Truth Will Triumph

Another victory. Just as Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi have been released from Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, so too Badar Khan Suri, Georgetown scholar and peace studies professor, has been ordered released from ICE detention. Masked federal agents abducted Badar Khan Suri in front of his home on March 17th. They transferred him between five different facilities across three states, ending up in an ICE detention facility in Texas, where he has been held for nearly two months without due process. The government’s case against him was based on false information and groundless allegations. The administration claims Badar Khan Suri was “spreading Hamas progaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” and they allege he has “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist who is a senor adviser to Hamas.” Suri, an avowed peacemaker, is no supporter of violence, and was vocally critical of Hamas’ October 7th attack. His support for the Palestinian people’s quest for dignity, justice, and equal rights was wrongly misrepresented as spreading “antisemitism.” His so-called “Hamas connections” are these: his wife is a Palestinian American, and his father-in-law was once an adviser to Hamas, a role he abandoned over a decade ago. None of these things are crimes or grounds for government action against him, as would have been clear had he been afforded his constitutional rights of due process. During Badar Khan Suri’s detention, his fellow detainees referred to him as “Gandhi,” because he taught them about Ghandian principles of satyagraha, or “soul-force,” and exemplified the spirit of peace in all his dealings with his fellow detainees and the guards. Badar Khan Suri’s detention has been extremely hard on his son, who enjoyed a very close bond with his father. His son has fallen into a deep depression, and is under the care of a therapist. Thankfully, they will soon be reunited. Here are Badar Khan Suri’s inspiring words for us all: “The time-honored principles I have adopted as my own also empower me to leave no avenue unexplored in defying the witch hunt unleashed upon me and others who believe in the freedom of Palestinians. We will reject authoritarianism and oppose this travesty of justice. Be courageous, because courage is contagious. Together, we can stand against the tide of totalitarianism, because as the Upanishads teach, ‘Ultimately, truth will triumph over falsehood.’” (Thanks to Zeteo for outstanding coverage of this story.)

In an eye-opening webinar sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism, scholar Atalia Omer of the Krok Institute of International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University, presented an insightful paper on how Israeli hasbara (propaganda) targets Black pastors and Black churches in the United States to build support in the Black community for Israel. One of the tactics Zionists use is trying to establish a bond of shared suffering between Blacks and Jews, a shared sense of victimhood between enslaved African Americans and Jewish victims of the Holocaust. One of the most powerful ways to manufacture this bond is through tourism. Israel devotes $185 million annually to this project, and funds multiple trips to Israel. Israel controls tourism and ensures that 95% of tourists stay within Israel and never travel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, are fed a carefully-curated pro-Israel narrative and never engage authentic Palestinian voices. Only 5% of those who come to Palestine-Israel are ever exposed to the harsh realities of Palestinian life under the occupation. Dr. Omer describes these tours as “Disneyland fantasies” divorced from reality. She pointed out that when Ta-Nehisi Coates visited Palestine in 2023 and wrote about it in his book, The Message, he made an immediate intuitive connection to Jim Crow. He felt in his body the racism of segregated Jewish-only settlements and Jewish-only roads and special license plates for Jews, and the constant dominating presence of armed authorities. Omer’s point is that this is the real, organic connection that Black people with their own distinctive history of oppression immediately sense when they encounter the reality of Palestine. Their first and most natural response to Palestinian oppression is “We’ve seen this before.” Since this natural Black-Palestinian solidarity is so instinctively strong and apparent, it takes an especially aggressive “spin” campaign to try to undermine it and replace it with a fake, manufactured Black-Zionist solidarity. But that is precisely what Israeli hasbara is attempting to do. Watch this newsletter for more information about Dr. Atalia Omer’s research.