While hate crimes have gone up since 9/11, prosecution for such cases has also risen, which is a welcome development, writes James Zogby* On Friday, 11 July 2008, a resident of Arlington, Virginia, was sentenced to two concurrent one- year prison terms for threatening my life and using hate-filled intimidation to violate my civil rights and those of my staff at the Arab American Institute. Upon release, he will be on supervised probation for three more years and be required both to perform community service and undergo psychiatric counselling. A simple enough story, on the surface. But there is a number of things here that need to be told. While the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not been well-led during the past eight years, the career attorneys in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division and the FBI agents who work with them investigating rights violations deserve significant credit for tracking down and prosecuting hate crimes against Arab Americans and American Muslims. Arab Americans, myself included, have been subjected to threats and violence for decades now. But never before have the agencies of the US government been so committed to hunting these criminals down and punishing them. Since 2001, in all, the Civil Rights Division has convicted 166 such criminals. I know of their work, firsthand, since three of these cases involved individuals who threatened me. While credit is due to the above-mentioned law enforcement officials, serious questions must be raised about the behaviour of the US State Department in this affair. The person who was sentenced last week was a 25-year career Foreign Service officer at the State Department who had twice been stationed in Lebanon. His two phone calls and four e-mail messages to my office were so obscene and so violent that I cannot reprint them in full. Sent to me, and some members of my staff, in the midst of the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006, he said, in part, "The only good Lebanese is a dead Lebanese. The only good Arab is a dead Arab"; called my staff and me "wicked and evil"; said that we "should burn in the fires of hell for all eternity" and that the "US would be safer without" us. There was worse. Much worse. The messages were frightening, and of concern. Even more disturbing was when investigating law enforcement officers told me that the perpetrator worked at the State Department. More troubling still was the fact that after State Department officials were notified of his behaviour, they did nothing and allowed the individual to remain at his job for another nine months until he was able to retire with a full pension. Perhaps worst of all was the fact, revealed in court, that the convicted Foreign Service officer had engaged in other anti-Arab behaviour earlier in his career and that nothing was done by the State Department to censure or stop him then either. That the State Department did nothing to correct this bigoted and criminal behaviour is unacceptable for many reasons -- not least of which is that it compromises the work of so many fine career Foreign Service officers, dedicated public servants who both serve America well and respect the people of the Arab world. Finally, a word about hate crimes. There are some who argue that obscene, hateful and threatening language should not be punished since to do so would be a violation of free speech. (This, in fact, was the initial defence raised by the individual in this case, before he ultimately pled guilty to the charges against him). They are wrong. Such behaviour is a crime, and individuals who commit these crimes do so precisely because they seek to violate the free speech of others. And though their targets are individuals, the intended victims are entire communities who the hate criminals seek to intimidate into silence. Hate crimes are an extension of bigotry and political exclusion. Blacks, Jews, gays and others have been repeatedly targeted by these crimes, and so, too, have Arab Americans and American Muslims. There were those who discriminated against and defamed Arab Americans (as terrorist supporters) and pressed political leaders to exclude Arab Americans from the mainstream -- all of this contributing to the climate that would incite some to threaten or commit acts of violence. My friend Alex Odeh, California director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, was murdered in 1985. He had been threatened on a number of occasions by phone and by mail. I personally brought Alex's complaints to the FBI. Tragically, at the time, they did not respond. And to this day, no one has been indicted for Odeh's murder. Over the past 38 years, I have, on many occasions, been a target. I have been threatened, attacked, and -- at one point -- my office was firebombed. For most of this time law enforcement did little to intervene. Thankfully this has changed. While the number of these threats and acts of violence may have increased since 11 September 2001, because of the work of the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ, and FBI agents working on hate crimes, the number of convictions has gone up even more. The vigorous work of law enforcement and, in particular, the sentence meted out in this case, sends a clear message that these crimes will not be tolerated. For that I and my staff, and my community, are thankful. * The writer is president of the Arab American Institute, Washington, DC.
