Face Off in Chicago’s Fifth District: Pete Dagher vs. Rahm Emmanuel

By Kristin Szremski

The race in Illinois’ 5th Congressional District could have been hyped as being between an Israeli and an Arab: American-born Rahm Emmanuel, who had once served in the Israel Defense Forces, vs. Chicago-born and -raised Pete Dagher, of multi-national descent.

Instead, the media basically ignored Dagher, focusing instead on frontrunners Emmanuel, a former Clinton adviser, and former Illinois state Rep. Nancy Kaszak. Emmanuel, born to Israeli immigrant parents, held dual Israeli-American citizenship until 1978, was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Gulf war. Kaszak now works as an attorney. Both planned to spend about $1 million on their primary campaigns.

Dagher, however, remained undaunted during the race, saying that his blue-collar roots, experience working as a Clinton aide, and heading up the transition team between the Clinton and in-coming George W. Bush administrations was enough to keep him afloat in a heavily contested field. Five Republicans, eight Democrats, and two Libertarians advanced their platforms to voters in a district that spans the upscale Lincoln Park area on Chicago’s north side to the brick bungalows of the city’s and some suburban working class neighborhoods.

Dagher, who is Catholic and who said his heritage is part Assyrian, Armenian, Lebanese and French, garnered an endorsement from the Latin American Police Association, the American Muslim Alliance, former U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater and two other Clinton staffers.

While he embraces his multi-ethnic heritage, Dagher said that his political views definitely have been shaped by his American experience. He advocates a change in U.S. Middle East policy and an end to this country’s massive financial support for Israel. But, he insists, that’s a pro-American stance rather than a pro-Arab one.

“It’s not American to support a country that suppresses another country,” he argued. “We’re [the United States government] advocating peace, and you’re not going to get it unless Palestine gets a homeland.”

In addition to calling for economic aid for a democratic, sovereign state of Palestine, Dagher said the U.S. must recognize that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal. If he made it to the House of Representatives, he added, he would push for an end to the embargoes against Iraq.

Although he realizes his stance on Middle East policy is unpopular on Capitol Hill, Dagher nevertheless would “get on the floor and call it like I see it,” he said.

Dagher first worked in the office of then-Illinois Sen. Paul Simon’s office, where he handled requests from veterans.

Then, in 1993, after buying into then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s charisma and political message, Dagher packed up his car and drove to Little Rock, Arkansas.

“I’m the only guy in the Clinton campaign who just showed up,” Dagher said.

His background—both his heritage and childhood spent in 5th district neighborhoods—lends itself well to his candidacy, Dagher said. He’d been to Lebanon, both before the war in Beirut—when the city still was considered the “jewel of the Middle East”—and afterward, when the country was in tatters.

Before the war, Dagher contends, people of different races, ethnicities and religions lived in peace, a delicate balance that was upset after Israel—with complicit U.S. support—attacked the country to drive out the PLO.

Dagher also lost an aunt in Iraq to diabetes because she couldn’t obtain insulin to treat her disease. The medicine was nearly impossible to get because of the embargoes imposed upon that country. That experience, he said, left him feeling “powerless and helpless.”

“No one wants to be soft on Iraq,” Dagher asserted, “but you’re being soft on Hussain if you let this [embargo] go on. I want to pound this in the floor of the House.”

Dagher admitted that his passion for changing U.S. foreign policy might not appeal to his potential blue-collar, multi-ethnic constituency, to whom issues such as affordable health care are more important. Campaigning, however, Dagher said he stressed how much taxpayer money is wasted because of bad foreign policy.

Despite the fact that Dagher was Clinton’s re-election chief of staff in 1996, his former boss endorsed opponent Emmanuel, who also worked for the Clinton administration.

Dagher downplayed the endorsement, saying the deal had been worked out before he declared his candidacy. Nor would he address Emmanuel’s Gulf war service in the Israel Defense Forces.

Three Kafkaesque Tales

Rabih Haddad sits in a 6-by-9 foot cell, whose only window is “whited out,” allowing light to filter in but preventing him from looking out. He’s allowed one 15-minute phone call per month to his wife, and is handcuffed through a foot-long slot in his door before he’s led out for his 90-minute exercise period, which takes place inside a cage with one stationary bicycle bolted to the floor.

Mohamed Mabrook spent the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in February with his wife, children and other family members knowing full well that in little more than a month’s time, he would be incarcerated for a crime he was convicted of but which he says he didn’t commit.

Anna Mustafa had a plane to catch at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago last December so she could attend her father’s funeral in Palestine. She never made the flight. Instead, she was arrested and charged with three counts of felony disorderly conduct after a nightmarish imbroglio, during which she said a law enforcement officer told her, “These boots are going to stamp and dance on both your and your parents’ graves.”

A group of activists met quietly on a cold winter’s night recently to discuss ways to deal with these three high-profile cases. Mustafa and Mabrook were in attendance. It was the group’s hope to bring media attention to the plight of the three individuals, thereby possibly affecting the cases.

For the most part, it hasn’t done much good.

Andy Thayer, from the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism (CCAWR), did say, however, that frequent demonstrations outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Haddad is being held, have forced his jailers to deliver Haddad’s mail. Until Thayer and others applied pressure via telephone calls and demonstrations, Thayer said, Haddad allegedly didn’t receive even registered mail.

The coalition’s efforts made “Important improvements in his treatment…we got his mail loosened up,” Thayer noted. In fact, Haddad was able to write a letter to Thayer describing his prison condition (see box).

Haddad, the co-founder of Global Relief Foundation, was moved to Chicago in January from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he had been arrested for overstaying his visa even though, according to his attorney, Ashraf Nubani, paperwork to adjust his status had been in the court system for some time.

Haddad has not been charged with a crime. He was transferred to Illinois in order to testify before a federal grand jury, whose purpose has not been revealed to either Haddad or his lawyer. “A U.S. attorney told me he’s [Haddad] not a target of the investigation of the grand jury, and Global Relief is not a target of the grand jury,” Nubani said at the end of February. “It suggests the [government] has nothing on Global Relief.”

Nubani suggested that the moves against his client and the Islamic charities such as Global Relief, Holy Land Foundation and Benevolence International were politically motivated by Sept. 11, and now “various agencies are left to fend for themselves,” he said.

Both Global Relief and Benevolence International, whose assets were seized and offices closed in December, have filed suit against the federal government to have their funds released.

According to Randall Sanborn, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago, “The government has absolutely nothing to say about Rabih Haddad. There is no public record to give us any basis to respond.”

The lack of public record has elicited a number of responses, from a letter written by Michigan Rep. John Conyers, to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, to local demonstrations held by the CCAWW and Refuse and Resist. The latter group passes out blue triangles—symbols used for “disappeareds”—with the names of some of the 5,000 people who have been detained since Sept. 11.

Conyers, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, who was barred from attending Haddad’s Michigan trial related to the immigration charges, was quoted as saying, “The treatment of Pastor Haddad over the last several weeks has highlighted everything that is abusive and unconstitutional about our government’s scapegoating of immigrants in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.”

Nor would U.S. Attorney spokesman Sanborn speak about Mabrook’s case, which began back in 1996, when FBI agents started to investigate Mabrook’s family and business. Surveillance was so thorough that documents show agents even trailed his wife and daughters to a dentist appointment.

Mabrook left his home country of Libya in 1979 because of his anti-Qaddafi activities. In 1986, he and his family were granted political asylum in this country. After completing college and earning an MBA and a Ph.D., Mabrook became a partner in a business that supplied to the oil industry chemicals used to reduce drag in pipelines and to aid oil-spill cleanups. To support that expensive line, the company also produced and sold swimming pool chemicals.

In 1994, the business hired a salesman to place the swimming pool products in stores around the country. According to Mabrook and his lawyer, Steven Shobat, the employee —unbeknownst to his boss—created a fraudulent invoice, for which he received a sizeable commission. He then saved this invoice on the hard drive of Mabrook’s computer—an action that turned out to be significant when federal authorities weren’t able to link Mabrook to any terrorist activity. They finally arrested him for mail fraud, because the fake invoice was billed using the U.S. postal service. Once Mabrook learned of the problem, he said, the company reimbursed the defrauded customers.

None of this information, however, was admitted at Mabrook’s trial. The employee, who already was in prison for similar illegal behavior at other companies, refused to testify unless the government granted him immunity. When prosecutors refused, the employee pleaded the Fifth Amendment. This man’s existence—let alone the fact that his duties included invoicing clients—was withheld from the jury of Mabrook’s peers that contained no Muslims or Arabs.

At one point during the proceedings, prosecutors offered Mabrook a deal, which he refused. “I am really astonished the government wanted a plea bargain,” he said. “There’s no way I can stand in front of a judge and say I’m guilty for something that I didn’t do.”

Ironically, while Haddad spends his days locked down in solitary confinement, in Mabrook’s case, community support only strengthened the prosecutor’s call for a lengthy sentence of 51 months. When some 50 Muslim community and family members attended his sentencing hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Deb Steiner told the judge that such a large showing of support meant the community would be able to care for Mabrook’s wife and 12 children while he was in prison.

As Mabrook prepares to begin his 51-month prison sentence, his lawyer is beginning the appeals process. At the prospect of facing over four years in prison—his infant son will be five years old upon his release—Mabrook had only this to say: “As a Muslim, I leave it to God.”

Mustafa, a mother of seven and grandmother of eight, who also is a former member of the Chicago Board of Education, was indicted recently on three felony counts for allegedly saying she had a bomb in her purse while at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Her story reads like a manuscript from the Theater of the Absurd.

Everything was proceeding smoothly as Mustafa tried to depart for Tel Aviv Dec. 28 in order to attend her father’s funeral in Palestine. She presented her ticket, her U.S. passport, and had her luggage checked and approved, she said.

But, in a seemingly transparent attempt at ethnic profiling, the gate agent offered Mustafa a Muslim meal on her flight. Standard airline procedure usually requires special meal requests to be made days before a scheduled flight. When Mustafa accepted the offer of a halal meal, the nightmare began. Mustafa said her bags were taken off the conveyer belt and put through a newly installed “bomb detection” machine. Confusion ensued when Mustafa started asking questions that went unanswered. At one point, in fact, Mustafa said, a Chicago police officer threatened to arrest her if she didn’t stop asking questions.

Things got out of hand when Mustafa said she offered officials her purse to be scanned through the bomb-detection machine as well. At that point, according to Mustafa, an airline employee shouted, “‘I heard the word bomb.’” The airline worker then began to taunt her, saying, “Lady, you’re going to jail.”

“She was mocking me and laughing at me,” Mustafa told the assembled group of activists.

Apparently, the first police officer on the scene found no reason for arrest, but the second to respond allegedly told her, “ Six-thousand people lost their lives because of people like you,’” Mustafa said.

Mustafa spent the weekend in jail and was released on $50,000 bond. She was fired from her job with the Cook County Circuit Court, where she worked as a clerk, a move Mustafa said is against union policy. She pointed to the case of former Cook County comptroller Miriam Santos, who was charged with money laundering and extortion but kept her job until her conviction in 1999.

“In a real sense, they [her employers] have convicted me already,” Mustafa said, noting that they behave as if “I’m guilty until proven innocent.”

She and her lawyer are hoping there was a surveillance camera at the scene which would prove her innocence. A full two months after the arrest, however, Mustafa said her lawyer has not even received the full police report.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office did not return phone calls for comment.

“People should know that Arab Americans and Muslims have no problem with extra security [at airports],” Mustafa said. “Everyone is concerned with safety. Don’t dehumanize us. Treat us with respect. Do what you have to do, but treat us with respect.”

Mustafa is optimistic about the outcome of her case. “I know I am innocent. I never said I had a bomb in my purse.…I would have had to have been certifiably crazy,” she pointed out. “Somehow, people will see the truth and the truth will prevail.”

Kristin Szremski is news editor at a suburban Chicago newspaper.