Good editorial from the Washington Post on the FBI's sweep of potential terrorists.
I'm deeply conflicted about the anti-terrorism measures. IMO, anybody who dismisses the need for special measures has not taken the threat seriously. On the other hand, anyone who trusts the judgement of the FBI and John Ashcroft in taking these measures has not examined their track records seriously, either. So I guess that makes me in favor the measures, but I still want Senator Leahy to stay on Ashcroft's case every step of the way.
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A Foreigner in Solitary in America
By Gershom Gorenberg
Saturday, December 8, 2001; Page A25
JERUSALEM -- On Sept. 12, Israela Marmari got a phone call from America at her home outside Tel Aviv. It was 11:30 at night; at the other end was an FBI agent who began asking questions about her son. Omer, 21, had arrived in the United States not long before, one of the countless young Israelis who travel abroad to relax after the strain of three years of army service. On the day of the Twin Towers attack, he and four other Israelis working illegally for a New York moving company were arrested -- as suspected terrorists. The FBI man pronounced his name as the Arabic "Omar," and repeatedly asked her to spell it. Her explanations that "Omer" is a Hebrew name -- and her reminders that her son is blond and blue-eyed -- apparently didn't register. At 6 the next morning, another FBI agent was on the phone, asking the same questions.
Omer Marmari spent 70 days in jail, 45 in solitary confinement. According to an Amnesty International memorandum to the U.S. attorney general, he and his four compatriots were held incommunicado for their first week or so. Israela Marmari says her son was kept in leg irons, and was sometimes punished when he sang in his cell in an effort to stay sane. For a month, the five were interrogated as suspected terrorists. After that, Marmari says, they were questioned about supposed connections to Israeli intelligence. The young men themselves, now back in Israel, won't talk to the press; they can't bear to relive their experiences.
As an American living in Israel for many years, I find it particularly difficult to listen to the stories that the detainees' mothers tell, their voices hovering between tears and fury. What disturbs me is what the affair says about my native country after Sept. 11 -- its ability to contend with the threats it faces, and its ability to maintain its freedoms despite those threats.
The first concern is practical. The people who investigated Omer Marmari and his four friends are responsible for tracking down Islamic extremists who attacked America. They are supposed to protect the country from future attacks. Apparently, they are so ignorant of the Middle East that they do not know the difference between Hebrew and Arabic. They did not grasp that young men who tried to fast on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, were probably not Muslim fanatics. Even when provided information on the detainees from Israeli authorities -- allies of America with considerable experience in fighting Islamic terror -- the investigators didn't grasp that they were wasting their time on the wrong men. Frankly, I think this should keep John Ashcroft from sleeping at night.
Now consider President Bush's executive order, under which non-citizens accused of terror acts may be tried before military tribunals -- courts free of the standard rules of evidence, able to convict and sentence by two-thirds vote, their decisions not subject to judicial review. Presumably the decision on who should be tried before such tribunals will be based on evaluations from counterterror officials. Given the powers of the tribunals, that decision is half a conviction in itself. If the people making the evaluations have a hard time telling Hebrew from Arabic, can we trust them to distinguish an innocent Pakistani student who fasts on Ramadan from an Islamic fanatic?
The president, and those who defend his decision on the tribunals, seem to forget that the point of America's constitutional guarantees of civil rights is not to make life easy for criminals. It is to ensure that innocent people are not abused, imprisoned, even executed. When fear is rampant, when knowledge is scarce, those rights are more essential, not less.
When America compromises on civil rights, moreover, it's not just a domestic issue. The United States presents itself in the world arena as defending those rights. The State Department issues reports of other countries' actions in that realm. "I respected America as the guardian of human rights," says Katie Shmuel, mother of Yaron Shmuel, another of the Israelis who was held in the United States. Now, she says, she sees it as "a Third World country, like Syria."
The damage is much deeper than a mother's disappointment. Once the United States shows it is willing to sacrifice human rights to fight terror, it loses its ability to criticize others. America is afraid of Osama bin Laden? Israel is afraid of Palestinian terrorists; Turkey fears Kurdish terrorists. Until now, advocates of human rights around the globe could look to America to show that fear is no excuse. It would be a tragedy for America to abdicate that role.
Gershom Gorenberg is the author of "The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount."
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