3 February, Clifton, NJ: Civil Liberties and the Holy Land Foundation Five

Saturday, 3 February
7:00 pm
Palestinian American Community Center
388 Lakeview Ave, Clifton NJ
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1600567906691208/

Miko Peled will be joined by Noor Elashi to discusses the case of the Holy Land Foundation Five, presenting a terrifying picture of governmental over-reach in post-9/11 America.

Peled is releasing his newest book, “Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.” Elashi is the daughter of Ghassan Elashi, one of the HLF5. She has written for McSweeney’s and the The Huffington Post and is currently writing a memoir chronicling her father’s decade-long prosecution.

Cosponsored by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Palestinian American Community Center, and Just World Educational.

The event is part of Peled’s speaker series: US-Israeli Collusion in Eroding Civil Liberties: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.

“Injustice” traces the labyrinthine course of the case of the Holy Land Foundation Five, presenting a terrifying picture of governmental over-reach in post-9/11 America. The five men were leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in the nation until it was shuttered by the federal government in Dec. 2001.

Their first trial ended in a hung jury. They were convicted in a second trial, marked by highly questionable procedures in which anonymous Israeli informants were allowed to give uncontested testimony, an event that grossly violated basic Sixth Amendment protections. The five were given very lengthy sentences—for “supporting terrorism” by donating to charities that the U.S. government itself and other respected international agencies had long worked with.

The five men, now all well over 50 years old, are serving multi-decade sentences in some of the US penal system’s worst longterm prisons. Peled traveled to those prisons to interview the men. Those interviews along with interviews with the lawyers and family members form the basis of his powerful story.

Endorsements for the book:

“Miko is a dedicated storyteller who approaches the difficult and complex Holy Land Foundation case in a sensitive, careful, and methodical manner while doing so with a humanistic focus on the impacted families. Injustice is a must-read for it provides a window into another painful dimension to the continuation of Palestine’s and Palestinians Nakba—but this one unfolds in the diaspora. For Miko, narrating the HLF case is a part of a long journey toward doing acts of justice that in a small way can contribute to putting Palestine back on the map.”
–Dr. Hatem Bazian, U.C. Berkeley and Zaytuna College

“This book is a compelling and moving account of the lives and trials of the Holy Land Foundation Five. It makes a convincing case that these 5 men are paying with long prison sentences for the 9/11 attacks, which they had nothing to do with. The book also demonstrates that US American juries are unable to be fair and just in cases that revolve around Palestine/Israel, since few have an unbiased understanding of the issues. Under such conditions, government prosecutors can allege just about anything, play on widely held stereotypes, and win, whether their case has any merits or not. Justice was not, and can not be, served.”
–Louise Cainkar, author of Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience after 9/11 (2009, Russell Sage Foundation, New York).

Copies of the book will be available for sale. More information atwww.justworldbooks.com/books/injustice/