James Hanna
21 June 2002
James Hanna
My name is James Hanna. I am a 24-year-old American citizen currently living in Munich, Germany. I am of Coptic (Christian) Egyptian heritage. Both of my parents were born in Cairo, Egypt, and moved to America in the late 1960s. Most of my family still lives in Egypt. On April 28, 2002, I took time off from my job as a computer engineer to conduct humanitarian work in the Occupied Territories. I went as part of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group of internationals dedicated to non-violent, peaceful means of ending the occupation. After spending the first day getting oriented, I went to Ramallah to help at a government-run elementary school, and the next two days I helped out at Aida refugee camp located in Bethlehem.
On Thursday, May 2, I took part in an action with other ISM members to deliver food to the people trapped inside the Church of the Nativity. We had been in contact with the people inside, and we had heard of their desperate situation. Food was extremely scarce, and people were reduced to eating grass and leaves from a lemon tree. I personally overheard a conversation between a friend of mine and a priest trapped inside confirming this. The Israelis had completely blocked off the area surrounding the church and refused to let humanitarian workers inside, even to treat those people inside who were wounded. Another goal of ours was to get people inside the church, in order to report accurately on the situation, prevent the Israelis from using indiscriminate force in trying to end the siege, and to help with the wounded. One person who made it inside was a nurse by profession.
About 20-30 people took part in the action. Ten of us made it inside, but 13 of us, including myself, stayed outside. We were taken to a building called the “Peace Center” for questioning. In my case, four Israeli soldiers grabbed me. Two grabbed my arms, and two grabbed my legs. Once I was inside the building, the two soldiers grabbing my legs dropped them, and the two soldiers grabbing my arms pulled even faster. I received burns on my lower back because of them. They took me inside to a room where I saw the other 12 ISM members waiting.
Over the next seven hours, we were taken out of the room randomly in groups of twos and threes for interrogation. They wanted to know what we were doing in Bethlehem, if we knew any people inside the church, and other questions like that. Our passports, film, and cell phones were confiscated. The men and the women were then separated (there were eight men and five women). The men were cuffed with a plastic tie that wrapped around our wrists, and we were taken to a large Armored Personnel Carrier (APC). We were driven around for about 4-5 hours in extremely cold weather. When the APC finally stopped, it was 5:00 a.m. on Friday and we were in front of the Kiryat Arba prison. We were forced to wait outside for about 15-20 minutes in the cold weather, and we had to huddle together to keep warm. When we finally were taken inside, we were led to a cell with six mats. We asked for two more mats so that all of us could sleep, but we never received them.
At about 9:00 a.m., we were taken out of the jail cell. We were led to a police station and asked some questions. I gave my name and my nationality, but I refused to answer any other questions. The forms that the officers were filling out were in Hebrew, and I had no idea what they were writing. All of us were questioned in this way, and then we were taken to an office belonging to the Israeli Ministry of the Interior. The ISM women were there as well. The American men (there were seven of us at that point) met with a representative of the American Consulate in Jerusalem, a Mrs. Victoria Coffineau. We asked for our lawyer to be present, but the Israeli representative refused. The lawyer was forced to wait outside while we met with Mrs. Coffineau. She explained that the Israeli government intended to deport all of us, and that we would be banned from re-entering Israel for 10 years. She also said that we could wait for the Israeli government to pay for our ticket, but it might take up to a week because of the paperwork. If we wanted to fight the deportation, we could, but she said that in the end we would probably be deported anyway.
Two people had tickets to leave that night, so they agreed to “self-deport” themselves. I had a ticket to leave on Wednesday of the following week, but it was to Munich where I live. Mrs. Coffineau said that the Israeli government would force me to fly to America at my own expense. While I was extremely furious at this development, I felt that I had no choice. I had to be back at work by that date, and I could not take a chance. So I decided that I would buy a one-way ticket to New York that left on Saturday. I did not agree to the deportation though. When I met with the representative of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, she handed me three papers to sign. All of these papers were in Hebrew. I asked for an English copy and she refused, so I refused to sign any of them. I wrote a one-line statement saying “I would like to leave Israel today” and signed that statement, but nothing else.
The two people that had tickets to leave that day were taken to the airport, while the rest of us were taken back to the Kiryat Arba prison. I called Mrs. Coffineau on Saturday to ask if she could come down to visit us, but she said that she couldn’t over the weekend because the consulate was closed. She also said that she might not be able to visit on Monday because there weren’t enough resources at the consulate. Meanwhile, a representative of the Swedish Embassy came on Saturday to visit a Swedish national that was among us. I stayed in the prison until Saturday night, when I was taken to the airport to catch my flight.
I was shackled by my legs and taken to a police station that is on the airport grounds. I was not allowed to see my passport, and I was unable to determine what was going on or what they were putting inside my passport. I sat there for about 30-40 minutes. When they were finished, I was taken inside the airport where I went through the check-in procedures. After my bags were checked in, I was taken back to the police station where two officers took me in a jeep and escorted me out to the tarmac. We approached the airplane that I was supposed to fly on, and we waited for everyone else to board. Then one of the officers escorted me up the stairs leading to the entrance and handed over my ticket and my passport to a steward. The steward was instructed not to hand them over until the plane had landed.
On Sunday morning I landed in New York. My next goal was to figure out how to get back to Munich as soon as possible because I didn’t want to miss any work. Since all the travel agents were closed, I waited until Monday, and was able to buy a ticket that left the same day. Meanwhile, I called my manager back in Munich to tell him what had happened to me. It didn’t even cross my mind to hide the fact that I was deported, because I felt that I had done nothing wrong and it was public news anyway. He sounded sympathetic and I thought everything was okay. I was originally supposed to be back to work on Wednesday but he said that I could have the rest of the week off. I agreed to that, and on Tuesday I was back in Munich. I didn’t talk with my manager or anyone else from the company that week, but I assumed everything was taken care of.
When I returned to work on Monday, May 13, the first thing I did was have an hour-long meeting with my manager. He asked me to explain everything, starting from even before I left to Israel. I told him about the two weeks before I left to Israel when I was sick, and then I explained in great detail everything that had happened during my trip. I told him that I had gone to Israel as part of a group of internationals committed to non-violence and peaceful means of ending the occupation, that I had performed humanitarian acts while I was there, and that I was illegally detained and deported for performing what essentially was a humanitarian act. I explained the illegal nature of the detention (it was in Bethlehem where the Israeli army doesn’t have jurisdiction), the way that we were detained (we were never charged with any crime), and the fact that we were denied access to a lawyer throughout the whole process. I also explained how I was forced, at considerable expense, to fly back to America and then to Munich when I possessed a return ticket from Tel Aviv to Munich.
After I was finished explaining myself, my manager explained what had taken place within the company. He said that when he found out what had happened to me, he informed the higher-ups in the Munich office. They informed the corporate headquarters in San Jose. From there, a chief of security was asked to do a full background check on me. He said that they thought that I might have aligned myself with terrorists or fundamentalists! I tried to explain that I was Coptic (Christian) and that my family had suffered at the hands of the fundamentalists, and that I would never associate myself with them. But of course the company didn’t make that distinction. He said that later on in the week, I would have a chance to explain myself to some higher-ups in the company. In the meantime, though, he asked me for copies of my plane tickets, any entry/exit stamps in my passport, and the websites of the group that I was associated with. I handed all of this information over, hopeful that he would see that I was completely honest and not hiding anything from him.
The next day, my manager told me that I had a meeting late in the afternoon with some HR people. I still thought that everything was okay, but when I entered the office where the meeting was held, I knew something was wrong. In the room was my manager, my department manager, the chief of HR for the German office, and another HR person. The chief of HR opened the meeting by saying, “I’m sorry, but we have to fire you.” I was shocked at this point. She then handed me a letter of termination to sign and I was even more shocked. Here is the text of the letter of termination:
Termination of your work contract by 31st of July 2002
Dear Mr. James Hanna,
Due to unacceptable conduct and political actions in a geographical area where Cadence does business (Israel) we hereby terminate your work contract with Cadence Design Systems within the contractual notice period of two months for the end of the month. The resulting risk to Cadence does not support further employment and therefore your are exempt revocable from your work with immediate effect.
Regards,
Cadence Design Systems GmbH
I tried to put up a defense, but I realized it would be useless. Some of the things that were said in the meeting were “Why did you go to Israel when we aren’t sending people there ourselves?” and “Business is bad now, and we can’t afford to lose any customers” and “You claim that you went for humanitarian actions, but in the end it is just your word. You have to understand how this looks to us.” I left the meeting too much in shock to say anything. I was told to hand over all company materials that day, and to come back tomorrow to pick up my stuff. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my fellow coworkers. On the way out, one of the HR people said, “You need to get back to reality.”
A few weeks after this happened, I got in touch with a German lawyer who agreed to represent me. We have filed a legal suit against the German affiliate of Cadence with a court date set for July 9. I also got in touch with the American media because I thought that people should be aware of what this company did. An article ran in the San Jose Mercury News about my story, but after that the company went on extensive damage-control. The CEO issued an internal memo to all Cadence employees that contained extremely misleading and downright false statements. The company spokesman was telling anyone who called the same misleading and false statements. And they convinced the San Jose Mercury News to do a follow-up article in which their viewpoint was aired.
I have looked into filing a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. On June 18, 2002, I sent an email to the San Jose office explaining my case and detailing the reasons why I was interested in filing a complaint. I received an email from the director of the office, a Mr. DeQuese Cooper, in which he stated “Based on the information that you have provided, it appears that the company was within their rights to terminate you.” This is in spite of all the safeguards of our Constitution, which guarantees our right to free speech, as well as California labor law (code 1102) which states: 1102. No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.
I feel that, as a person of Middle Eastern origin, my rights are being trampled on by the actions of our government. Ever since the tragic events of 9/11, the government has waged a “war against terror” in our names. It is supposed to be directed only against terrorism and those who commit terrorist acts, but I feel that all Middle Eastern people are being targeted. Anyone who speaks out against this is automatically “unpatriotic” and “un-American.” I completely disagree. I know of other cases where Egyptians living in America have had their rights trampled on as well. We must put an end to this and ensure that our civil liberties, the same liberties that make America a truly great nation, are preserved.
