“We recently received complaints that FBI agents contacted our community members directly, either by phone or by going to their homes, to question them”.
Muslims in the United States were subjected to intense scrutiny and follow-up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) amid Israel’s current onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, a lawyer at the largest Muslim civil liberties organization in the US has said.
Dina Chehata, civil rights managing attorney for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Los Angeles office, told the Anadolu news agency that Muslims in the US have been followed by the FBI for many years.
Thanks to today's 9-0 Supreme Court ruling in our favor, the FBI can no longer easily evade our lawsuits challenging the govt's discriminatory, Orwellian watchlist. Check out the video to learn about the watchlist's impact on American Muslims and then donate to support our work! pic.twitter.com/7ImAGxx5Ao
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) March 20, 2024
However, complaints have increased after the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza following the October 7 Resistance operation.
“CAIR’s Los Angeles office has received numerous complaints from members of the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities in Southern California,” Chehata said.
“After the Israeli war, we recently received complaints that FBI agents contacted our community members directly, either by phone or by going to their homes, to question them. We consider this to be FBI surveillance and interrogation of our community,” she reportedly said.
Tracking People
Chehata stated, “There have been complaints that federal and local law enforcement have asked community members whether they support Hamas, whether they support the use of violence in the war region, and their views on Israel and Hamas.”
“We believe that many people in our community are being watched and surveilled by the FBI,” she added.
“We also know that the FBI is tracking many people who are not reported directly to us. Therefore, we know that the numbers in the reports we received do not represent the number of people the FBI agents were actually tracking; many more people were investigated.”
Chehata said CAIR has “issued a warning to our community to be vigilant as we have noticed several consecutive reports of agents interrogating Palestinians over the past week or two.”
Three Palestinian Students Shot in Suspected Hate Crime in Vermont
Throughout the past five months of Israel’s war crimes in the besieged Gaza Strip, Western nations have seen a staggering rise in anti-Muslim or Islamophobic acts and sentiments, the Middle East Monitor reported.
That rise has at times even led to physical attacks on individuals, such as the shooting of three American-Palestinian students and a landlord’s killing of his tenant’s child – both of which were perpetrated in the US.
On the shooting of the students in Vermont, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said on X: “We have reason to believe that the shooting was motivated by the three (victims) being Arab.”
The students were reportedly all wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh when they were attacked.
Staggering Death Toll
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 31,923 Palestinians have been killed, and 74,096 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
90 Palestinians Executed, Hundreds Detained – Siege on Al-Shifa Continues for Third Day
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’
(PC, Anadolu, MEMO)
