a newer extension; I saw that I was right. The view from inside the garden was also worth the effort. The hills surrounding the house are as beautiful as they come.
Near Silwad is one of the highest points in Palestine, and down below the village is the road that leads from Jerusalem north to Nablus. There is an Israeli settlement nearby called Ofra. It is a main thoroughfare, and Silwad’s altitude of almost three thousand feet gives it a tremendous vantage point.
During the British Mandate, which is another name for the British occupation of Palestine that lasted from 1920 to 1948, the British suffered greatly from the Palestinian resistance, and Silwad was the source of many resistance fighters. To discover the whereabouts of these fighters, British soldiers would come to the village and drag someone from there to the dawar. They would then begin to torture their victim in plain view until someone could not bear the sight any longer and provided the information they sought.
Inside the Abu Baker home’s yard
Among Silwad’s stories of resistance to foreign occupation—the one that arguably stands at the top of the list—is the story of Thaer Hamad and Ayun El-Haramiya. In 2010, Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss wrote about this story, calling it “The Legend of the Silwad Sniper.” While in Silwad, I heard the story again. It has an immediacy to it when one is standing on the sites.
Abdulqader family home in Silwad
It was March of 2002, and twenty-two-year-old Thaer Hamad, tired of the brutality of Israeli military rule, decided to act. He rode his mare to a point from which he could see Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint at the intersection below the village. Thaer was armed with a WW-2 M-1 Mauser rifle and thirty bullets. The rifle used to belong to his grandfather.
Thaer positioned himself so he had a good view of the intersection and the soldiers. Then, aiming the ancient Mauser, he began to shoot the soldiers, one by one. The fully armed, combat-trained IDF infantrymen were completely exposed with nowhere to find shelter and were taken completely by surprise. Hard as they tried, they could not locate the shooter. The echo created by the surrounding mountains was an asset for Thaer and made it impossible to tell where the shots were coming from. He killed ten soldiers, including one officer, and injured one.
After he was done, Thaer returned home and told no one. It took Israeli authorities two years to find him. They assumed this was the work of a well-trained sniper and figured that being so skilled he could not have been a Palestinian. They considered the possibility that the shooter was an overseas mercenary. Perhaps a former IRA volunteer, they thought, or maybe a Muslim veteran from Chechnya who had fought against the Russians.
Eventually, Thaer made the mistake of telling someone and that person told another. Finally, under torture, someone revealed that Thaer was the shooter. Today he is serving ten life sentences in an Israeli prison.
After seeing Shukri’s family home, we went on to see where the Abdulqader family had lived. It is a larger house and sits on a hilltop above street level. The house is made with traditional stone, like a typical Palestinian home.
The view is breathtaking and a strong wind blows in from the valley. From the house there is a steep drop to a green valley with a few houses, terraces, and olive trees that ends on the main highway below. Looking at the house on one side and the steep hill on the other, I saw the terraces and olive trees I remembered from Mufid’s stories about his childhood.
Abdulrahman Odeh is the third of the defendants who is from the village of Silwad in Palestine. But the family left Palestine while he was a child, and Abdulrahman was raised in Kuwait, where his father worked, like so many other Palestinians. In 1982, he came to the United States to study, receiving a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Montclair State College in New Jersey. He had several businesses before deciding to open the Holy Land Foundation’s New Jersey office in 1994.
Abdulrahman is modest and speaks little of himself. He doesn’t make a big deal of the work he has done for others, but it is clear that he was drawn to help those in need. In 1996, he visited Palestine, delivering supplies to the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. He brought fifty tons of flour, fifty tons of rice, and fifty tons of sugar. During the holy month of Ramadan of 1997, he helped distribute 100 food packages to Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Then, in 1999, he traveled to Albania for one month and gave out a thousand tons of flour, two ambulances, and a mobile bakery. That same year, he opened up a food pantry in Paterson, New Jersey, that supported more than 200 needy families. Over the years he has also represented the HLF in many United Nations events in the United States and in various countries around the Middle East.
Federal Correctional Facility, Terre Haute, Indiana
Prison visits are not easy or brief, despite the short amount of time you will spend actually sitting with “your” inmate. First you must fly to the nearest hub. But prisons are often located in towns farther from “civilization.” Hotels are of poor quality, and the towns themselves are often in deep economic distress and can be depressing. In Indiana, where I visited Mufid, I had to travel to Terre Haute, which at one point was the official headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. Beaumont, Texas, where Abdulrahman and Shukri are held, is not much better, which may help explain why they put a prison there.
Besides the simple logistics of visiting, there is the cost of getting there. Plane fare, hotels, rental cars—all these things add up. One visit to Texas might cost $1,500, and that is just for me traveling alone. If a whole family wants to visit an inmate, it’s even more expensive and complicated, even before considering the emotional toll. Seeing a family member should be joyful; these visits are a slow descent into sadness that is hard to overcome.
During my first visit, Abdulrahman and I sat together from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
I visited Shukri the next day. When I mentioned that I had been to visit Abdulrahman, he looked at me and said, “You will not find many people who would be willing to do what Abdulrahman did for his brothers.”
When I applied to visit Abdulrahman, I expected it to be a simple process. He is currently serving a fifteen-year sentence in the FCI - Low, or the Federal Correctional Institution, low security in Beaumont, and at the time he had already served seven years. I had already corresponded with Abdulrahman, who likes to call me Avram, or Ibrahim, or some other form of Avraham since reading my book, and knew that a visit would be welcome.
But a few days after I mailed in my request, I received an email from Abdulrahman:
My Dear Avram
They need you to mail a copy of your photo ID.
I had sent a copy of my ID with the first application, but I knew better than to argue with the prison authorities, so I mailed it again.
Ya akhui Ibrahim, you forgot to sign the form.
I had not forgotten. I know this because I keep copies of these forms.
I completed a new form, attached a copy of my photo ID, signed it, and mailed it in again.
Abdulrahman sent a third email:
They need a confirmation of your address, please write it down in the email to me.
I complied immediately, and received a jubilant email in response:
Approved finally!
There was another hurdle to overcome, however: because Abdulrahman’s prisoner ID number ends in an even number he can only receive visitors on “even” days. Fortunately, Shukri is being held at the same prison complex, in the high-security section. But his ID ends with an odd number. I could see Shukri one day and Abdulrahman the next.
A few days before I left for Texas, I got another email. Since it was the holiday season, prison officials expected that the visitation room would be very crowded. They were only allowing an hour or two for each visit.
“It would be a shame for you to spend all that money for just a short visit,” Abdulrahman wrote.
“I will come over even if it is only for five minutes,” I replied.
The road leading from the main highway to the federal prison complex in Beaumont, Texas, is a long and winding country road straight out of a cowboy ballad. One drives through open spaces with detached, stand-alone houses built in no particular order or scheme. All the houses have large open yards and most of them are unfenced. Vehicles, mostly pickup trucks, are parked in a sort of disarray, partly in driveways and partly on front lawns, and all around are fields with cows and horses grazing lazily.
It is almost as though by some design everything around spells freedom. Even the birds flying above seem unconstrained by any particular pattern or order. All this freedom stands in stark contrast to the imposing, windowless fortresses that make up the Beaumont–Port Arthur prison complex. Surrounded by razor wire and watchtowers, it is hard to believe that thousands of human beings are held in these lifeless buildings for years and decades, and sometimes entire lifetimes.
The federal penitentiary, a high-security facility, Beaumont, Texas
Young men turn into old men within these walled structures, deprived of the basic right to see the world around them. These fortresses have a life of their own and are ruled by laws that we on the outside cannot even imagine and would prefer not to know. But know we must. We as a society have placed these men here, and since the United States has the largest number of prisoners of any country in the world, more than any totalitarian regime has ever had, we must be held accountable for what takes place between these fortified walls.
There are no homes close to the prison. The closest homes are built far enough from the prison complex so that their residents cannot see the prisons. The prisoners and the people who live in the vicinity are oblivious to each other’s existence; people on the outside cannot see or hear anything that happens within the walls, and the prisoners cannot hear or see the outside world.
I arrived at the prison around 9:30 a.m., and the waiting room was already packed. A guard told me to come back at 11:00. I drove around for a bit, and in less than fifteen minutes I was at the heart of a mall bustling with people shopping for the holidays, with nothing to suggest that a few short miles away, thousands of men live in total seclusion. The proximity somehow made it worse. I had a cup of coffee and then drove back to the prison.
The line at 11:00 seemed hardly shorter than the 9:30 line, and we found ourselves at the mercy of a group of prison guards with unpleasant dispositions who operate the reception and control the in and out privileges of the visitors.
Standing ahead of me was a tall Mexican gentleman with gray hair combed back and a well-groomed, gray mustache. He was elegantly dressed, wearing a black shirt, black trousers, and a black blazer adorned with silver feathers on the back and breasts. He had a pair of matching black boots and wore a large gold crucifix under his slightly opened shirt.
Another Hispanic-looking gentleman was wearing a white leather coat and matching white boots, a red plaid shirt, and a large gold chain with the Virgin Mary hanging from it.
A young black man, his hair cropped short, wore a shiny gold jacket, black jeans lined with gold, and bright gold tennis shoes. The jacket was reversible, and when he turned it inside out, as he kept doing every few minutes, the reverse side was black with gold lining.
At around 11:15, they finally let us in. The room was filled with plastic chairs, and sitting in front of me were three young Hispanic girls with their mother. The girls were very pretty. They all had shiny black hair pulled back neatly and beautiful red or multicolored bows in their hair.
As I looked around, I saw mothers made single by incarceration with their small children, some too young to walk. There was a strange sense of normalcy in the room—kids and parents joking around as though they were visiting a friend or relative at camp or school rather than in a prison. Some people were standing solemn, deep in thought as though carrying a heavy burden.
The young black guards manning the reception began speaking, commanding the crowd at their mercy to come, go, wait, and proceed. Everyone listened attentively, afraid to upset the authorities that stood between them and their loved ones waiting behind the high walls and razor wire.
We had each been assigned a number, and the guards let us in by tens. I was in the third group. Millions of people go through this every week, every month and year, all around the United States. No one writes or speaks up because no one wants to stir this nest of hornets that is the prison system; no one wants to bring attention to their sorrow and shame. But the shame does not lie with these families.
A young black woman fell asleep while we waited. Her head was leaning against the wall, her high-heeled shoes next to her. Another black man was shepherding three girls, perhaps nine to thirteen years old. Dressed in stylish sweats, the older girl was clearly a dancer. She moved like my daughter Tali does when she is waiting for something or just plain bored: unconsciously adjusting her arms and legs as though practicing a step she just learned in dance class.
When your number is finally called, you hand over a form you have competed and you wait some more. They take your ID and give you keys to a locker to store your car keys and phone and whatever else you might have on you. After you have been processed by number, you will finally be called in to visit. Then you must remove your coats and shoes and place them on the conveyor belt that takes them through a scanner, like at the airport. You may also bring with you a Ziploc bag with twenty single dollar bills—this is all the money that is permitted and it is for the vending machines inside. The guard counts the money in the bags, checking that there are only $1 bills in there.
When I went to visit Abdulrahman, I was wearing my kuffiya scarf. I had hoped to bring it in, pretending I had it just because of the cold weather when really it was a small sign of solidarity with my Palestinian friend who is on the inside.
“Can’t wear the scarf!”
The kuffiya had to go into the locker with my other possessions, leaving me in a sweatshirt with a small map of Palestine embroidered on it. I was happy to manage even such a small expression of resistance.
An elderly lady ahead of me had a walker and a pacemaker, creating a delay at the metal detector while the guards tried to figure out what to do with her. No one can go in until the entire group is ready. Rules are rules.
I finally cleared the metal detector and got an invisible stamp on my hand.
While your group is cleared, you can sit in a spacious sort of waiting area behind the guards. Awards and photos are prominently displayed on the walls. They even have a display cabinet with merchandise: caps and t-shirts that say “Beaumont FCC” (Federal Corrections Center) or “United States Bureau of Prisons, Beaumont.” I have to wonder who would want to buy one of those. And even if one did, what money is available? All the wallets are back in the locker.
The next step is going as a group into the prison itself. We were led into a room that looks like a command and control room. I could see radios, walkie-talkies, phones, and all kinds of electronics. A guard behind the window looked on we placed our hands under a special light so he could see the invisible stamp.
From this room, one goes outdoors, walking as a group to a large gate. The visitation room is behind this gate, and you are there at last.
When I reached the visitation room, the guard asked me the name of “my inmate” and then asked if I could see him anywhere. The room was jam packed and very noisy. This was my first visit to see Abdulrahman, and I was worried that I might not recognize him in the crowded space. I didn’t see any prisoners without guests, so I said no. I was directed to a chair between two couples, and there was an empty chair in front of me with a small plastic table in between. No one is allowed to move the chairs or tables. The room was so crowded that everyone was seated very close together.
I noticed that inmates were coming from behind, so I’d look back from time to time. At last I saw a short guy with a beard like a sheikh and a large white head cover, the kind Muslims and very, very orthodox Jews wear. He looked completely different from what he had looked like before prison, but he looked at me and gestured to say hi. I breathed a sigh of relief: until this moment there had been no way to tell if I was going to see him or not. He reported to the guards and came over. We hugged like old friends and then sat down to talk.
Abdulrahman Odeh and me
Since we were sitting so close to other people, Abdulrahman suggested we speak in Arabic. Still it was so noisy that even though we were less than two feet apart it was hard to hear one another. Abdulrahman is a jovial, good guy. He was funny, and at the same time I could tell he was tough as nails.
With all my $1 bills I went and got us some snacks and drinks from the vending machines. There was nothing you would want to buy if you had a choice, but this was prison, and there are no good choices.
When visitation is over, the guards blow the whistle and then they call, “Inmates over here, visitors over there.”
“Look at all these tough guys,” Abdulrahman told me. “In five minutes they will all cry like babies and then fall into depression that will last for days. But don’t worry about me, don’t feel sad, hamdulillah I am fine.”
1 “Go in peace, father, go in peace.”
2 “God be with you, my dear.”
3 Because of a fight between prisoners, Shukri’s unit had been placed in lockdown for several days until an investigation could be completed. “We just have few minutes to use the shower and make essential calls and we will back in our cell until further notice,” he explained in an earlier email.
4 http://news.kuwaittimes.net/legacy-of-palestinians-forgotten-in-kuwait/
5 Salaam is a greeting that means peace. Baba usually means Daddy, but is often used back by fathers to their children as a term of endearment.
6 Inshallah, also spelled Insha Allah, means “God willing.”
7 Beshshit was a Palestinian Arab village in the Ramle Subdistrict, located 16.5 kilometers southwest of Ramla. It was destroyed and depopulated by the Givati Brigade in 1948. There are seven Israeli localities now situated on what were the village lands.
8 Abu Ali Shahin was a Palestinian commander and leader of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.