ZGram - 7/13/2003 - "Federal Court Rules "Goy" Evidence Of Persecution"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

July 13, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

A somewhat unusual story:

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Federal Court Rules "Goy" Evidence Of Persecution

The federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Friday that the hate 
word "goy" is evidence of persecution in Israel, and a San  Jose 
resident received political asylum.  The facts are not as clean as we 
would like them (the victim was half Jewish and  half Arab), and 
"goy" was determined to have "a derogatory  meaning to Arabs."

Nevertheless, this is a bold step into a future when European 
Americans will be able to bring civil and criminal charges against 
those who disparage and demean our children on sidewalks, in school 
buses, and in classrooms.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/07/12/MN37369.DTL

Full story:

Israeli Arab wins asylum in U.S.

Court finds Jewish nation's navy persecuted man who now lives in San Jose.
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, July 12,
2003

An Israeli Arab who lives in San Jose was found eligible for 
political asylum  Friday by a federal appeals court, which said 
Israeli naval forces attacked  and harassed him for a decade in his 
homeland as the child of a mixed marriage.

The attacks on Abrahim Baballah in the Israeli town of Akko on the 
Mediterranean, where he worked as a fisherman, included firing shots 
over his fishing  boat, destroying the boat in a purported rescue and 
wrecking his livelihood, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 
in San Francisco. The court said Baballah was persecuted because of 
his religion and ethnicity.

The attacks on Abrahim Baballah in the Israeli town of Akko on the 
Mediterranean, where he worked as a fisherman, included firing shots 
over his fishing boat, destroying the boat in a purported rescue and 
wrecking his livelihood, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 
in San Francisco. The court said  Baballah was persecuted because of 
his religion and ethnicity. "This decision shows that the fact that a 
country is a democratic country doesn't mean that is incapable of 
committing human rights violations that can  rise to the level of 
persecution," said Musalo, who was a consultant to the U. N. High 
Commissioner for Refugees on the issue of religious persecution.

The Israeli Consulate in San Francisco could not be
reached for comment.

Baballah was the child of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father, the 
only mixed marriage in Akko, the court said. He said employers 
refused to hire him when they learned about his parents, so he worked 
as a fisherman and became a target of daily harassment by the Israeli 
navy. 

Naval crews circled Baballah's boat, sprayed it with water hoses, 
fired bullets over it, pelted him and his crew with eggs and damaged 
his fishing nets  with their propellers, the court said. On one 
occasion, a naval crew boarded the boat, tied Baballah's brother to a 
pole, sprayed him with water in freezing weather, then had the 
brother arrested and imprisoned for more than a year, the court said.

Later, when Baballah's boat ran adrift, he accepted help from an 
Israeli naval crew, which pulled the boat in a way that split it 
apart and laughed as the boat broke up, the court said.

Sailors also followed Baballah in town and called him "goy," which 
means non-Jew and has a derogatory meaning to Arabs, the court said.

Unable to make a living in Israel, Baballah came to the United States 
with his family in 1992, and now owns a restaurant in San Jose. 
Immigration courts ruled him ineligible for asylum, citing the 
tension between Jews and Arabs and saying Baballah was not singled 
out for persecution. The appeals court disagreed "Baballah was the 
victim of terrifying attacks on a frequent basis over a 10-year 
period . . . and risked his life in frustrated attempts to earn a 
livelihood," said Judge Richard Paez in the 3-0 ruling. He said 
Baballah was also persecuted economically, by the destruction of his 
business.

The constant taunt of "goy" showed that Baballah's
tormentors were motivated by his ethnicity and religion, which are 
legal grounds for asylum, Paez said.

author:  begelko at sfchronicle.com
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(Source: 
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/996398F506EE119C88256D5F00830B 
)

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