Audio By Carbonatix
Noor Elashi is the 23-year-old daughter of Holy Land Foundation co-founder Ghassan Elashi, who found out only today that he will be sentenced in May following his conviction last November; he’s looking at 15 years to life in prison, after having been among those convicted of donating to Hamas following a 2007 mistrial. (Ghassan was also convicted in 2005 of funding terrorism.) Noor, a University of North Texas graduate and former reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram profiled in our October 31, 2007, cover story, is also part of a new group called Free the Holy Land Five — which, tomorrow, holds a film screening of its own at the Richardson Civic Center.
At 2 p.m., Free the Holy Land Five will screen Arna’s Children, a 2003 documentary about the Israeli Defense Forces’ shuttering of a children’s theater in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, as well as presentations by Star-Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders and producer Jen Marlowe. Elashi, who in the fall will attend graduate school in creative non-fiction at the New School in New York, spoke with Unfair Park about Free the Holy Land Five, her father and his case, and how she believes it relates to the overall situation of the Palestinian people. It’s after the jump.
What’s Free the Holy Land Five and what do you hope to accomplish
with it?
Its purpose is to keep the plight of these five political
prisoners alive and remind local residents and Americans in general
that they’re still in prison and shouldn’t be there. The main reason
they’re there is because they saved Palestinian lives, and, unfortunately,
that’s become illegal in America. It’s sad because now people are
thinking twice about giving charity, especially to the Middle East. A
few concerned citizens and close friends of the family launched this
group after the convictions in November. One has known my dad for 15
years, and another is just your typical Jane Doe white American who
heard of this case and decided she wanted to help out because these
people are being singled out for being Palestinian at the wrong time —
in the post-9/11 hysteria.
Tell me about the event and why you
chose Arna’s Children.
The catchphrase we’re using is “Remember
Gaza.” Any aware American would remember what happened a few months ago
and how 1,300 Palestinians were just dead within months and basically
murdered. What the Holy Land Foundation’s mission was was to help these
type of people, the people who were so unjustly treated and massacred
for being who they were.
The film is about this woman born in Palestine
before 1948, and afterward she served in the Israeli Army and quickly
realized she wanted to fight the occupation after witnessing firsthand
what they were going through – the illegal settlements, the home
demolishment, etc. She opened up this theater in Jenin, and it was the
only means of self-expression. It was shut down, and the film follows
what happened to a few of the children afterward. … It’s a way to remind
people that the Palestinian struggle is international, and the Holy
Land Five are part of it.
Trying to convince Americans to get behind a cause like Free the Holy Land Five seems like
a tall order, given the fact that your father has been convicted of
funding terrorism. What do you think think you’ll be able to
accomplish?
I think for anybody who has no background about Palestine and the
Palestinian issue, they’re not going to be able to fathom what’s going
on here. But just like with any major issue, if they know the context
in the Holy Land case and the Palestinian struggle … once you know the
historical context, then you’ll start looking at things with a more
critical eye. Most people are pretty clueless. Their image of
Palestinians is pretty much what they see on FOX News. That’s why we’re
doing this outreach.
When I do talk about the issue, a lot of people do
listen. At the end of the day it’s not a Palestinian issue, an Israeli
issue, it’s not even an American issue. It’s a human issue.
In
terms of the Palestinian context and raising awareness about it, there
are clearly issues of poverty and oppression that people may not know
about, but for a lot of people, at the end of the day those on the
Hamas side are still firing rockets into Israel, and it’s hard to get
around that in terms of sympathy for the Palestinian cause. And your
father was convicted of supporting that.
They were falsely convicted of supporting Hamas — not a single cent
went to Hamas. They were nothing more than humanitarians. If you
attended the trial, it was so transparent what was going on. It was a
very obvious fear tactic the prosecution used to convince the jury that
they were funding terrorism even though there wasn’t any evidence.
Your father was initially serving an 80-month sentence for an earlier conviction. Where is he being kept while he awaits sentencing?
All five of them are being held
at Seagoville
Many people were glad to see the government prevail
in this case and have no sympathy for your father and the others
convicted in the Holy Land case. What would you say to those people?
I feel sorry for them, because once you dig deeper and do minimal
research you’ll find out the truth — and the truth is that the verdict
was purely wrong. I would just reiterate that all they had to do is
attend the trial and realize there wasn’t a single piece of evidence
that linked my dad and the other men to violence. Looking forward, I
really have hope that these men are not going to serve life sentences.
I have hope that we’re going to win this appeal.
How often do you
see your father?
All the families get to visit once or twice a week
for a couple of hours. I pretty much see my dad every week. He is very
strong, he’s basically reading the Holy Koran, and that’s what’s keeping
his spirit alive. He tells me, “If I have to spend the rest of my life
in prison because I fed a holy child, then that’s just my honor.”
How’s your family doing?
They’re hanging in there. We all know this is basically a test and
we’re not the first people who have gone through this type of injustice
– that the Japanese suffered very similar circumstances, as well as the
Italians and the Germans. Now it’s our turn. A lot of people might
think we would be learning from history, but obviously that’s not
happening. Political prisoners exist in this country as of 2009.
How has this experience impacted you personally?
It’s
definitely made me look at life very differently. I haven’t become more
cynical, but I’ve realized the world is a very cruel and harsh place.
But it’s also made me work harder for everything that I want – it has
taught me that nothing comes simply in life. In my every day life, it
has been extremely distracting. It started when I was in high school
and it was so distracting for me. I’ve felt a deep sense of
displacement — displacement in my own country, a betrayal by my own
president at the time. It has also made me feel very very proud to be
the daughter of a hero, a political prisoner who is in the situation
that he is because he saved lives.
After your father’s arrest, you
said you were known in the neighborhood as “the Holy Land family.” What
has it been like since November, when the verdict was handed down and
you actually became the daughter of a convicted funder of terrorism?
I’ve gotten several negative e-mails from people I don’t know,
through the Web site, people who don’t know my family and blindly labeled
us as terrorist supporters and told me to get out of the country. But
everyone I’ve actually known — from people I went to school with and
worked with to friends I’ve made — have been very supportive and don’t
look at my family differently. They know this is just a setback and one
day the truth will come out.
You mentioned that the case has been
distracting for you — you left your job at the Star-Telegram to focus
entirely on his case. What has it been like trying to be there for
your family while pursuing your own individual goals?
I’ve been
thinking about graduate school for a couple years now, and everytime
I’d want to start the whole application process, something would come
up. First it was the trial, then it was the retrial. It felt like a
neverending nightmare. And, of course, the conviction was not the end. I
didn’t rest after that. Right now I still feel stuck, but I know
there’s not much more I can do. It’s up to the attorneys to follow
through with the appeal. I decided to devote the next several years to
document the case [in a memoir]. I’m going to tell the story, and once
Americans read the story in a narrative form, I feel like they’ll relate
to it and be sympathetic.
So your career and family situation have
basically become intertwined.
Yeah, definitely. I’ve felt like I
had to stay around because it was the right thing to do. I couldn’t
leave my family at that point in time. Because my dad’s in prison, I
have to do a lot of what he used to do, like take my brother with Down syndrome to his speech therapy lessions. There are three boys and three
girls in my family, and it’s been more distraction and responsibility
for all of us.
What does your father say to you about your efforts
with Free the Holy Land Five, and what about your decision to go to
graduate school?
He’s very supportive of anything I do — he’s very
proud of me. Writing this book is a big deal. It’s going to be about
him, my grandmother and I all feeling displaced. He’s very
supportive.
