Rights activist blasts US bias against Muslims

Arab News
SAUDI ARABIA'S FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE DAILY


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Rights activist blasts US bias against Muslims
By Mohammed Alkhereiji, Arab News Staff
Published on 07 February 2003

JEDDAH, 7 February 2003 — Controversial lawyer and political activist Stanley L. Cohen, who is in the Kingdom on a lecture tour, took time out yesterday to talk to Arab News in an exclusive interview.

Cohen condemned the Sept. 11 lawsuit, dammed American foreign policy and the treatment of Muslims in America, and explained why he instigated a landmark lawsuit against the Israeli government.

Cohen pointed out that the Sept. 11 lawsuit has been brought by the same lawyers who sued big tobacco companies in the US.

“It’s a transparent suit driven by a political agenda,” he argued. “It’s clearly fueled by a combination of the Right wing in America, personal ambitions and the lawyers’ agendas. I think there is also a clear connection to the Zionist lobby. The notion of holding a country and its government responsible for the acts of a few people is crazy.”

“But they are probably looking to settle, hence the astronomical figure,” he speculates, adding that in some states it is illegal to start a lawsuit which you have no chance of winning.

Cohen calls the INS detention of hundreds of Muslims in America for visa violations “predictable.”

“Every day, in a host of ways, there’s an increasing encroachment, a repression of all Muslim communities in the US,” he claimed.

“The government periodically comes up with these new security-minded special projects, the driving force behind is the Bush administration’s need to tell the people that we are doing well. Big Brother has everything under control.”

It has become irrelevant, Cohen argued, that these programs are unnecessary in security terms.

George W. Bush, Cohen feels, is “a truly simplistic, sophomoric, guttural politician,” spurred on by the conservative right-wing think tanks.

“I think he is driven by the need to establish his mark on the world,” Cohen added, “but he lacks the intellectual capacity, vision, understanding or sophistication to do so.”

“I’m embarrassed as an American to know that, in the year 2003, the most powerful nation in the world is controlled by someone so shallow and misplaced in his understanding and priorities,” he says.

Last July, Cohen filed a landmark case against Ariel Sharon and other Israeli leaders, as well as the president of the United States and numerous weapons manufactures.

It sought damages on behalf of Palestinian-Americans who have been killed, injured or tortured in Palestine.

“I’m just fighting the war against terror,” Cohen explains, drawing attention to the hypocrisy of exempting Palestinian-Americans from the laws that are designed to protect everyone from terrorism.

“People forget that there are over 40,000 US citizens living in the West Bank. These are my peers, and the same laws apply to them.”



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2003 ArabNews All Rights Reserved.



*Cartoons of recents events concerning war on The Middle East, courtesy of M. Kahil.
.