A defense expert for Fawaz Damra says the indicted imam did not try to incite violence in the early 1990s when he screamed at fund-raisers to destroy Jews.
Instead, Damra simply wanted to support the resistance to Israel's occupation of land claimed by Palestinians, the expert said.
Scott Alexander's testimony provided the first hint Monday of Damra's defense to charges of lying on his immigration forms because of his past ties to terrorism. Damra is to go on trial next week in a case that appears to focus on several tapes made of his speeches.
If convicted, the leader of the Islamic Center of Greater Cleveland could face a maximum of five years in prison and deportation.
Federal prosecutors James Moroney and Cherie Krigsman say the videos that captured Damra's words show he was a radical Islamic militant who sought donors for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad before he obtained citizenship in April 1994.
Alexander, a Chicago researcher in Mideast studies, disagrees. A judge will decide whether his testimony will be permitted at trial.
"The rhetoric is principally used by political and religious leaders to galvanize resistance to what Palestinian Arabs consider to be the patent persecution of their people by Jewish immigrants to the Middle East," Alexander said in a report filed in federal court.
"As unquestionably hate-filled and thus morally reprehensible as such language is, when Palestinians refer to Jews as 'descended from apes and swine' or encourage support for those who 'kill Jews,' they do so with the reasonably justifiable self-image of victim and persecuted, not of victimizer and persecutor."
Defense lawyers Larry Zukerman and Nancy Hollander argued that Alexander believes the language "takes on an entirely different meaning" when heard by Americans who are not connected to the Mideast conflict.
Prosecutors said in documents that the case is not about politics or religion but about Damra inciting and assisting others to persecute Jews and lying about it on his immigration statement.
U.S. District Judge James Gwin must decide whether he will allow Alexander and another expert for Damra, Michael Dahan, to testify in the trial.
The government's expert, Matthew Levitt, a Washington researcher who has studied the Middle East for years and had worked as a counterterrorism analyst for the FBI, called Damra an advocate of radical Islam who sought out violence in pursuit of his goals. Damra's lawyers say Levitt's opinions are based on hearsay and should be inadmissible.