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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Ultimately being Pro-Palestinian is being pro-life in the fully factual meaning of the term. Committing to all life here on Earth. All races and religions, all languages and cultures, all genders and orientations. And all the plants and animals on which human life depends.
Humanity is the aggregate of all peoples, not a zero-sum game.
And clearly not in the eyes of the current and immediately-past administrations.
On Monday, armed ICE officials with covered faces handcuffed and carted Mohsen Mahdawi away from a US Citizenship and Immigration Services facility in Vermont.
Mahdawi, who grew up in a West Bank refugee camp and has been a lawful permanent resident of the United States since 2015, arrived at the office in Colchester from his home in White River Junction for an interview to finalize his becoming an American citizen.
In 2023, he helped found the Palestinian Student Union with Mahmoud Khalil, a leader in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. Khalil was scandalously arrested by ICE last month in front of his pregnant American wife after Homeland Security revoked his student visa under a McCarthy-era law then spirited him away to Louisiana where, far from friends and family and without any criminal charges, a local immigration judge has authorized his deportation.
Mahdawi’s abduction this week was solely due to what he lawfully expressed about the continuing abuse of Palestinians by the Israeli government under his First Amendment right to free speech.
Further compounded by the current administration’s denial of due process to those who have that right repudiated.
In this case, Vermont District Court Judge William Sessions immediately issued a temporary restraining order preventing Mahdawi’s removal from Vermont.
As Becca Balint, Mahdawi’s (and now my) Representative in the Congress wrote her constituents on Tuesday: “If anyone can be snatched off the streets and detained without due process, it can happen to you too.”
Balint and Vermont Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch in public interviews and in the press have condemned Mahdawi’s seizure and incarceration as “immoral, inhumane and illegal.”
On what basis can Secretary of State Marco Rubio claim that the Vermonter’s activities threatened attempts to end the war in Gaza?
In a 60 Minutes interview from December 2023, Mahdawi explicitly states: “The fight for freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
How does such a statement rise to the level of a threat to national security, as helping fuel antisemitism across the country? The justification used for a slew of recent visa and green card revocations…
Targeting any minority, be they Jewish or Palestinian, Black or Asian, by individuals or the government is a violation of human rights and does not promote an inclusive pluralistic society of which Americans can be proud.
And who does the administration purport to protect? The vast swath of American Jews whose concerns and perceptions run a gamut as diverse as those held by Caucasian Protestants?
Or the current Israeli prime minister and his insidious influencers on our elected officials.
Are the issues racial or religious, protectionist or territorial?
Christians in the Middle East express feelings of betrayal by zealots of the religious right who have unconditionally accepted the narrative of Netanyahu and the genocidal oppression of not only Arab terrorists and Muslim fundamentalists but of Palestinian Christians and every person who questions their right to assume the mantle of a mid-Eastern Hitler.
Are Netanyahu’s goals strictly protectionist? Or do they signify expansionist ambitions? And will he have the whole-hearted support of American politicians? And the military-industrial complex jonesing for bigger budgets for new toys to sell if not use themselves?
When will the carnage stop?
Will it take more nuclear weapons?
According to a tidbit in the New York Times a week ago, Western intelligence agencies have determined that once Iran commits politically to a showdown, it could produce bomb-grade fuel in weeks and a workable weapon in months to a year.
With Israel again threatening military action, and the United States moving B-2 stealth bombers within target range of Tehran, how soon before the fires of hell consume the Middle East? How soon before the conflagration breaks out into the wider world?
Does Trump even care?
He has clearly been behind the exacerbation of the situation for a decade.
With the tacit and covert support of the last five presidents, rattled by what longtime CIA interference in the Middle East has created – jihadists, chants of “American is the Great Satan” and “Death to America” in streets from Iran to Michigan – Israeli agents killed Iranian nuclear scientists and crafted a computer virus to blow up Iranian nuclear centrifuges.
This past year, Tehran has been weakened by the pummeling of its proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah and the Yemen Houthis – by Israeli and U.S. attacks. Without real accord in the Middle East between all parties and entities, political and religious, the world is at risk of an earlier demise than from the existential consequences of climate change.
While some pundits opine that the Teflon Don is protecting America with his image as a madman who could give Netanyahu the green light and additional weapons to attack Iran and further decimate Gaza, it is the posturing of a bully who has proven he doesn’t care how many people he hurts and how much damage he causes so long as his erratic whims are fulfilled.
All Americans need to engage in vigorous but peaceful protest to move the United States government to be fully supportive of both Palestinian AND Jewish rights.
In the words of Mohsen Mahdawi: “The fight for freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
