Nahla Al-Arian has been living a nightmare for the past seven months, watching from afar as Israel carries out its scorched-earth war against her ancestral homeland in the Gaza Strip. Like many Palestinian Americans, the 63-year-old retired fourth-grade teacher from Tampa Bay, Florida, has endured seven months of a steady trickle of WhatsApp messages about the deaths of her relatives.
“You see, my father’s family is originally from Gaza, so they are a big family. And they are not only in Gaza City, but also in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, other parts,” Al-Arian told me. Recently, the trickle of horrors became a flood: “It started with like 27, and then we lost count until I received this message from my relative who said at least 200 had died.”
The catastrophe was the backdrop for Al-Arian’s visit last week to Columbia University in New York City.
Al-Arian has five children, four of whom are journalists or filmmakers. On April 25, two of her daughters, Laila and Lama, both award-winning TV journalists, visited the encampment established by Columbia students to oppose the war in Gaza. Laila, an executive producer at Al Jazeera English with Emmys and a George Polk Award to her name, is a graduate of Columbia’s journalism school. Lama was the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Alfred I. duPont–Columbia Award for her reporting for Vice News on the 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut.
The two sisters traveled to Columbia as journalists to see the campus, and Nahla joined them.
“Of course, I tagged along. You know, why would I sit at the hotel by myself? And I wanted to really see those kids. I felt so down,” she said. “I was crying every day for Gaza, for the children being killed, for the women, the destruction of my father’s city, so I wanted to feel better, you know, to see those kids. I heard a lot about them, how smart they are, how organized, you know? So I said, let’s go along with you. So I went.”
Nahla Al-Arian was on the campus for less than an hour. She sat and listened to part of a teach-in, and shared some hummus with her daughters and some students. Then she left, feeling a glimmer of hope that people — at least these students — actually cared about the suffering and deaths being inflicted on her family in Gaza.
“I didn’t teach them anything. They are the ones who taught me. They are the ones who gave me hope,” she recalled. “I felt much better when I went there because I felt those kids are really very well informed, very well educated. They are the conscience of America. They care about the Palestinian people who they never saw or got to meet.”
Her husband posted a picture of Nahla, sitting on the lawn at the tent city erected by the student protesters, on his Twitter feed. “My wife Nahla in solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students,” he wrote. Nahla left New York, inspired by her visit to Columbia, and returned to Virginia to spend time with her grandchildren.
A few days later, that one tweet by her husband would thrust Nahla Al-Arian into the center of a spurious narrative promoted by the mayor of New York City and major media outlets. She became the exemplar of the dangerous “outside agitator” who was training the students at Columbia. It was Nahla’s presence, according to Mayor Eric Adams, that was the “tipping point” in his decision to authorize the military-style raids on the campus.
USA vs. Al-Arian
On February 20, 2003, Nahla’s husband, Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, was arrested and indicted on 53 counts of supporting the armed resistance group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The PIJ had been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, and the charges against Al-Arian could have put him in prison for multiple life sentences, plus 225 years. It was a centerpiece case of the George W. Bush administration’s domestic “war on terror.” When John Ashcroft, Bush’s notorious attorney general, announced the indictment, he described the Florida-based scholar as “the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian.”
Among the charges against him was conspiracy to kill or maim persons abroad, specifically in Israel, yet the prosecutors openly admitted Al-Arian had no connection to any violence. He was a well-known and deeply respected figure in the Tampa community, where he and Nahla raised their family. He was also, like many fellow Palestinians, a tenacious critic of U.S. support for Israel and of the burgeoning “global war on terror.” His arrest came just days before the U.S. invaded Iraq, a war Al-Arian was publicly opposed to.
The Al-Arian case was, at its core, a political attack waged by Bush’s Justice Department as part of a wider assault on the rights of Muslims in the U.S. The government launched a campaign, echoed in media outlets, to portray Al-Arian as a terror leader at a time when the Bush administration was ratcheting up its so-called global war on terror abroad, and when Muslims in the U.S. were being subjected to harassment, surveillance, and abuse. The legal case against Al-Arian was flimsy, and prosecutors largely sought to portray his protected First Amendment speech and charitable activities as terrorism.
The trial against Al-Arian, a legal permanent resident in the U.S., did not go well for federal prosecutors. In December 2005, following a six-month trial, a jury acquitted him on eight of the most serious counts and deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal on the other nine. The judge made clear he was not pleased with this outcome, and the prosecutors were intent on relitigating the case. Al-Arian had spent two years in jail already without any conviction and was staring down the prospect of years more.
In the face of this reality and the toll the trial against him had taken on his family, Al-Arian agreed to take a plea deal.
He pleaded guilty in 2006 to providing nonviolent support to individuals the government claimed were affiliated with the PIJ. Al-Arian agreed to a short sentence and expedited deportation after his residency was revoked. Throughout the trial, prosecutors failed to provide evidence linking him to violent acts.
After his release in 2008, Al-Arian spent eight years under house arrest, facing what his lawyers described as prosecutorial harassment. They accused the federal prosecutor of bias against Palestinians and raised concerns about Amnesty International’s report of abuse in prison. The case dragged on before prosecutors finally dropped it, leading to Al-Arian’s deportation.
Al-Arian’s lawyer, Jonathan Turley, called the case a troubling chapter in the post-9/11 crackdown, noting the government’s persistence in pursuing charges despite the plea deal. Al-Arian and his family always maintained his innocence, believing he was targeted for his political activism. Al-Arian’s wife Nahla shared that he initially resisted the deal.
Now residing in Turkey, Sami and Nahla Al-Arian are separated from their children and grandchildren in the United States. Despite their situation, Nahla visits them frequently.
During the Columbia raids, officials leaked information to journalists, alleging that the wife of a convicted terrorist was present on campus. Nahla Al-Arian, unaware of the unfolding events, discovered her involvement through social media posts. Feeling betrayed by the authorities’ tactics, she expressed disappointment in the use of such methods to target students.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams referenced Al-Arian’s presence at Columbia as a significant factor in authorizing the raid on the building. Adam pointed to Al-Arian as a specific example of “outside agitators” influencing the protests to support his argument. He mentioned Al-Arian’s connection to terrorism and emphasized that the protests were not a natural evolution but orchestrated by professionals. In various media appearances, Adam reiterated his concerns, stating that Nahla’s presence at Columbia was a key factor in his decision to raid the campus.
However, Nahla, Al-Arian’s daughter, refuted these claims, calling them inflammatory and intended to justify the police raid on the student protest. Despite the NYPD acknowledging that Nahla was not present during the raids, they continued to use her visit as a justification for their actions.
The smear campaign against Nahla extended to right-wing media and social media platforms, with false accusations linking her to terrorism financing. The Al-Arian family has a history of enduring surveillance and trials, stemming from their Palestinian heritage and displacement during the Nakba in 1948.
Amidst the controversy, Nahla expressed anger at being used as a scapegoat and distraction from the ongoing situation in Gaza. She emphasized the importance of focusing on the atrocities in Gaza rather than sensationalized stories like hers. The Al-Arian family remains committed to shedding light on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, despite the challenges they face. Can you rewrite this sentence for me?
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