Gazan Fidaa Abed Speaks Out!

Blocking a Gazan's path to San Diego
By Fidaa Abed
August 15, 2008

As a young Palestinian from Gaza, I had been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to study at the University of California San Diego on a Fulbright scholarship. The chance to escape Gaza's confines and immerse myself in an American education was deeply thrilling. With Israel controlling Gaza's border exits, air space and sea access – notwithstanding its “pullout” of 2005 – I imagined the long, open roads of the United States and its people's unchallenged freedom of movement.

I love my people and my homeland, but a young person needs opportunities. These are far more abundant in the United States than in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Last week, I landed in Washington, D.C., brimming with optimism. Upon arrival, I was whisked into a separate room. An American official informed me that he had just received information about me that he could not reveal. However, it required him to put me on the next plane home. I was shocked. And I was taken aback at the cruelty of snatching away my educational dreams at the last possible moment.

My mistreatment was particularly unexpected because in late May, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice learned that I and six other Fulbright students were being stripped of our Fulbright scholarships, she leapt to our assistance. One by one, Israel let other Palestinians Fulbright scholars out of Gaza, and they made their way to American universities. Then I was mysteriously singled out for last-minute denial based on “secret evidence.” Two others had their visas canceled on account of secret evidence before they could even leave Gaza.

William J. Fulbright was the only U.S. senator to vote against funding for Sen. Joseph McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee. It is ironic, then, that my remarkable educational opportunity is being stripped from me on the basis of the sort of secret – and fabricated – evidence that Fulbright opposed in the hands of McCarthy. Unopposed, McCarthy destroyed lives. I do hope the United States will side with the openness of Fulbright and not the fear-mongering of McCarthy.

Israel routinely locks up Palestinians based on secret charges. All sorts of outrageous claims can be leveled based on information that Israeli officials garner coercively. Could the secret evidence against me have been extracted through the torture of some young Palestinian? Was I even the one denounced, or someone with a similar name? Was my “crime” sharing a classroom or a lunchtime conversation with someone Israel believes poses a danger? I have no way of knowing, and thus no way of defending myself.

My education is my gateway to the future. The master's degree I would have earned at UC San Diego in computer science certainly cannot be attained in Gaza. And I am not alone. Hundreds of Palestinian students with dreams of improving their lives are stagnating intellectually in Gaza. The doors to our open-air prison have largely been slammed shut.

Israel tightened economic restrictions in 2006 following the election victory of Hamas. Hoping to weaken Hamas, Israel has gradually tightened restrictions on freedom of goods and people from the Gaza Strip to the outside world, maintaining a near total blockade on some 1.5 million Palestinian civilians for more than a year.

Thankfully, I have received support from people around the world. Journalists have wanted to hear my story. The American officials who saw me in Amman and Jerusalem upon my return were friendly and seemed embarrassed by my predicament.

Despite my treatment, I know that most Americans are kind people who mean well. What happened to me runs contrary to the good will exhibited by the American people. Israeli policies that relegate Palestinians in Gaza to prison-like conditions and Palestinians in the West Bank to an apartheid-like existence do not advance the cause of peace. The United States should use its tremendous sway with Israel to advance the cause of freedom and equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

We Palestinians have been stripped of our land for 60 years. But with educational opportunity we have persevered and made what we could of our lives. Limiting our educational prospects only perpetuates our status as a subordinate people. Nothing is served by confining our best and our brightest to Gaza. A better future for everyone lies in unlocking the gates to Gaza and allowing us to learn and gain exposure to the broader world – with all of the challenges, controversies and diverse perspectives it offers.

• Abed, recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, lives in the Gaza Strip.

Previous Posts on this Subject

• Israel Advocacy Organizations Change Tactics
• Closing American Minds, Excluding Arabs
• Gazan Fulbright Scholar at Columbia
• Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars
• New Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars
• Israeli Scholar Revisits Academic Boycott

[Please excuse the confusion that my coverage may have introduced. Fidaa was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of California San Diego and another scholarship for Columbia.] Sphere: Related Content

Closing American Minds, Excluding Arabs

Previous Posts on this Subject:

1. Gazan Fulbright Scholar at Columbia


2. Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars and


3. New Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars.


4. Israeli Scholar Revisits Academic Boycott

In The Magnes Zionist: Please Help This Young Man Get to America, Professor Jeremiah Haber continues to cover the sage of the Gaza Fulbright scholars as was as a Gaza High School student who were going to attend school in the USA this September.

Philip Weiss discusses Haber's article in The U.S. Must Reverse Its Decision to Bar Gaza Boy From Coming Here to Study.

Haber writes:

That somebody like Ahmed could grow up in a place like Gaza seems incomprehensible to many Israelis. That Gaza could be home to doctors, lawyers, and university professors, seems as incomprehensible. Such is the power of prejudice and stereotypes.

Haber may be focusing on the wrong target group. The Israeli government is not particularly worried that Israeli Zionists might change their beliefs, for they are well indoctrinated.

If Americans meet real live Palestinians, Israel advocacy groups will have a lot more difficulty in demonizing and dehumanizing Arabs and Muslims as some almost certainly Zionist Jewish dominated PR firm attempted in the Nissan ad discussed in Nissan Pulls Ad Featuring Vengeful Arab Stereotype.

The Gaza scholars and student story is interesting because it fits a pattern in the battle for domination of American discourse. Israel Advocacy groups are making greater use of non-Jewish proxy groups to their dirty work -- in this case middle level bureacrats at the US State Department.

I will post more on the subject soon but in this case the benefit of the proxy discourse war is fairly clear. Pro-Palestinian advocates cannot argue that an Israeli siege of Palestinian students and scholars provides an undebatable argument for boycotting Israeli academia. Sphere: Related Content

Israeli Scholar Revisits Academic Boycott

The Magnes Zionist discusses the treatment of Fulbright recipients and poses an important question:

I have always held academic freedom to be important, and as I have written before,I am not a fan of academic boycotts. Academic freedom is very important to me. But it's a two-way street. If Israel continues to curtail the academic freedom of Palestinian students and faculty, especially in Gaza, why should Israeli academic institutions benefit from [it]. Is the academic freedom of Israelis dearer than that of Palestinians?

I cannot help but concur with Professor Haber as I have made more or less the same argument in Gazan Fulbright Scholar at Columbia with followup reports in Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars and New Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars. Sphere: Related Content

New Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars

Followup: Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars
Followup: Gazan Fulbright Scholar at Columbia

I received the following news yesterday.

Fidaa [Abed] got his visa from Jerusalem consulate last week and was finally given the Israeli permit to leave to Amman. His flight was booked on August 1st, and he actually flew from Amman to Washington DC, through Frankfurt. We thought that was the happy end of the story, and we were all waiting for Fidaa to call us from California late yesterday.. not in a bizarro world.

 

Fidaa was returned back to Frankfurt airport, and now he is waiting for the next flight back to Amman (like 17 hours of waiting at Frankfurt's airport). The visa officer told him that the consulate sent them a fax to cancel Fidaa's visa. We don't know yet why was that. The visa officer was astonished himself and said he'd never seen a case like that. Fidaa was not notified by the consulate about that, and he knew only in Washington DC. It must be a last minute decision. I don't know what it is. If it is intended to be a joke, it is a very poor one. It is not funny at all.

I wish I knew which consulate sent the fax to cancel Fidaa's visa.

 

Philip Weiss has discussed Journalism's Old-Boy-Network and Zionism. The phenomenon is not unique to the news industry, and similar Jewish networks exist throughout the business world, academia and government. The ongoing refusal of OSI to apply its mandate equally to Jews and to gentiles by including possible Jewish violators of the law in its investigations and prosecutions is probably an example of the power of Jewish networking within the US government.

 

With knowledge of the specific consulate where the visa cancellation originated, identification of the specific local facilitators and gatekeepers in the case of Gaza Fulbright scholars might be possible.

 

If we take Condeleeza Rice's reported position at face value, the hassle that Gaza Fulbright scholars have been experiencing is originating at lower bureaucratic levels and possibly in collusion with the Israeli government. (See Jewish Dominance Ohio, Subversion KSG and in particular the section that discusses the Harvard Wexner Israel Fellowship.)

 

 

 

Sphere: Related Content

Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars

Followup: Gazan Fulbright Scholar at Columbia

It appears that the "3 students were able to leave yesterday [July 29th]. It turned out that none of them was [a] terrorist." Sphere: Related Content