Dr. Sami Al-Arian
A blog posting on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)’s official campaign site—which is “just a sampling of a large volume of racist, anti-Semitic and pro-Palestinian rhetoric published on the user-friendly MyObama community blog pages”—”urges Americans to take action to secure the release of imprisoned terrorist fundraiser Sami Al-Arian, comparing the controversial former professor to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X,” Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief of World Net Daily reported June 29, 2008.
In a blog post on Obama’s site titled, “We are all Palestinians,” user Ulf Erlingsson laments what he calls the “harsh” conditions of Al-Arian’s imprisonment – explaining he “lives in segregation … is not allowed any visitors and is given only two phone calls a month.”
The posting quotes Agha Saeed, chair of the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, comparing Al-Arian to King and Malcom X, who “symbolized the struggle for human rights in the fifties and sixties. Dr. Sami Al-Arian has come to symbolize the current struggle for human rights.”
Al-Arian is also labeled an “internationally recognized political prisoner.”
Obama’s site readers are called upon to “take urgent action. Just 3 phone calls and 1 E-mail to make a difference.”
The blog, “first noticed this weekend” by Little Green Footballs, “goes on to list phone numbers or e-mails for Al-Arian’s jail, a civil liberties office at the Homeland Security Department and the attorney general handling the Al-Arian case. The posting gives specific instructions for what protestors should say when they call the various agencies,” Klein wrote.
The blog also links to a Free Al-Arian website for readers interested in learning more.
Al-Arian, a former university professor, was arrested in 2003 on multiple charges of funding terrorists, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization, which took credit for every suicide bombing in Israel since 2005. In 2006, Al-Arian accepted a plea bargain resulting in a conviction with conspiracy to aid Islamic Jihad.
Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison including time served. He was to serve the remainder of 19 months and then be deported, but he was held in contempt of court for refusing to testify in other related terrorism cases involving former associates. The contempt charges were overturned last year, but in March Al-Arian was subpoenaed to testify in front of another grand jury in a terrorist case, and he has so far refused.
The Al-Arian posting is joined by volumes of controversial rhetoric posted by registered users on Obama’s official campaign site. Some of the offending postings have been removed, while others still remain.
“The Obama campaign does not monitor all blog material, which is posted by registered users, but says it removes offending posts that are brought to the attention of the administrators,” Klein wrote.
Read the rest of Klein’s article here.
Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light.--Thomas Jefferson.
see how long that post lasts
My guess is: it will last forever in the minds of Obama supporters.