Rasmieh Odeh Granted Pre-Sentence Bond

Rasmieh Odeh, a 67-year-old Palestinian convicted of naturalization fraud in Detroit last month, can be freed on bond pending a March 10 sentencing date, a federal judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin A. Drain originally ordered that Odeh be jailed while awaiting her sentence for naturalization fraud, finding that she was a flight risk. Monday's order reverses that, based on Odeh's strong community ties in Chicago. But, Drain indicated, he still has concerns about Odeh's respect for the court, ordering a $50,000 cash bond before she can be released and mandating bi-weekly reports to the probation office.

Jurors found Odeh guilty due to her failure to disclose convictions in an Israeli court stemming from a 1969 terrorist bombing in a Jerusalem supermarket. She is certain to be sentenced for the fraud and faces "certain removal from the United States upon completion of that sentence," Drain wrote. She never would have been admitted to the United States had she been truthful about her record, he added. Being connected with a bombing, which killed two Hebrew University students, "demonstrated a lack of good moral character that is required for eligibility to immigrate."

Between the jury's verdict Nov. 10 and Drain's decision to hold her without bond pending sentencing, a defiant Odeh told supporters outside court that she did not receive justice and described the verdict as racist.

That attitude, along with Odeh's "serial dishonesty" and repeated violations of the court's limitations on her testimony were sufficient to show she should not be trusted to adhere to subsequent court orders and show up for her sentencing, prosecutors argued. She faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Drain granted the pre-sentence bond, but cited the prosecutions concerns about Odeh's "seeming proclivity for dishonesty, as well as her apparent disdain for this Court's Orders." Read the full order here.

Breaking News: Interpol Alert Seeks Arrest of MB's Qaradawi

Interpol issued a bulletin Friday seeking the arrest of the Muslim Brotherhood's most influential cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The bulletin was sparse on details but said that Egypt wanted the 88-year-old Qaradawi "to serve a sentence" for crimes including "incitement and assistance to commit intentional murder."

Qaradawi lives in Qatar. He also is alleged to have had a hand in a massive prison break of Brotherhood members and others during the revolution against then-dictator Hosni Mubarak. Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood official who went on to become Egypt's president in 2012, was among those who escaped.

Qaradawi has been a fierce critic of Egypt's new government and of Morsi's July 2013 ouster after one year in office. "From the day he (new President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi) came, all we saw is killing and bloodshed, detention and women being raped," Qaradawi before elections in May.

In February, Egyptian officials demanded that Qatar extradite Qaradawi. They also asked Interpol to arrest Qaradawi a year ago.

Qaradawi described the recent acquittal of ousted Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak as "the saddest day in the history of human justice and a disgrace on Egyptian judiciary."

According to the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch, Interpol issued a "red notice" which is both its highest level alert, and a move subject to later review by the international police agency.

AP's Weak Push Back Against Former Reporter's Criticism

The Associated Press is firing back at a former reporter who claims the global news agency helps set a narrative for "the Israel story" that underplays or ignores Palestinian incitement and violence while trumpeting criticism of Israel.

In a statement, AP rejected the allegations Matti Friedman made in a Nov. 30 article published by The Atlantic. "There's no 'narrative' that says it is Israel that doesn't want peace; the story of this century-long conflict is more complicated than that," wrote media relations director Paul Colford.

The rapid response indicates that Friedman landed some punches. But Colford's statement doesn't hold up under scrutiny, Lori Lowenthal Marcus writes in The Jewish Press. For starters, it pits the claims of a reporter who was there against an AP flack who was not.

Marcus details Colford's aggressive push to get The Jewish Press to run the full AP statement. She then shows how one point challenged by Colford actually has more proof behind it than Friedman provided. In his Atlantic piece, Friedman described the AP's blacklisting of Bar Ilan University Professor Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, a fact-checking organization which seeks to "publicize distortions of human rights issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict and provide information and context" for the public.

The AP Jerusalem bureau gave "explicit orders to reporters ... to never quote" Steinberg or his organization, Friedman wrote. That never happened, Colford's statement said. AP cited them "in at least a half-dozen stories since the 2009 Gaza war."

But Marcus found that comment wasn't really responsive to what Friedman wrote. Friedman's reference covered Operation Cast Lead, a 2008-09 round of fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Two of the articles Colford cites preceded that conflict. The others dealt with unrelated issues.

Meanwhile, a former colleague of Friedman's told Marcus about an incident in which that AP's bureau chief in 2009 cut a quote from Steinberg from his story. The editor told reporter Mark Lavie that "AP reporters 'can't interview Steinberg as an expert because he is identified with the right wing,'" Marcus writes.

Some sources might merit blacklisting by a news organization. But that action should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances, such as a source who provided false information in the past or who might incite violence. Deliberately withholding an opposing point of view from readers, especially in an issue as hotly debated as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seems to fly in the face of responsible reporting.

And that goes to what we think is Friedman's core point. He's not saying journalists should be passive observers. They just shouldn't appoint themselves to be referees.

Friedman posted his own rebuttal on Facebook, saying he doesn't want the Steinberg blacklisting to "obscure the broader argument" about how Israel is covered by foreign media. AP's statement, he added, harkens back to "the Philip Morris Handbook for Amoral Corporate Damage Control – charge 'distortions and half-truths' to obscure the fact that you actually have to acknowledge serious errors, throw out some vague numbers to make it all sound scientific, and smear the critic as a publicity hound."

Read Marcus' account here and Friedman's Atlantic article here.

Feds: Stolen Passport Helps Minnesota Woman Join Syrian Jihadists

Another Minnesota resident of Somali descent has been charged with a crime related to an attempt to join Syrian jihadists.

Yusra Ismail, a 20-year-old St. Paul woman, is charged with stealing and misusing a passport to travel to Syria. Ismail, who is not a U.S. citizen, left the United States Aug. 21, apparently using the passport she stole from an acquaintance.

Although there are no records currently available to show Ismail traveled beyond Norway, an affidavit in support of the complaint said that Ismail "departed the United States using a stolen passport and likely traveled to Syria."

On Aug. 24, Ismail wrote to her family saying she was now in "Sham," described in the affidavit as "the area within Syria and Iraq where the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ('ISIS') is attempting to establish a caliphate."

Although Ismail was scheduled to return to the U.S. on Sept. 1, there is no evidence she came back.

Thus far seven people, including Ismail, have been charged this year with traveling to Syria in support of ISIS. Last week, two other Minneapolis-area Somalis were charged with conspiring to provide material support to ISIS, also known as the Islamic State. Abdullahi Yusuf and Abdi Nur allegedly obtained expedited passports and booked flights to Turkey using cash from unknown sources. Nur, who left the country in May and has not returned, told an undercover federal agent he went "to the brothers." He added that we "will see each other in afterlife inshallah" (God willing).

Hamas, Jordanian Brotherhood Smuggle Weapons into Palestinian Territories

Recent arrests in Jordan and Israel show that Hamas and the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood are trying to smuggle weapons into Gaza and the West Bank. After Egypt's army destroyed tunnels joining Gaza and Sinai that had been lucrative smuggling paths, Hamas has been cultivating replacements.

The terrorist organization recruited 20 fishermen to smuggle weapons and explosives into Gaza, Jerusalem Online reports.

The Shin Bet (Israel's domestic security agency) arrested one fisherman, Hussam Bakr, after he visited his child who was being treated for cancer in an Israeli hospital.

Bakr told interrogators that Hamas forced him to become a smuggler after terrorists detained and beat him, accusing him of collaborating with Israel. Hamas threatened to put Bakr on an "internal security list" to prevent him from entering Israel to visit his child. He gave in.

"They told us to be quiet and not to speak to anyone. And if the Egyptians or the Israelis chase after us, throw it [weapons and explosives] all to the sea and to say that we are fishermen, to not say what we are doing," Bakr reportedly said.

The Israeli Navy has foiled numerous attempts to smuggle weapons to Hamas off the coast of Gaza since the end of last summer's war.

"There have been a number of smuggling attempts in recent months that we have thwarted. We are monitoring the area day and night; thwarting smuggling is one of central missions," a senior Israeli navy source told the Jerusalem Post.

Meanwhile, members of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood reportedly tried to create a secret military organization planning terrorist attacks in the West Bank, senior Jordanian sources told Al-Hayat.

Jordanian officials arrested 21 Muslim Brotherhood personnel for smuggling money and weapons into the West Bank. Two of the suspects were charged with getting military training in Gaza.

The Jordanian sources revealed that "these two young men tried to train other Muslim Brotherhood members in order to carry out operations in the occupied West Bank." Salah al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official based in Turkey, also came up in the investigation.

These allegations come after Israeli authorities thwarted a large-scale transnational Hamas network planning to attack Israelis in Jerusalem, the West Bank and overseas. Hamas' new headquarters in Turkey reportedly oversees the terrorist organization's West Bank operations.

Ex-AP Reporter – Media Imbalance Toward Israel Becomes Rooted

Life as a foreign correspondent often is portrayed as dangerous, sexy work for a journalist.

But it also can be insular – you're a stranger in a strange land, often dropping in with little knowledge about history, culture and context. That can inhibit the breadth of reporting presented to the world, a glaring flaw when it comes to reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, former Associated Press Jerusalem correspondent Matti Friedman writes in an article for The Atlantic.

Journalists monitor each other's work and tend to view human rights groups and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well meaning do-gooders immune from scrutiny. "Are they bloated, ineffective, or corrupt? Are they helping, or hurting? We don't know," Friedman writes, "because these groups are to be quoted, not covered."

Over time, that arrangement helped entrench a narrative among foreign correspondents in Israel, writes Friedman, who reported out of the AP's Jerusalem office from 2006-11. It is the second essay from the veteran journalist on how the media covers Israel. In August, Friedman provided first-hand examples of stories which were spiked if they made the Palestinians look intransigent, or made Israelis look good.

A "distaste for Israel has come to be something between an acceptable prejudice and a prerequisite for entry," he writes in the Atlantic piece. "The Israel story" is "a simple narrative in which there is a bad guy who doesn't want peace and a good guy who does."

A New York Times editor unintentionally reinforced Friedman's point last month when he took to Twitter to admit his willingness to ignore Palestinian incitement and bigotry until "they have [a] sovereign state to discriminate with."

When events conflict with that narrative, Friedman writes, they are under-reported or not reported at all. So a 2013 rally at the West Bank's Al-Quds University supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and invoking Nazi imagery was widely known among Western journalists but generated little coverage until Brandeis University suspended a partnership program with Al-Quds.

Or, more recently: "The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn't report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP's Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn't report it. (This also happened.)"

Hamas understands this reality and manipulates journalists to further advance it. So some stories hint that Hamas no longer is wed to its founding, anti-Semitic charter and its calls for Israel's destruction. Others falsely cast Hamas as open to peace and moderation.

Friedman's essay is important because he writes from experience, not anger. It is packed with too much insight to fully capture here. To read the full essay, click here.

Plotting New Violence, Hamas Dissolves Unity Government with Fatah

Hamas announced Sunday that the unity government with Fatah has collapsed.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri accused Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas of spreading lies by claiming that Hamas and Israel held secret negotiations concerning Hamas rule in the West Bank.

In an interview on Egyptian television, reported by Israel's Channel 10, Abbas claimed that Israel offered Hamas control over half of the West Bank and future negotiations would decide control over the remaining territory. Abbas' unsupported claims overlook the fact that Israel foiled an extensive Hamas plot to initiate a third Intifada and a carry out a coup to oust the PA in the West Bank earlier this year.

At the time, Abbas called the Israeli information "a grave threat to the unity of the Palestinian people and its future," ordering his security forces to investigate the Hamas plot.

Now, the internal Palestinian rift has led Hamas to end the unity government with Abbas' Fatah faction.

This development comes in context of yet another major Hamas terrorist plot. Last Thursday, the Shin Bet (Israel's Security Agency) and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) foiled a large-scale Hamas network in the West Bank that planned to attack the Teddy soccer stadium and the light rail system in Jerusalem. The plot also featured car bombings and kidnapping of Israelis in the West Bank and abroad. The cell also wanted to attack Israeli military and traffic targets in the West Bank, infiltrate into Israeli communities, and initiate terrorist cells in Jordan to conduct cross-border attacks. The uncovered plot revealed numerous terror cells and Hamas personnel training abroad.

More than 30 people were arrested.

According to the Shin Bet, Hamas' headquarters in Turkey is overseeing the network of West Bank terrorist cells. The terrorist organization's base in Turkey was also directly responsible for attempting to orchestrate a mass-casualty attack and overthrow of the Palestinian Authority earlier this year.

Turkey is a NATO country that openly supports Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization. It denies the Israeli claim, saying it talks with Hamas, "but would not under any circumstances allow a terror group to operate from its territory."

But senior Hamas official Salah Arouri openly operates in the country, and is suspected of helping facilitate the June kidnapping and murder of three Yeshiva students which triggered a summer-long conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

2 Somali Minnesotans Charged with Supporting ISIL

Two men were charged Tuesday for providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as the Islamic State (IS).

According to the complaint, 18-year-old Abdullahi Yusuf aroused authorities' suspicion last April when he applied for an expedited passport in Minneapolis. He claimed that he was traveling to Turkey but couldn't provide details about "his travel itinerary, travel companions, hotel location or the name or address of a friend in Turkey who he claimed to have met recently via Facebook." The passport specialist found this "unusual" and contacted his supervisor who, in turn, alerted the FBI.

On May 5, the same day he obtained his passport, Yusuf opened a Wells Fargo checking account. Even though he had no known sources of income, Yusuf deposited $1,500 into the account later that month. He then bought an Aeroflot airplane ticket to fly from Minneapolis to Istanbul on May 28. The same debit card was used by a former Minnesota resident identified as H.M. to buy an airline ticket on March 9, the complaint said. H.M., who is believed to be fighting in Syria, allegedly exchanged several telephone calls and text messages with Yusuf.

Yusuf's co-defendant Abdi Nur, 20, also obtained an expedited U.S. passport and opened a checking account the same day, depositing $1,540 into it. He then bought an airline ticket to Turkey. Nur left for Turkey on May 29, but did not return to the U.S. on June 16 as scheduled, the complaint said.

Nur later told an undercover agent on social media that he had gone "to the brothers." He added that we "will see each other in afterlife inshallah," and, "You cant come looking for me its to late for that" (sic) and "im not coming back" (sic).

Nur was Facebook "friends" with Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan, one of dozens of Minneapolis area Somalis who left the U.S. to fight with the terrorist group al-Shabaab in Somalia. Hassan was indicted in absentia in 2009 for providing material support to the Somali terrorist group.

"More than 16,000 recruits from over 90 countries traveled to Syria to become foreign terrorist fighters with alarming consequences," Assistant Attorney for National Security General John P. Carlin said in a Justice Department statement announcing the charges Tuesday. "This is a global crisis and we will continue our efforts to prevent Americans from joining the fight and to hold accountable those who provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations."

Prosecution: Lies Should Keep Rasmieh Odeh Detained

Attorneys for Rasmieh Odeh say a federal judge was "unreasonable and unfair" when he ordered Odeh held without bond Nov. 10 pending a spring sentencing date.

Odeh faces up to 10 years in prison and subsequent deportation from the United States after being convicted of naturalization fraud.

Her conviction was based on her failure to disclose 10 years spent in an Israeli prison after being convicted for a series of 1969 Jerusalem bombings that killed two college students. On applications for a visa and later for naturalization as an American citizen, Odeh claimed to have never been arrested, convicted or imprisoned.

While she claims she was tortured and really was innocent in the bombings, immigration officials testified that she never would have been allowed into the country if they knew about her true record.

In paperwork filed earlier this week, defense attorney Michael Deutsch said that, if given a chance, he could show Odeh's "unique and extraordinary ties to her community" which would prove she is no flight risk. Odeh already is being punished, Deutsch wrote, "beginning with her sudden frightening and humiliating physical seizure and handcuffing in the courtroom, in front of the large group of her supporters and friends and clients." She has no warm clothes or blankets in the Michigan jail holding her.

In response, prosecutors say that Odeh's word is not worth much, and the facts supporting her conviction show "serial dishonesty carried out over decades."

Odeh shows a "lack of respect for this Court and these proceedings." Between her conviction and her bond revocation, Odeh slammed the "racist verdict." And during her testimony, Odeh repeatedly violated the court's order not to discuss her view that her Israeli conviction was unjust, since the issue for jurors to decide involved Odeh's answers to U.S. immigration applications. That shows "she pays no heed to this Court's orders," prosecutors wrote.

As Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson notes at the Legal Insurrection blog, the government response included new disclosures which further undermine Odeh's story.

Israeli officials "found explosive bricks in her room" the night they arrested Odeh, the reply says. And while Odeh claims her father, by then a U.S. citizen, was forced by their Israeli captors to rape her and watch her be abused, he reported nothing remotely out of the ordinary when he met with an American diplomat at the U.S. Consulate. According to a cable attached to the prosecution memo, Odeh's father reported his daughter complained she was in "uncomfortable, overcrowded jail conditions … no worse than standard treatment afforded majority detainees at Jerusalem jail."

Odeh, prosecutors wrote, "has been telling stories for many years without any basis in truth, and continued to tell them in the present trial even after the Court told her directly that such evidence was not admissible at trial."

That record should outweigh Odeh's claim that she deserves to be released from jail pending her sentencing, they argued.

Raid Shows Enhanced Use of Fireworks as Palestinian Riot Weapon

Israeli police intercepted a large shipment of weapons intended for Arab rioters in the east Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Post reports. Israeli authorities seized two shipping containers from China, which arrived in Ashdod, consisting of fireworks, knives, and Tasers. The fireworks were hidden within Christmas decorations bound for the mostly Arab Christian neighborhood of Beit Hanina in east Jerusalem.

The containers included 18,000 prohibited fireworks, 5,200 commando knives, 5,500 Tasers, 4,300 flashlights capable of being converted into Tasers, and 1,000 swords.

Click here to watch Israeli authorities uncover the weapons shipment.

Jerusalem detectives collaborated with Israeli tax and customs officials in the undercover investigation. Police arrested three of the suspects after they claimed the containers at the Ashdod port and dropped them off in an Afula storehouse.

In recent weeks, Palestinian rioters increasingly used fireworks as a weapon against Israeli police and soldiers, especially in East Jerusalem. Potentially deadly firecrackers and large roman candles have been fired at Israeli security personnel. Some are capable of penetrating protective police gear, including shields.

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