Hanania: Government Wrong in Searching Private Homes Without Charges
Government agents searched eight homes of a handful of activists in Chicago and Minneapolis this past week claiming that they were giving “material support to terrorism.”
I don’t know the people whose homes were searched in Minneapolis but I do know one of the three people whose homes were targeted in Chicago. He is Hatem Abudayyeh.
Abudayyeh is the executive director of the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network. Abudayyeh has been behind several campaigns to target and harass me because of my views on supporting compromise. His whisper attacks have targeted me on several occasions, boycotting my activities and criticizing me personally because of my columns; we don’t see eye-to-eye on Middle East peace.
Yet that being said, Hatem Abudayyeh is not the issue when it comes to the government’s actions. Neither is the AAAN.
What does concern me, however, is that the government entered the homes of a handful of political activists and grabbed documents including pictures of children in what is clearly a fishing expedition that violates individual rights.
The orders were given by the U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald who has started a new practice of accusing people first before providing any evidence, as he did in the case of the very unpopular former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich.
I wonder in the Blagojevich case if it was the governor’s friendship with high profile American Arabs, including the convicted Antoine “Tony” Rezko, that was the real crime in Illinois. The crime of being “Arab.”
Abudayyeh is an Arab and I will defend him, even if he won’t defend me, because the crime of being Arab is a pernicious and illegal crime of hatred and fear-mongering.
If the targets are in fact providing “material support” to terrorists, as the government asserts, then arrest them and charge them. Don’t hype-up the raid into their homes by casting them as terrorist supporters to veil the fact that the government is violating their civil liberties.
If there is no evidence to charge the activists, then how can the government justify raiding their homes, invading their privacy and confiscating documents?
There is no evidence. There is no proof that these sometimes loudmouthed, extreme-leaning activists who bully others have in fact broken any laws except maybe being hypocrites.
There is no evidence to charge them and therefore there is no evidence to break in to their homes and violate their rights.
This isn’t about Hatem Abudayyeh. It is about civil rights. Americans have the right to expect to be protected by their governments, not to be harassed. They have a right to free speech, and express views that the majority of Americans would reject or abhor. They have a right to be offensive and they have a right to even be hypocrites.
But that doesn’t give the government the right to violate their civil rights waving the hysteria of “material support” to terrorists.
The outrageousness of the term suggests that there is in fact evidence or “material.”
But I don’t believe there is any “material” evidence of anything.
Abudayyeh’s capable lawyer is Jim Fennerty who told the news media recently that “The government is trying to quiet activists. This case is really scary.”
It is scary. Maybe this experience will be a lesson to everyone, including Hatem Abudayyeh. Maybe he’ll learn the principle of civil rights and why hypocrisy is wrong. That principle is while we defend Abudayyeh’s rights, he must learn to defend the rights of other Arabs in this community whether he disagrees with their views or not.
Ray Hanania
Palestine Note