AN AMERICAN PENAL RADICALIZATION OF A PALESTINIAN INMATE
American prisons pose a significant potential for the radicalization of its inmates. Extreme political ideologies, a worship of violence, and racial hatred are common characteristics in a prison system that is the largest in the world – more than 2 million, 93 percent of whom are in state prisons and local jails.
I had always viewed the Israeli/Palestinian conflict through the eyes of Israel.
Then I met Mazen ”Ali” Hamdan.
He was fond of saying that he had learned so much from me, but I actually learned much more from him.
I was vulnerable the time we met. I could not see unless I taped my eyelids open with band aids. It was never a pretty process. Ali patiently assumed this task for me each day, teaching me how to do it on my own. I told him, “You’re my Palestinian doctor.”
We were both inmates at the C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center located in DeQuincy, a small southwest Louisiana town 30 miles shy of the Texas border. We shared a double bunk in one of the facility’s dormitories—he in the lower bunk, me in the top.
We shared many intellectual conversations, mostly of a political nature.
Prison had radicalized him.
I did not subscribe to all of Ali political views, but I respected his right to express them. More importantly, I respected his courage and willingness to share them with me. And I diligently recorded all of them on my yellow legal pads.
Ali was always patient each time I went back over my notes of our conversations to make sure I got what he said right.
Prison radicalization caused him see himself as a “freedom fighter” but I’m not so sure I agree with that self-characterization.
I don’t know what happened to Ali after he was released from prison.
I’m just glad I recorded his thoughts, showing the radicalization of an American Palestinian inmate. I memorialized much of this essay in 2006 shortly after my release from Phelps. Little did I know that his views would come to explain so much about how and why the world now finds itself embroiled, directly or indirectly, in the Israel-Hamas War.
He was short.
I was tall
.
He was Arab.
I was American.
He was Muslim.
I was Christian.
We had nothing in common. Or so I thought when Mazen “Ali” Hamdan became my “cellie” in the summer of 2004 at the C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center. We were both assigned to Dorm H-2 in Unit One at the penal facility. I slept in Bed 50, a top bunk, and Hamdan moved into Bed 49, the bottom bunk. That made us “cellies” in the prison vernacular. He called himself “Ali” to keep his real name from becoming too known in the prison community.
The initial impression we have of people are quite often deceiving. We tend to approach new people with biased feelings and stereotypical attitudes. We sniff around the contours of their personality and body language before we decide whether we like or dislike them.
Prison is about individual space, turf and territory. Its inmates invisibly piss-mark their meager domains. This collective characteristic makes them establish relationships cautiously.
So it was with prison cellies.
They shared one double bunk. Each cellie had two lockers – a standup locker at the head of the bunk and a foot locker at the end of the bunk. These lockers were the inmate’s home, the place for his property. Each cellie’s “living space” was narrow, so cellies paths crossed many times each day as they moved in and out and around their bunks. Each cellie had to compromise in order to accommodate the individual habits of the other.
For example, Ali placed his Muslim “prayer rug” on the floor next to our bunk five times each day. This blocked access to my standup locker. So I had to learn his prayer schedule and make the necessary accommodations. I awoke at 4:30 a.m., made my bunk, took care of my personal hygiene, and dressed before he awoke at 5:30 when the dorm lights were turned on. As soon as the lights came on, I vacated the area to give him space necessary to get ready to meet the day. I swept and mopped the area around our bunk while he cleaned the lockers and adjacent window. We learned to do these things without ever speaking a word about them.
Ali learned I was the author of a book and had a rather legendary jailhouse lawyer reputation. He was an aspiring writer (poetry mostly) and had become a prolific neophyte jailhouse lawyer. He read “A Life In The Balance: The Billy Wayne Sinclair Story” (Arcade Publishing, New York 2000), a book I co-authored with my wife, Jodie. He was hugely impressed with it. I became “Mr. Sinclair” to this intense 24-year-old Palestinian.
Ali had several civil rights lawsuits against the prison system pending in federal courts when we met. He picked my brain for kernels of legal information he could utilize in those legal battles. I was a willing teacher, drawn to this fiercely determined and remarkably matured young man.
Mazen Hamdan appeared older than his twenty-four years. He was gifted with self-confidence reflected in his walk, body language, and penetrating stares. His dark eyes radiated an intellectual curiosity. He spoke softly but with firmness. He chose his words carefully as he expressed focused thoughts. He liked to read my New York Times. The newspaper became the source for many of our intense conversations about world events.
“Mr. Sinclair,” he said after reading an article in the Times that Israel had purchased “bunker-busting” bombs from the United States, “if the Israelis bomb the nuclear facilities in Iran, it will unleash a violent insurgency, a brutal religious backlash. Everyone in the Arab world will know that Israel acted on instructions from the U.S. The insurgency in Iraq will seem like a grain of sand on a beach compared to the violent insurgency that will be produced in Iran. This insurgent backlash will take its violence throughout the Arab world and it will be directed at American interests.”
Ali was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Palestinian parents who immigrated to America. The Hamdan family then migrated to Detroit where Ali spent most of his formative years before the family moved to Louisiana. They settled in New Orleans where they became prosperous store owners.
But Ali had never felt comfortable about people in Louisiana.
“The people up North, in Michigan, are different from people in Louisiana,” the Palestinian explained. “There was poverty, welfare, and food stamps in Michigan. People there took advantage these benefits, but not like in Louisiana. It was natural for these Southern people to beg for a state handout. I saw this social trait in New Orleans with my own eyes and I’ve seen it in this state’s prison system. Palestinian people believe in making do with what you have, and you make do without if you don’t have anything. I’ve seen many inmates lower themselves to begging for a honey bun. I will give what I can to any man who has nothing, but I will ask nothing of no man. I would rather have hunger as a companion than accept gifts from a free hand. I know what is in my stomach; I do not know what is in the heart of the one extending that free hand.”
Ali was arrested in New Orleans with slightly more than a kilo of heroin in his possession. With 9/11 still cascading across America, he became a major “Arab drug dealer.” He said the New Orleans police “cut” the almost pure heroin down to approximately two percent pure. They kept the rest for themselves.
“All cops in New Orleans are corrupt,” he said.
That was true. New Orleans cops reflect the corruption that lies in the bone marrow of Louisiana. An official hand accepting a bribe should be the state’s symbol.
I did not ask Ali why he had so much heroin and he did not offer an explanation. Some things are best left un-spoken in prison.
This young Palestinian inmate knew nothing about “prisoner’s rights” or how to enforce them in the American judicial system. But he was armed with determination. He quickly put himself on a fast track to a legal education. He filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against then Orleans Parish Sheriff Charles Foti. A federal judge appointed a Loyola University law professor to represent him in the lawsuit. The professor secured a six-thousand dollar settlement against Foti for violating the Ali’s civil rights.
The sheriff transferred Ali out of the parish prison to the Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel. He encountered the same 9/11-generated official bias against Arab-American inmates. He was placed in lockdown at Hunt, probably because of the lawsuit against Foti. He was frequently tortured and abused while in lockdown. He was placed in full restraints – handcuffs, waist chain, and leg irons – before being locked in a “super max’ cell called “the tank.”
Two African-American guards entered the Palestinian’s cell. One was female. She emptied two cans of Punch II pepper spray in Ali’s face. The male guard slapped and punched him around the head as he tried to avoid the pepper spray. The spray forced both guards to retreat. Before they left, they set off another can of chemical spray agent and closed the metal door behind them. This torture session lasted four hours.
The African-American guards kept up the campaign of cursing, threatening, and feeding him a “food loaf.” The food loaf was all of the day’s food compressed into a loaf. It smelled horrible and tasted worse. He was also denied any opportunity to practice his Muslim faith – and he never knew if the food loaf contained pork
Ali began filing “grievances” and writing letters of complaint to Hunt officials. The institution had thirteen assistant wardens. These officials had entrenched in the prison’s bureaucracy a quasi-official policy of retaliating against those inmates who reported or challenged official wrongdoing. Ali quickly became the target of dozens of false disciplinary reports by unscrupulous guards acting at the direction of one or more of these wardens. These guards repeatedly placed him in administrative segregation where he encountered an atmosphere of inmate violence instigated by the guards. He had to confront and fend off homosexual advances by sexual predators that attacked him with razor blades. Ali’s reaction to the razor-blade assault revealed a lot about his personal values.
“I had several razor blade cuts on my arm,” he said, revealing to me the noticeable scars. “I showered – I was hoping to stop the blood flow. After I showered, I wrapped a towel around my arm, hoping that would pressure off the blood flow. The tier guard didn’t see the fight but he did see the bloody towel. He asked me what happened. He knew what happened. He set it up. I would not rat. It’s not in me to expose someone else. I do not collaborate with the enemy. So I told the guard I cut myself. He put in a disciplinary report that I attempted suicide. When my family learned about this, they were really upset. Suicide is a sin in Islam. I had to explain the whole thing to them. I had a choice – let it go down as a suicide attempt or rat out the inmates that did it. Being a rat was unacceptable.”
The systematic abuse and torture Ali endured at Hunt prompted him to file yet another federal civil rights lawsuit. He charged in this lawsuit that the Louisiana corrections department encouraged, or at least permitted, a quasi-official practice of discriminating, harassing, and retaliating against Arab-American inmates.
The charge had credence.
After 9/11 Arab-American inmates in the state’s prison system, particularly at the Avoyelles Parish Correctional Center, were tortured, brutally beaten, and subjected to physical abuse with restraints and chemical spray. Other forms of torture were inflicted with electronic stun shields, attack dogs, and police batons.
After he filed the civil rights lawsuit against Hunt officials, Ali was transferred to the Dixon Correctional Institute. He encountered the same entrenched religious and racial discrimination against Arab-Americans, particularly by African-American Muslim inmates he claimed.
“African-American Muslim inmates at DCI were so afraid, so intimidated that they would be associated with the 9/11 attacks or any kind of terrorism,” Ali said, “they compromised the basic teachings of the Koran and what Islam stands for just to be accepted by the white prison administration.”
Ali once again found himself in the posture of having to challenge the established order. He filed more grievances and letters of complaint. He was defiant of prison authority and refused to accept the inmate status quo. He disregarded the inmate Muslim community by forming his own group of Muslims who strictly adhered to the teachings of the Koran. This fundamentalist group collected the names of other Muslim inmates who possessed any form of pornography or who participated in homosexuality. The fundamentalists would then confiscate the Koran from the Muslims and hold “court” on them for their transgressions.
“You cannot be a true Muslim and possess pornography,” Ali explained. “Our confiscation of the Koran was designed to do more than punish the inmates for having this pornography, this human filth. We had to openly defy the hypocrisy and teachings of the African-American Muslims who knew nothing about Islam. Arab-Americans do not recognize the Nation of Islam as true Muslims. There is no such thing as ‘Al-Islam’.”
At this point I should note that it was not my experience with Nation of Islam Muslims to see them possess any form of pornography or to engage in homosexuality which was strictly forbidden by their religious tenets.
But it was this perceived religious, cultural and racial divide that prompted Ali to challenge the Iman who visited and preached at the DCI facility.
“The Iman was preaching that all Arab Muslims are terrorists and cowards,” Ali said. “I could not accept this teaching. It was not only a lie, but it demonstrated his prejudice against Arab Muslims. I told the Iman he was a liar, a coward. I told him that his people are cowards. They have a history of accepting abuse, being enslaved or trying to enslave their own people. In this country they embrace a culture of violence against their own people – crack, gangs, sexual degradation. Instead of trying to resist, fight, or change poverty, they embrace it as a ticket to a check or a free meal. They would rather opt for a hand-out rather than demand the right to earn a meal – and, then, they have the audacity to call my people cowards and terrorists because we have the will and courage to fight and die for our human dignity.”
The fire of anger burned deep in Ali’s eyes. The intensity of his beliefs ensnared the listener.
“I am not a racist against African-Americans or Jews,” he said. “But I do not like them as a people. I do not like their values and culture – and I certainly don’t share their religious beliefs. I am a natural enemy of the Jew – there is no denying that. And I am a natural enemy of African-American Muslims. I do not hate these people, but I will not tolerate their misrepresentations about my people. My mother did not rear me to hate – she reared me to be proud, independent, and outspoken.”
Ali’s mother had a tremendous influence in his life. She was a charismatic person. People were drawn to her wisdom and counsel – an anomaly in the Arab culture. She married a much older man and was totally devoted to the family he gave her.
“My mother never let us leave our home unless we were neat and clean,” Ali said. “She always told me, ‘remember, son, no one knows what is in your stomach, no one knows what you have not eaten. You are judged by the way you appear to the world, so always be neat, clean, and strong.’ So I could never let prison defeat or change me. My people are warriors. We will choose death every time over enslavement and oppression, so I am deeply offended by hard-faking African-American Muslims. The ones I have met in prison are, for the most part, pseudo-intellectual Uncle Toms – and for these people to dare judge Arabs as cowards and terrorists is an offense against the Koran. I will always challenge these cocker-roaches face-to-face, anytime, anywhere, when they offend the dignity of my people.”
Anger and bitterness are part of a natural diet for Palestinians. They are a people without a country – a people cast aside by the rest of the world so the Jewish people could be given a homeland in 1947 as some historical sources contend.
“The Jews were actively plotting to steal Palestine since the 1890s,” Ali said. “According to their own Torah, the House of Jacob, Jews were exiled from the Holy Land for their repeated sins. They were scattered over the face of the earth. They could not come together to form a nation until the ‘Messiah’ arrived. They did not accept Jesus Christ as the ‘Messiah’ and they still say that no ‘Messiah’ has arrived.
“Yet the British, at the direction of America, flooded Palestine with European Jews, most of who were living in camps, following World War II – and America was the main force behind the formation of the Jewish state in November 1947.
“This is exactly what Theodor Herzl advocated in 1896 in his book ‘The Jewish State’. It was Herzl’s writings that created the world politics necessary to ultimately bring about the 1947 Jewish state. But many Jews objected to Herzl’s proposed Jewish state because it would be created without a Messiah. But Herzl, and others like Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, ignored the doctrines of Judaism and went ahead to create the Jewish state by theft.
“The Jews who stole my land for that state did it with the same greed and theft that caused God to exile all of the twelve Jewish tribes from the Holy Land. By stealing the Palestinian homeland, they once again offended their own God – not to mention their violations of human decency and honor.”
Ali did not believe that a Palestinian state could be created to co-exist with Israel.
“It’s like stealing a man’s shoes,” he said, “and, as a token of appeasement, offer him the shoe laces in return. I will have no truck with those appeasers and collaborators who would accept the shoe laces.
“Let me give you as an American a Southern analogy. You live in an exclusive all-white neighborhood. Your neighbors get together – they want to deal with the collective social guilt caused by Black slavery and the evils of segregation. So your neighbors decide to take your home and give it to a Black family – just give it to them, all the furnishings, everything. Of course, you are quite upset about it and complain to your neighbors that it is really unfair. Your neighbors tell you that it really was not your home – you were just paying for it, and since this Black family had suffered so much because of white-imposed segregation, it was in the interests of the neighborhood to give the Black family your home.
“You’re indignant, fighting mad, even openly rebellious. Your neighbors do not understand your petulance. They turn against you. They make you an outlaw family, telling everyone you do not deserve a home. You begin to attack other homes in the neighborhood, forcing your neighbors to take notice.
“Finally, your neighbors tell you that the best you can hope for is the right to live in the Black family’s garage. But you must live there in peace. So what was once the home of your car becomes the home of your family – and you are expected to co-exist in peace with the Black family that hates you and who are constantly throwing their garbage in the garage where you live. And the only means of support you have is to work for the Black family who controls your entire existence.”
The fire in Ali’s eyes grew white. Prison did not put it there, but it certainly gave it an enriched nuclear energy. Prison gave him time to read, study law, and analyze the reasons for the abuses he suffered. He became intense, committed, and determined to speak out about the Palestinian cause – a subject that was always in his mind because it was so prominent in the Arab-American culture. But it took the prison experience to intellectualize the cause for him; to think it through and understand it with a personal passion.
“The Palestinian freedom fighters have summarily executed collaborators in the streets of refugee camps,” Ali said, “and the world community cringed in shock and passed harsh judgments on them, especially those pussy-assed French. Yet the same world community found it heroic when the French resistance executed fellow Frenchmen who collaborated with the Germans in World War II – and true history teaches that there were more French collaborators than there were French freedom fighters.
“But let’s keep it personal. Imagine your white brother secretly reporting to the Black family all your efforts to resist and secure the return of your home – and he does it for extra crumbs of food. That kind of collaboration deserves execution, make no mistake about it. Don’t confuse this kind of execution with capital punishment as liberal Americans try to do. Like Americans, Arab governments tend to favor the death penalty as they have a right to do. But appeasers and collaborators are not criminals who violate social laws. They are traitors of a cause, of the family. They betray the group. Those who betray the group, causing death or injury to the group, or those who appease the enemy at the expense of the group, should be summarily executed – and the execution should be carried out so the group can see it. Collaborators and appeasers are worst than the enemy. They work under the cover of darkness and the veil of secrecy to do their treachery. I hold such people in utter contempt. They should be executed before the group, not just as an act of retribution but to send a deterrent message to others.”
Ali harbored the same harsh feelings toward African-American Muslim inmates. He viewed their faith, the core of their worship, as a betrayal of Islam, a sacrilege of the Koran. He considered them appeasers and collaborators with the enemy. Likewise, some African-American Muslim inmates held similar harsh view toward Arab-Americans Muslim inmates. This conflict had its genesis in the 9/11 attacks in the early 2000s.
“You’re a coward,” Ali told an African-American Muslim inmate. “You worship a religion that you bastardized on the soil of the country that enslaved you. You call it Islam. You would be killed in a true Islamic country. There is no such religion as Al-Islam or the Nation of Islam. Those religious doctrines are as foreign to Arab Muslims as Christianity. You are the same to me as one of those ‘born again Christians’. And you call yourself a warrior – you do not have the courage to shed an ounce of blood for true Islam.”
By the time Ali appeared before the Louisiana Board of Parole in November 2003, he had accumulated 190 disciplinary reports – most of them false. Those “write-ups” were the result of a system trying to break his will, his spirit. The Orleans Parish district attorney’s office and the New Orleans Police Department were there to oppose his parole. Still, the Palestinian managed to convince a reluctant, and conservative, parole panel to grant him parole. Ali walked out of the hearing room believing the prison war was over; that he had survived against the odds.
“You’re not going to win, Hamdan,” a DCI security colonel said outside the hearing room. “It ain’t gonna happen.”
As soon as the parole panel left the institution, Ali was given yet another false disciplinary report. This time for allegedly trying to smuggle a watch back into the prison. The report charged that Ali had swapped his watch for the watch of a family member who had attended the parole hearing. The report said he wanted to smuggle a better, more expensive watch back into the prison.
“The report itself defied logic,” Ali said. “Why would anyone who had just made parole want or need a watch?”
The disciplinary report accomplished what the colonel wanted. The parole panel returned to the institution several weeks later. Based on the disciplinary report, even though no one could produce the alleged contraband watch, the parole panel rescinded Ali’s parole, even though it expressed reservations about the factual accuracy of the report.
“I was devastated,” Ali said. “I knew how corrupt, how racist the prison system is. It had shown me that, but the parole board is a political entity. Somehow, I thought the parole board would be different – I mean, the colonel could not even produce the watch I was suppose to have smuggled back into the prison. The colonel was the only person who saw the watch. The write-up itself was eventually dismissed by the prison administration. But it was not dismissed before it sabotaged my parole. The episode made me realize that this is no game – the prison system had brutalized and tortured me in every way possible. Then it stole my freedom with a lie.”
This time Ali’s eyes revealed nothing. Yet I could see those eyes not betraying a concealed vest bomb under a coat.
“Can you imagine what it’s like to be hated for no reason?” he asked. “Palestinians are hated not for anything we did but because of what was done to us and our refusal to accept it. The DCI colonel lied on me not because of anything I did but because of what he thinks I represent as an Arab-American – terrorism, suicide bombings, violence. His hatred, and his willingness to act against us because of that hatred, not only explains but justifies Palestinian ‘terrorism’. You will always get the worst from a people you have deprived of their humanity, their right to exist.”
Ali reached for his Koran and turned quickly to a passage about peace.
“The Western world, particularly America,” he said, “must understand that Arabs have a right to their own destiny. They do not want Jeffersonian democracy or Western cultural influences. They will decide for themselves by any means necessary, even if it means revolution, what kind of government they will have. Muslims do not need Christianity – they can, and will, believe as they choose, and they will never accept the slightest imposition of Christians. We pose no threat to the rest of the world. We can co-exist in peace with the Western world, but we cannot accept being bastardized by any region of the world.”
After his parole was rescinded, Ali launched a full frontal assault against the DCI administration. He filed scores of grievances and complaints about conditions at the prison.
“I flooded them with paper,” he said.
It did not take the DCI administration long to react. The bogus disciplinary report for the alleged watch-smuggling incident was creating administrative problems. Everyone involved in the review process of the report knew the colonel had lied, so to put the matter to rest the DCI administration transferred Ali to a private prison at Basile, Louisiana.
Basile was one of three private prisons in Louisiana. Like other private prison operations across the nation, private prisons in Louisiana were violent, corrupt, and horribly mismanaged. Gang activity, rapes, strong-arming, theft and drugs were prevalent in these facilities. The security staffs were underpaid, and receptive to bribes, especially female guards willing to trade sex for bribe merchandise.
The message of harassment preceded Ali at Basile. The racial taunts, physical abuse and false disciplinary reports greeted him at that facility as well. The favorite racial taunt at Basile was “sand monkey.” The taunt was calculated to provoke an angry outburst from Ali which inevitably led to another disciplinary report and a trip to lockdown.
In lockdown Ali was denied basic hygiene – clean clothes, toilet tissue and toothpaste. He was forced to sleep on the floor in a two-man cell because the guards put three inmates in the cell.
“Those abuses made me think a lot about terrorism,” Ali said. “My parents are peaceful people. My mother was an extremely kind and compassionate woman. When I was a boy, a little white girl fell and hurt herself on the concrete curb. The girl’s mother was standing in the yard several houses down the street, cursing. My mother ran outside her house, picked up the little girl, and took her inside where she cleaned and bandaged the girl. My mother cared for that child as though she was her own child. I told my mother that the people down the street did not like us. ‘She is a child, my son,’ my mother said. ‘Her heart is not spoiled with hate. In the face of hatred, you must offer peace and love – hatred for hatred only destroys people and offends God’.
“So, you see, terrorism is not a natural response for me – and I don’t think it is a natural response for most Palestinian people. But the Louisiana prison system – and I’m sure it’s the same in all American prisons – introduced me to what it is like to live powerless under a regime of absolute power. Any system of absolute power, as they say, rules absolutely. A Palestinian father who cannot feed his family, a Palestinian mother who watches her children die, and a Palestinian teenager who has no future are all victims of the terror produced by a system of absolute power. The absolute power the Israelis have wielded over the Palestinian people for decades has methodically inflicted more terrorism on my people than the suicide bombings by Palestinians have on the Israelis.
“Let me illustrate my point. A Palestinian sniper fires on a Jewish settlement. He kills a father and his three-year-old daughter. The Western world uniformly considers this an act of terror. Then the Israeli military fires a rocket from one of its helicopters in an assassination attempt on a suspected bomb maker killing a Palestinian father and mother along with their three children. The New York Times will report that ‘five civilians’ were killed in the ‘military attack’.
“The purpose of both attacks was not only to kill the targeted individuals but to invoke terror in the people. Terror has one single, unilateral objective – to instill fear in the masses. Organized governments created the concept of terror – not the revolutionaries or insurgents. America maintained its brutal system of slavery with terror – just as Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Hitler all used terror in their brutal conquests to rule the world. The Romans introduced the Jews to terror through both crucifixion and slavery.
“A mere reading of the Old Testament reveals many instances where Jews upon divine instruction from God attacked villages, killing every man, woman, and child as well as all the animals. How could there be a greater example of terrorism? How else would you describe such a divine edict from God ordering the slaughter of children? And, remember, these were horrible deaths, inflicted up close and personal at the point of a knife or a club.
“Yet a Palestinian teenager who detonates a bomb on a Jerusalem bus that kills himself and sixteen civilians is a ‘terrorist’. I will be the first to say that such an act is an act of terrorism. The very purpose of a suicide bombing is to spread terror – to instill a collective fear in the masses so that no public area is safe. Terror takes the individual fear of death and inflicts it upon the community psyche. People rather foolishly find comfort, security, and safety in numbers, in the group. A suicide bombing kills so indiscriminately that it shatters that collective feeling of security. An individual willing to kill himself to kill others defies normal logic.
“The Israeli military utilizes the same terror weapon to fight Palestinian freedom fighters. They try to inject enough terror on the community to keep the community from giving the freedom fighters a safe haven. This ‘military objective’ is the same as the objective of the suicide bomber – to spread the fear of death throughout the community.
“Palestinians did not create ‘terrorism’ – we simply co-opted it from the Israelis. The Jewish resistance groups fighting the British in the 1940s were called ‘outright terrorists’ groups by Robert St. John in his book ‘Builder of Israel’. These terrorist groups were fighting to steal my people’s homeland.
“If history teaches us nothing else, it teaches that oppressors have always used terror to maintain systems of oppression – you don’t have to be a history student to understand that. The continent of Africa is riddled with religious and cultural wars – and the governments in these countries are using unspeakable acts of terrorism to keep their power. This official terrorism has spawned countless insurgencies who have responded with their own acts of terrorism.
“The Western world is not shocked or outraged at the wholesale human slaughter in these African countries – not even African-Americans are offended. The Western world, and its controlled media, has used the word ‘terrorism’ as a propaganda tool – a way to legitimize oppression and outlaw any resistance to oppression. Can you seriously believe that the American people would accept that its government has systematically oppressed the Arab world? Or that the Israeli government has systematically oppressed the Palestinian people for five decades? The answer to both question is no. So when the people who are victims of oppression begin to organize a resistance to the oppression, and they do it in a violent way, they become terrorists.
“Yes, there are mercenary terrorists – those who inflict terror for the sake of terror. They are comparable to the elite special forces of the militaries of organized governments. And, yes, there are those in the ranks of the resistance who are criminal, corrupt, and murderous – just as many world leaders are criminal, corrupt and murderous. The bottom line is this – there would be no market for terrorism without oppression.”
Political violence has become a fixture in the Arab world. It has triggered a volatile debate among Arab intellectuals, political scholars, and Muslim clerics about why, and when, violence should be utilized to achieve political and religious objectives. The New York Times reported on this “holy war” debate in December 2004. The Times quoted Abel Sabour Shahin, a linguistics professor at Cairo University, who supports beheadings of civilians.
“When a missile hits a house,” Shahin told the Times, “it decapitates 30 or 40 residents and turns them to ash. Isn’t there a need to compare the behavior of a person under siege and angry with those who are managing the instruments of war?”
The Times also quoted Sheik Yousef Qaradani, a Qatari cleric who was host the Al-Jazeera program “Islamic Law and Life.”
“Resistance is a legitimate matter – even more, it is a duty,” the cleric said.
The American prison experience inculcated Ali with these same radical views. It was why he remained at war with the prison system until it freed him. Six months before he discharged his sentence he was transferred to Phelps. It was there we met.
“Mr. Sinclair, you have helped me a lot with your counsel and advice,” he told me one afternoon. “I will one day write about you in a book. I’ve never met a more neutral person in my life. You weigh all sides of an issue before you form an opinion. I admire you for that.”
Ali’s respect struck an emotional cord. I enjoyed the many conversations we shared about world events.
“You have taught me far more than I have taught you, Ali,” I said. “You provided me with a window into a world I’ve never looked at. I appreciate that. The greatest gift you can give a person is knowledge. Our paths have crossed briefly in life – and for a good reason. You put a face to the Palestinian cause for me. All I really gave you was a receptive ear – you filled it with knowledge.”
Ali became my “Palestinian doctor” in a casual way. I suffered with a rare neurological disorder that destroyed the muscle in the eyelids. The result of this rare form of ophthalmoplegia was severe ptosis in both eyes. I was forced to tape my eyelids open with band aids each day so that I could see. In effect, I was legally blind. My eyes were paralyzed in place. I could see only by looking directly in front of me or turning my head from side to side. The band aids attached to the eyelid and pulled up over the eyebrow allowed me to function normally. Initially it was a difficult task to perform each day.
“Let me help you with that, Mr. Sinclair,” Ali said one morning.
He took the band aids and deftly used fingernail clippers to tear off narrow adhesive strips. It took him only a few moments to have both eyelids neatly taped in place. He would start each day taping open my eyes. He did not take offense when I called him “my Palestinian doctor.” His steady hands and intense demeanor made it a professional operation – and he was not concerned with what other inmates thought.
“You have a need, Mr. Sinclair,” he said. “I can help you with that need. The judgment of others does not concern me. I do what I think it right – not what others think I should do.”
Gradually, Ali taught me how to apply the band aids on my own. The independence it gave me strengthened our relationship. It fueled our intellectual exchanges. In my four decade incarceration, I had never met a 24-year-old with so much intellectual maturity. While most of his knowledge was derived from reading, his views of the world and the political issues that shaped it were formed by his own innate intelligence. He read and listened not to develop a particular view but to enhance the texture of the view he has already formed.
Prison offers options to an inmate. He can choose to exist in an institutionalized vacuum or he can choose to live beyond the razor wire fences. Most inmates choose the institutionalized vacuum – a process that brings life to a standstill. The daily events and circumstances of prison are their only points of interest. If they think of life beyond the fence, it is generally a sojourn into the past; personal reflections embellished to compensate for the failure of their lives.
I always chose to live beyond the fence – a choice also made by Ali. The events of the world were important to us. We read – not for fictional entertainment but to focus our views on the outside world. We could care less who “went to the block” or who got “extra duty.” We were not interested in the “lives and scandals of the stars” or what was happening on “The Young and The Restless.” We wanted to know what happened to Yassar Arafat and his missing billions or why “moral values” tilted a presidential election and reduced traditional political muck-raking to a grotesque fine art.
That’s why Ali’s view about a Palestinian “homeland” was important to me. He had given the issue a lot of thought.
“As a child,” he said, “I was told by my father, and other family elders, that my people came from a land called Palestine, from Jerusalem. This holy city has a history of extreme religious significance. It is the third holiest place in Islamic religion. I was not indoctrinated as a child. I was given only the essential facts about my culture. I knew my father did not like Zionists, but he reminded me that not all Jews are bad. He reserved his dislike for those who stole our homeland.
“My father was a man of few words. He was a man of action. He never beat or raised his voice in anger against me. He would just demonstrate through his actions the error of my thinking or my behavior. He did not use words to impress, so even when he said something that was trite, he managed somehow to make it unique. So he didn’t preach against the Jews – he simply made it clear that he didn’t like them and how much he loved Palestine.
“My father never once said, or even indicated, that he did not like America. I believe he sincerely appreciated the opportunity this country gave him. But I know he didn’t like it when America went to war with Iraq in the Gulf War. He loved the fact that Saddam was attacking Israel with missiles. Saddam represented lost Arab pride with those attacks.
“There is an article in the PLO charter which states that ‘The Palestinian personality is a permanent and genuine characteristic that does not disappear. It is transferred from father to son.’ My father transferred that ‘permanent’ Palestinian personality to me. I share his dislike of the Israelis.
“But every Palestinian, man or woman and no matter his or her place of birth, must come to terms with what the world calls the ‘Palestinian Question.’ I have answered this question in my heart. First, I came to the realization that my people cannot deal with Israel in moderation. Moderation will always be viewed as weakness by the Israelis – and weakness will only invite more aggression and oppression from them.
“I recognize the right of Jews to exist. I just don’t recognize their claimed right to exist in the homeland of my people. I do not recognize the sovereignty of the state of Israel – it is a nation created through fraud and theft. I cannot see any co-existence between a Palestinian state and a Jewish state. The international community created this dilemma that now has much of the world engulfed in violence.
“I truly believe that the very existence of the state of Israel is an incurable cancer in the world body – and its evil malignancy is spreading throughout the body of the world. The PLO has always held that the essence and destiny of Arab existence are tied to the Palestinian question. This is no longer a regional question, an issue between Jews and Arabs. The violence spawned by this explosive issue has struck the heartlands of the world’s super powers. The roots of the terrorism we see in this world today sprouted from the fertile soil of the Palestinian question.
“The world’s super powers can no longer impose their will on the world – certainly not on the Arab people. This point should have been absolutely clear to America by Vietnam and to Russia by Afghanistan. The Palestinians have made the same point to Israel for decades – and the Iraqis are making the same point to America. So I will say this as forcefully as I can – the world’s super powers cannot impose the state of Israel on the Arab people.
“How do you liquidate a nation without the annihilation of its people? I don’t know the answer to that critical question. What I do know is that there will never be a true and lasting peace in the Middle East so long as the state of Israel exists. And creating a Palestinian state will not buy peace – it will only allow yet another Arab state to arm itself and point its weapons at the heart of Israel.
“Can you possibly believe that a separate Palestinian state will bring peace with the Israelis? Certainly not. The Jewish people have never been able to live in peace with anyone. They could not live in peace with their own God who made them the Chosen People. And, now, they live on stolen land – and left to their own choice, they would try to drive all the Arab people into the Red Sea.
“The Arab people will never try to establish a Hitler-like solution to the Jewish issue. As an Arab-Palestinian, I simply want to see the state of Israel absolved. I don’t care if the Jewish people decide to live in the Arab world, just as they now live in other parts of the world – and I would not care if the world’s super powers created a nation for them in the South Pacific. But these super powers, and the Jewish people, will learn one day that the state of Israel cannot be imposed on the Arab world, ever.”
I had always accepted, without much thought, the right of Israel to exist. The
“Palestinian question” was an abstract issue. But sitting on prison foot lockers in long conversations with my Palestinian doctor forced me to think about this troubling dilemma. I realized the world is being held hostage by those who subscribe to the Koran and the Holy Bible. The seed of Abraham has sown upon humanity a bitter harvest of never-ending violence. One look at the rabid face of a Jewish settler or the fanatical face of a Palestinian Fatah member reveals that the death of the other is the only solution that will satisfy them. The two extremes will never allow peace to exist.
“The real issue is, and always had been,” Ali said, “might is right. Let me illustrate – a Palestinian freedom fighter demands that Israel dissolve itself or surrender to the Palestinian people. Israel refuses. The Palestinian freedom fighter detonates himself in a crowd of Israelis civilians. He kills a dozen of them.
“America in 1945 demanded the surrender of Japan. Japan refused. America dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – both non-military targets. The bombs killed nearly one million civilians.
“Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. They were obviously determined to defeat America and occupy the country. America declared war against Japan in response to what President Roosevelt called a ‘day that will live in infamy’. It was recognized as a just war.
“Israel stole Palestine. The Palestinian people declared war against Israel. Yet our war has been universally called ‘terrorism’.
“The difference between our ‘war’ and the ‘American ‘war’ is might – we lack the ‘might’ to be right. An overwhelming percentage of the world’s population believes that the Palestinians are ‘right’ – but right has no enforcement power without ‘might’.”
A dorm officer had been listening to our conversation. He was clearly irritated by Ali’s views. He walked over to our bed area.
“Shakedown, Hamdan,” he said, interrupting the conversation.
The guard searched through all of Ali’s personal belongings, deliberately leaving everything in disarray when he was finished. Ali knew why the guard had done it but said nothing. He was completely calm, revealing no emotion.
“America is trying to do the same thing in Iraq,” he continued, refusing to let the guard’s presence disrupt his flow of thought. “Using might to make the invasion and occupation of that country right.
“Where does America, and particularly George Bush, get off deciding that there had to be a regime change in Iraq, and then decide it would impose its notion of democracy on the Iraqi people.
“The power behind that imperialistic assumption is the same power that said the Jews had a greater right to Palestine than the Palestinians did.
“The arrogance of this kind of power created the Iraqi freedom fighters – what America elects to call the ‘insurgency’. These freedom fighters know they cannot defeat the ‘might’ of the American military in an open confrontation. They are out-numbered. The Roman general Fabius Maximus defeated Hannibal with the same strategy – he engaged Hannibal in a series of small battles, running after each small victory. That’s the only way right can defeat might.
“Do Americans really believe that a man who drives a bomb-rigged vehicle into a military checkpoint or a man who attacks a tank with an Ak-47 is a terrorist or an insurgent?
“He’s a warrior fighting an occupying force. He is not motivated by politics. He does not really care who runs Iraq. He simply will not accept an American rule, or the rule of American collaborators – just as Americans would not accept the rule of Japan.
“If a foreign power had refused to accept the legitimacy of George Bush’s stolen victory over Al Gore and decided there was a need for a regime change, and after bombing and attacking American cities, they occupied America and installed Al Gore as president, what do you think Americans would have done?
“Of course, they would have fought, and with any means necessary – just as the Iraqis are doing and just as the Palestinians have done for the past five decades. Believe me, terrorism would have become a legitimate weapon of the American resistance. There would have been suicide bombings and brutal attacks on non-military targets by the resistance. These acts of resistance would be called attacks for liberty, freedom, and democracy.”
Ali’s social views tracked with his political views.
“I do not believe in the social ‘melting pot’ theory,” he explained. “I believe that different cultures and races should be unique. They should cooperate and work for the good of society, but they should not mix. I would never marry a non-Palestinian woman. I would dishonor my culture, my family if I did. Preserving one’s culture is important to me – cultural and racial mixing produces a bastardized society. We should never believe that one race or culture is superior to another, but we should believe that our culture and race are unique.
“I do not recognize ‘political correctness’ – words are meant to convey human feelings, good and bad. What’s good for one society is bad for another – but we have every right to believe that our culture and race is unique, and should be preserved. I do not expect Americans to understand Palestinians. What I do expect, and demand, is that Americans let Palestinians be Palestinians.’
Mazen “Ali” Hamdan was one of the most unique individuals I met in prison. He defied normal description. He spoke like a terrorist, but he was not a terrorist. He held racist views but was not a racist. He provoked thoughts with his ideas. He was mature beyond his years, and more intelligent than his formal education. He would be a good man to share a fox hole with.
Yet there was an invisible wound in this young man’s spirit. He was a man without a country.