Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Obama Brings Pro - Saddam, Anti - Israel Palestinian Al Waleed "Refugees" To US
Obama Brings Pro - Saddam, Anti - Israel Palestinian Al Waleed "Refugees" To US
September 14, 2009
Obama Brings Pro-Saddam, Anti-Israel Palestinian Al Waleed "Refugees" To US
Obama Brings Pro-Saddam, Anti-Israel Palestinian Al Waleed "Refugees" To US
By WILLIAM MAYER and BEILA RABINOWITZ
September 14, 2009 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Since the creation of Israel in 1948, approximately 35,000 Palestinians have made the trek to Iraq welcomed especially by Saddam Hussein who wanted to make a statement of support for the "Palestinian cause."
These non-Iraqis were given special treatment by the outlaw regime including free or heavily subsidized housing.
Now with team Obama tilting against Israel and towards the Muslim world, his administration has made the determination that approximately 1,350 of these dregs of Iraq will be resettled in the United States provided with public assistance and placed on the glide-path to full U.S. citizenship.
"...Obama administration's push to resettle in America, over the next few months, more than 1,300 Palestinians who were once among the showcase beneficiaries in Saddam Hussein's Iraq..."
The first family is scheduled to arrive in Southern California on September, 16.
In a lengthy in-depth piece written for Forbes Magazine by Claudia Rosett [see, Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Guests Of Saddam, http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/29/state-department-saddam-hussein-palestinian-opinions-columnists-claudia-rosett.html] the author lays out many of the details of the case, coming to the conclusion, "Before this mills quietly through the gears now turning within the Obama administration, surely the American public deserves to hear more?"
Working actively to promote the resettlement is the radical Palestinian group Al-Awda [Arabic for Right to Return] an organization which supports Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
"They thus became refugees again, originally as a result of the Zionist theft and colonial occupation of Palestine beginning in 1948. Some became refugees also when they were expelled from Kuwait in 1991 by the US-backed Kuwaiti government. Now, after years of waiting, many of the refugees stranded in the camps on the borders of Iraq are being relocated largely to Europe and the US, which continues its occupation of Iraq to this day."
[source, Al Awda email, full text located here, http://ccun.org/Opinion%20Editorials/2009/September/14%20o/Palestinians%20Arriving%20in%20the%20US%20from%20Iraq,%20Urgent%20Help%20Needed%20to%20Support%20them.htm]
Below a few images from one of many demonstrations organized by Al-Awda:
That this resettlement effort by team Obama is thoroughly political should be obvious.
Consider the following from the State Department's 2008 Human Rights Report which indicates no great humanitarian crisis in these camps, "Since the end of 2007 there have been few reports of attacks and arrests of refugees in central and southern Iraq. Refugees were targeted periodically in attacks carried out by insurgents, militias, and criminals. According to UNHCR, there has been a reduction in general violence in central Iraq and attacks against Palestinians. There were some credible reports that police targeted Palestinians for arbitrary arrest, detention, house raids, and extortion." [source, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/nea/119116.htm]
Though the State Department has been reluctant to provide more than surface background about this operation, the Department of Homeland Security has been less so, revealing the shockingly shoddy job whereby by the residents of Al Waleed were supposedly vetted
"some 1,000 Palestinians at Al Waleed have already been interviewed for admission to the U.S. They are expected to arrive by early next year. But their names and specific histories are confidential. Also confidential are the interview questions, the number of U.S. officers conducting the interviews, and the amount of time spent per interviewee. While stressing that "National security is always at the forefront of our mind," Homeland Security officials describe the interview process preceding the final security clearance as "non-adversarial," with interpreters provided if needed, and efforts to make sure the interviewees "feel quite comfortable."
[source, ibid]
Asked if any of the Palestinians from Al Waleed have been rejected on security grounds, a Homeland Security officer replied: 'I can't go into that.'"
Absent any real driving humanitarian reason for providing U.S. citizenship to such substantial numbers of pro-Saddam, radical Palestinians and given the obviously less-than-rigorous vetting process of these "refugees," we can't begin to comprehend what reason - aside from simply another tip-of -the-hat by the Obama administration to the "Muslim world" ala his Cairo speech - might be behind this move aside from the most base type of gamesmanship, grounded in this administration's antipathy towards Israel.
Perhaps even worse, dumping this number of less-than-model, future citizens into the hands of American Jew-haters such as Al-Awda and others, constitutes a national security nightmare in the making.
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=waleed9.14.09%2Ehtm
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