Assalamu'alaikum,

Recently the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is
the largest Arab-American grassroots activist organization in the United
States, was asked why they don't sue pro-Israeli organizations in the same
way that they sue Arab and Muslim organizations. We feel the answer the
ADC has provided below is quite instructive and we would like to share it
with you. It is easy to say "let's sue," but somebody has to pay and it
takes a lot of money. That is not to say that the Arab and Muslim
community does not have the funds in their communities, which we are
convinced that they do, but there is lack of will to contribute to this
effort. Our enemies are quite aware of this and they will continue to
launch nuisance law suits against us until they completely drain our
resources. When this takes place there will no longer be any Muslim
leadership in place in this country to defend the rights of Muslims and
Arabs. Are we willing to take that chance?

Read on......


From Kamal Nawash <legal@...>

Recently, ADC has received many questions about why we dont sue
pro-Israeli organizations in the same way that they sue Arab and Muslim
organizations. I would like to shed light on this issue.

ADC is very eager to file law suites against any organization or country
that abuses the rights of Arabs or Arab Americans. ADC has recently
settled a case with ADL after suing them for spying on our community.
When we sued ADL we were advised that the case would not last more than
a year or two and would probably not cost more than a hundred thousand
dollars. However, the case lasted ten years, and at one point the case
was costing $80,000 per month. Consequently, because our resources are
much more finite than the pro-Israeli organizations we have to be much
more selective in the cases we pursue.

However, this is not to say that we are not interested in suing. In
fact, we recently studied the feasability of suing on behalf of Arab
Americans tortured in Israel. Early estimates indicate that such a
lawsuit may last at least five years. We are trying to convince other
organizations to work with us on this endeavor. While it is not
impossible for ADC to take on such a cases, it must be noted that ADC
differs from the pro-Israeli organizations in way that limits our
ability to take on these expensive cases. The Arab and Arab American
communities are much more vulnerable than the Jewish communities to such
things as employment discrimination, discrimination in places of higher
education and places of public accommodations. For ADC to initiate
cases like those initiated by the pro-Israeli organizations ADC would
have to completely eliminate our services to the thousands of people who
call us seeking our help. Those people who call ADC for help do so
because they are vulnerable and have no where else to turn. We simply
can not and will not turn our backs on them.

Moreover, it should be noted that AIPACs budget is more than $40
million while ADCs budget is $1.4 million. AIPAC has more than 100
employees while we have 18. In short, ADC is striving to reach a point
where we can challenge Israels abuses on all fronts, including American
Courts. Hopefully one day, through your support we will be as strong as
AIPAC and then we can finally challenge and bring to justice all those
who abuse our rights, including officials of the Israeli government.


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Proudly Serving Palestine and Al-Quds ooooooooooooooo
___________________________________________| |___

Islamic Association for Palestine ___ _ ____
P.O. Box 74353, Dallas, TX 75374 |_ _| / \ | _ \
Tel: (972) 669 - 9595 | | / _ \ | |_) |
Fax: (972) 669 - 9597 | | / ___ \ | __/
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