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.
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.
