Posted on 07/27/2006 5:49:03 AM PDT by markomalley
WASHINGTON — A University of Akron geography professor has been accused by Israel of spying for Hezbollah and Iran, his attorney and Israeli officials in the United States said yesterday.
Ghazi Falah is being held in an Israeli jail. He was arrested July 8 in northern Israel, but Israeli officials and Falah’s attorney, Husein abu-Husein, had been prohibited by an Israeli court from saying why.
"He was taking pictures of Israeli installations along the northern border," said Nancy Goldfarb, spokeswoman for the Israeli Consulate General in Philadelphia. "He was arrested on suspicion that his pictures were taken for intelligence purposes. ... I don’t know whether he will be indicted."
Husein confirmed yesterday that Falah was taking photographs, but he said they were for research. Falah has written academic articles about the borders of Israel and a future Palestinian state.
One of the photographs he took included a military antenna, Husein said, but Falah denies spying.
"He is very clear that he is not a spy," Husein said from Israel, shortly after meeting with his client for the first time since the arrest. "As a specialist in geography, he was documenting and taking pictures in the north area in Israel, just as he had in the south of Lebanon when he went there last June."
Falah’s joint Israeli-Canadian citizenship allows him to travel easily in the Islamic world. He was in Tehran, Iran’s capital, three years ago on an academic trip, Husein said.
An Israeli court extended Falah’s detention through Sunday, and an appeal is scheduled for today in Haifa.
The court lifted a gag order on the case yesterday after requests from Haaretz, the newspaper reported. Police requested the gag order when they arrested Falah at a beach near Nahariya, just south of the Israel-Lebanon border.
Until yesterday, Falah, 53, had been denied access to an attorney under another Israeli law. His son, Naail, 23, said the family in Wadsworth, near Akron, has been wondering why he was being held. They were relieved to know what the accusation was because they considered it without merit, he said.
The arrest of Falah came four days before the current conflict began.
"Gotta love these college profs nowadays/sarc"
Yeah. And they can have the rest of them, too - especially the 101 of them in the book by David Horowitz, "The Professors".
I'm glad at least one of them is put away. Our college students are better off by that little increment, at least until another traitor replaces him.
Why does this NOT surprise me?
Dr Ghazi Falah is a geographer, who is currently a tenured professor at the University of Akron. His research is interesting and unusual in that is spans fields of both physical and human geography, and focuses on the geography of the Islamic world.
Falah gained his PhD from Durham University, England - his doctoral thesis was 'The Processes and Patterns of Sedentarization of the Galilee Bedouin, 1880-1982' . Since then, however, he has published works with titles including 'No longer 'Lost in the Desert': Human Geography from within the Arab World since 1985' (2001) and 'Bridging the gap: Palestinian and Israeli discourses on autonomy and statehood' (1997), as well as editing 'Some Geographical Aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict' (1990)
He has held academic posts at the University of Wales, Lampeter in the United Kingdom, the University of Hebron in Palestine, the University of Toronto in Canada and the University of Akron in the US.
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Falah’s joint Israeli-Canadian citizenship --Good, he won't serve much time if convicted, but at least he won't be coming back to the US.
Hmmm. If he was spying he has been spying for a long time. I wonder if they have known about this guy for years.
How will taking photos of Israeli installations apply to a geography lesson?
Just doing the espionage that college professors do. It's "research", you know.
Lock him up and throw away the key.
So what's the big whoop about this?
Every geography book I've ever seen is chock-full of pictures of military equipment.
Hope they cap his a$$...
Hope some moron from the State Department ask that an "Aamerican Citizen" be sent back home to the US. Lose the bastard in an Israeli Prison.
Mount him as a hood ornament on the front of an Israeli tank.
Canada ping.
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Some of those books actually sound interesting.
I would think that holding Israeli citizenship, even accompanied by a dual nationality, would make travel extremely difficult in the Islamic world. Maybe they meant to say, in the Infidel world.
He was in Tehran, Iran’s capital, three years ago on an academic trip, Husein said.
It was Jihad training so therefore it's academic.
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He might be a Canadian citizen by birth, and an Israeli citizen by law. If he is traveling on the Canadian passport, then his Israeli citizenship would remain "submerged," unless he's picked-up by Israeli authorities. No extradition for you, Professor.
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