A Jewish writer replaced his eyeglasses to avoid being mistaken for a confessed funder of Islamic Jihad.
Bob Andelman said his uncanny resemblance to Sami al-Arian, the former Florida professor sentenced this week for his role in terrorist fund raising, has made travel a problem. “Suddenly I was getting extra security checks, being pulled aside for extra wanding, questioning and delays,” Andelman, a former reporter who now writes books, wrote Tuesday in Florida’s St. Petersburg Times. “The hassles finally relented when I bought a pair of funky blue plastic-frame glasses that looked nothing like the wire frames and oval lenses al-Arian and I apparently both preferred.” Even Andelman’s 9-year-old daughter wondered whether the bald man with the salt-and-pepper beard on the front page of the newspaper was her father. Andelman said he had some sympathy for al-Arian, who was incarcerated three years before his sentencing for supporting Islamic Jihad. “While I couldn’t be more disgusted by al-Arian’s angry, misguided politics, we are supposed to be a nation of laws and due process,” he wrote.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
