FBI Interviews of Arab-Americans
No one should take seriously the reasons advanced by our government in a feeble attempt to justify the FBI’s indiscriminate interviews of Arab-Americans. For years, there have been unfounded rumors of imminent acts of Arab-sponsored terrorism in the United States and the FBI has never interviewed Jewish-Americans under the guise of providing protection.
Moreover, after the assassination of Alex Odeh (a prominent Arab-American who advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state), the FBI refrained from interviewing Jewish-Americans even though the FBI believed then (and believes now) that Odeh was murdered by a group of extremists now hiding in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Of course, to have done so would have been pure folly, just as it is now to conduct wholesale interviews of Arab-Americans.
At the risk of beating a dead horse, I must point out that the FBI has never adopted a policy of interviewing Irish-Americans due to the activities of the Irish Republican Army, Latino-Americans due to the activities of Colombian cocaine smugglers and so on.
Clearly, interviewing Arab-Americans can be explained only by the existence of bigotry and bias at the highest levels of our government. Shame on you, George Bush! Shame on you, William Sessions!
MICHAEL J. KHOURI, Irvine
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