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By Aisha Gawad
January 14, 2010
Noor Elashi is many things. She is a writer, photographer, graphic artist, aspiring piano player, big sister, journalist, recent New York City resident, and M.F.A. student. But all of these things are secondary to her identity as proud daughter of Ghassan Elashi, one of the Holy Land Five.
Her father was the chairman of the Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Muslim charity in the nation. But in 2001, it was shut down by the Bush administration and accused of ties to Hamas. Ghassan Elashi and his four co-defendants were tried in 2007, but the case ended in a mistrial. The prosecution tried again in 2009, more aggressively this time, and the Holy Land Five were sentenced to prison for allegedly sending millions of dollars to Palestinian charities associated with Hamas. Noor Elashi’s father was sentenced to the maximum sentence of 65 years and is currently serving his time in a federal prison in Texas.
The twenty-four-year-old Noor recently moved from Dallas to New York to pursue a non-fiction creative writing M.F.A. at the New School. She is writing a memoir about her family’s experience and hopes that it will liberate her father and all other Muslim and Arab Americans living in post-9/11 fear. She talks with elan about her transformation into an activist for Palestine, for Muslim-Americans, and for her father.
elan Q: What is your memoir about?
NE: It’s going to be about three generations of displacement - my paternal grandmother, who was displaced in 1948, my father, who was displaced in 1967, and myself, an American-born daughter of a Palestinian man who has been prosecuted for his political beliefs. I’m confident that the book will be a best-seller (laughs).
elan Q: When did you get the idea to write a memoir?
NE: I would say the idea was floating in my head since the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) was shut down in 2001. But I didn’t really become serious about it until one of my undergraduate professors encouraged me to write a personal essay about the case and how it’s affected the family. I started to realize that people are really interested in this case and want to learn more. I realized that this is a great way to express what’s going on. Then, a few years later, I started applying to MFA programs and I got really encouraging responses from the programs. At the New School, I’ve met amazing professors who I’m confident will really help me write this story.
elan Q: How has it been adjusting to life as an activist in Dallas and life as an activist in New York City?
NE: I haven’t been here for that long and I haven’t met too many people in the Palestinian solidarity movement. Back in Dallas, I was there for so long that I really grew close to some activists - people from the Dallas Peace Center and the Crawford Peace House, all these groups that from day one, stood in solidarity with my dad, with the Palestinian cause, with all issues of Arab and Muslim justice. I sort of grew up with that atmosphere.
elan Q: How did your father’s trial change you?
NE: After the first HLF trial, I became very aware - I matured very quickly. I realized that I was going to devote the next several months to cover the trial, attend every single day in court. I took time off from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which is where I worked as a staff writer. My life became the trial.
elan Q: You were surrounded by humanitarian activists growing up. When did you feel that you yourself had actually become an activist for justice as well?
NE: I became an activist through the trial. I started speaking during press conferences after the trials. I started writing commentaries - I posted a few on Huffington Post. I tried every medium available today to get the story out there. I started a website, www.freedomtogive.com, wrote updates on the trial every night, and posted really horribly edited videos.
elan Q: What was it like sitting in the court room while your father was facing charges of aiding terrorism?
NE: It was all very, very enlightening and very horrific. It was very traumatic to sit in there at certain points in time, listening to the prosecution give one lie after another about my father, listen to the prosecution use tactics that I had no idea were even legal in this country like calling in secret witnesses.
elan Q: The first trial was declared a mistrial because of a deadlocked jury, but the prosecution insisted on retrying it. Were you hopeful for the second trial?
NE: We were really surprised when the jury did not return a single guilty verdict the first time. But then unfortunately, the judge declared a mistrial which gave the prosecution the right to re-try the case, which they did about a year later. They learned from their mistakes, and they were more aggressive. We were so sure that nothing really was going to come of it. But in the second trial, he was declared guilty. I mean, that doesn’t happen, to go from not a single guilty verdict to all guilty verdicts.
elan Q: How did your friends and co-workers react to the news of your father’s case?
NE: I would say all of my friends were 100 percent supportive, my ex-bosses, people I had worked with, people I have met along the way - they all sent me emails of sincere empathy, urging me to stay strong. It was overwhelming, it was amazing.
elan Q: What about the rest of the community in Texas - was it supportive?
NE: People that we’ve never met before found out about the case and came out to support us, especially in the last trial because it had grown so huge at that point. LULAC - the League of United Latin American Citizens - spoke out on our behalf.
I also met an old grandma. Her name is Diane Wood, a white-Anglo Saxon woman from Texas. She found out about the case through a local human rights group. She is just this living and breathing miracle. She drove from Fort Worth to Dallas - it’s like a 45 minute ride - every day of the trial. She sat right next to the family members, she hugged them. We grew really close to her, we completely adored her. She was right there next to you when you wanted to scream in the middle of the trial - she was that shoulder to cry on. She is a stellar example of your typical American - who wanted to make herself aware by attending this post-9/11 case, and then realizing that so many people have suffered needlessly.
elan Q: How is your family coping now that your father is in prison?
NE: We are three boys and three girls. Two of my brothers are teenagers so it’s kind of tough living without a father at this point. Every day it gets worse, and I keep thinking it’s going to keep getting worse before it gets better. For example, prison visitation rights were recently revoked. My family used to be able to visit my dad once a week. At the end of one of the visitations, the guard told all the inmates to go on one side and all the family members to go on the other. But my nine-year-old brother Omar, who has Down Syndrome, doesn’t always understand when you tell him to do something. He ran over to my dad and the guard started telling, “What Elashi, you think you’re an exception?” The guard filed a complaint against my dad saying he doesn’t listen to instructions, so his visitations have been revoked for six months to a year. It’s been three months so far, and we don’t know how much longer it will be. We feel pretty helpless.
elan Q: How does your father manage life in prison?
NE: My father is a very calm individual. He does pilates - I mean what kind of man does pilates? He asked me to send him a book in prison called “Pilates for Men.” He’s pro-yoga and he reads the Qur’an and that’s what keeps him going in prison.
elan Q: In order to write this book, you have to immerse yourself in all the painful memories. What do you do when it feels too overwhelming?
NE: There’s this intense calmness that hits people when you’re going through something like this. My father says he feels it every day. People are so shocked by the strength and resilience of the Holy Land Five. I cope, number one, by writing and, number two, I speak to my father on the phone every few days, and by remembering that no matter how suffocated I feel, he’s ten times more suffocated. It really changes your perspective on things. It’s helped me mature very quickly and look at many things in a different light.
elan Q: Are your professors and classmates at your MFA program supportive?
NE: Not 100 percent. There are people who have compared me to Bernie Madoff’s kids. I’ve gotten some very harsh comments like, “I think you’re just another daughter who thinks her father is innocent.” Some people say I’m way too involved in this to write anything. It is a struggle, and there are many obstacles. But at the same time, there is a lot of support from the students and professors as well.
elan Q: What do you hope to accomplish with this book?
NE: Sixty-five years in prison means nothing. We know that political prisoners don’t usually have to serve their whole terms, so my family and my father are hopeful that there will be some sort of outcry. That’s why I’m writing this book from A-Z to let people know what our story is about. Hopefully, that will help spread the word about what’s going on. We want to keep the struggle alive.
elan Q: Do you think that the public’s negative perception of Palestine will keep people from sympathizing with your father’s case?
NE: If this story is publicized as it is, I hope people will realize that it goes beyond the Palestine issue. This is the story of five American men who have grown to love this country and make it their home and raise their children here. They were born in Palestine and saw many terrible things and were not able to go on with their lives without doing something about it. So they decided to open a humanitarian organization to help needy people in occupied Palestine. These are five humanitarians who were locked up for feeding hungry orphans and giving out medical supplies.
elan Q: What would you say to people who are scared of being involved in the Muslim and Arab American communities - who are scared of getting involved in Palestine solidarity actions? Who think they might end up like all the other Muslim-Americans who were harassed after 9/11?
NE: My dad’s motto his whole life is “never be silent.” He was always very outspoken about the injustice and the occupation in Palestine. In the end, many people who were outspoken were either deported or arrested. That was to teach people a lesson. I’m very proud of my father and if he had been the silent type - if he had not been true to himself - if he had pled guilty to something he didn’t do, I would have been ashamed to be his daughter. But really, he is ten times the man that any other man would have been in that situation. People can’t be afraid to be true themselves.
elan Q: What does your dad think about the book?
NE: To him, it’s more thrilling than being exonerated. Because while that would free him in the eyes of the law, this will free him in the eyes of world, people who have heard about this case, who had doubts about the HLF or about Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims. They will finally realize the truth.
elan Q: What do you want to do after you finish the book?
NE: I very much consider myself an artist. I am a creative writer, I love photography, and I love graphic design. I want to learn how to play the piano. Right now, the book is my priority, but I do see fiction in my future. I have a few book ideas in mind. And of course they’d be about the Arab-American experience.
I do have a plan over the next couple of years while I’m at the MFA program at the New School. I want to illustrate the Palestinian struggle through art, music, film and lectures. It will be like a series over the next couple of years, and I’m hoping that at each event, I can incorporate my father’s case in some way, even if it’s me getting up at the end and talking for 5 minutes about the case. I feel like even that will make a huge difference.
elan Q: When you finish the book, what impact do you want it to have on your readers?
NE: I would like to take readers on my family’s journey from the very beginning to the very end. It’s sort of a long, exhausting, and traumatic journey, but at the end of it, I’d like them to also be left with some sense of hope. At this point, I do have hope, but it’s really intangible, because it’s an incomplete story. Factually speaking and legally speaking, my father has been sentenced to 65 years, so there is no hope in that. But I’m hoping that in the next couple of years, there will be some sort of turnaround, that my father will be exonerated.
If anything, I’d like people to just start talking. I’d like to start stirring conversations about the Arab-American experience, about the injustice that happened to my father and many, many other people after 9/11. That’s what I call my dad, a post-9/11 political prisoner, the Palestinian Nelson Mandela.
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