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AL-BIREH, PALESTINE<br />
I was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 19, 1980, oldest<br />
of seven children of Palestinian immigrants. My parents<br />
weren’t part of the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the Nakba, but<br />
lived in the Palestinian city of Al-Bireh and were merchants.<br />
They came to the United States because they hated the<br />
occupation, not because they were displaced. My parents<br />
made the first pillar of what I call Silent Jihad, IMMIGRATE.<br />
With seven children my parents also observed the second<br />
pillar of Silent Jihad, POPULATE. Silent Jihad might be a new<br />
concept for you to understand so let me fill the reader in:<br />
Silent Jihad groups don’t operate underground. We have<br />
offices, spokesmen, PR people, legal teams, and impressive<br />
websites. We present ourselves as moderate mainstream<br />
groups, and for the most part the media and administration<br />
officials buy this hogwash. We advertise ourselves as civil<br />
rights advocates working to protect the rights of the “Muslim<br />
community.” Using the cover of civil rights activism, we have<br />
been able to score some spectacular successes. In 2012, for<br />
example, more than 1,000 documents and presentations were<br />
purged from counter-terror training programs for the FBI and<br />
other security agencies.
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