Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 64, No. 10, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 11, 2010 Page: 4 of 28
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4 I March 11,2010
Communications activist, Alan Gross,
languishes silently in Cuban ail cell
By Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alan
Gross has been about communica-
tions all his life: the call-mom-ev-
ery-day son, the family newsbreaker,
the message guy for Jewish groups,
the get-out-the-vote enthusiast for
candidate Barack Obama, the tech-
nology contractor who helped the
U.S. government bring the world's
remotest populations into the 21st
century.
Gross, 60, of Potomac, Md., has
been languishing for three months
in a Cuban high-security prison and
his rare conversations are monitored
by Cuban officials.
"He spoke with my sister-in-law
on a few occasions with someone
standing by him," Bonnie Rubin-
stein, his sister, told JTA in an in-
terview Monday. "Though he was
guarded, he tried to impart that he
was OK."
In fact, not so OK, Rubinstein
said, correcting herself: Gross' call
last week to his wife, Judy, was to
ask for the medication he needs for
his gout and that is unavailable in
Cuba.
"We're hoping he got the medica-
tion," said Rubinstein, a director of
early childhood education at Tem-
ple Shalom in Dallas. "He's lost 52
pounds. We're very worried about
him."
Rubinstein was arrested Dec. 3
as he prepared to return from Cuba,
where he was completing work on
behalf of the U.S. government. He
has not been charged, but leading
Cuban figures — including Presi-
dent Raul Castro — have accused
him of being part of a plot to under-
mine the government.
After weeks of taking a quiet ap-
proach to secure Gross' release, his
family and friends launched a public
campaign that is spreading to Jew-
ish communities across the United
States, attracting the support of U.S.
lawmakers and high-profile media
outlets. It started last month when
Judy Gross issued a video appeal
for the release of her husband of 40
years. The Grosses have two adult
daughters.
"Alan has done nothing wrong
and we want him home," she said in
the Feb. 18 video. "We're hoping that
U.S. officials and Cuban officials
can get together and agree on a way
to get him home."
Judy Gross added that she had
been able to have only three brief
conversations with her husband.
The video marked the family's
decision to go public after several
,1
Photo: Courtesy of the Gross family
Alan Gross, with wife Judy at the Western Wall in spring 2005, is being held with-
out charges in Cuba, where he was on contract for the U.S. government connect-
ing the tiny Jewish community to the Internet.
weeks of hoping to secure his release
behind closed doors. Remarks by
Cuban leaders suggesting that Gross
was a spy were a factor in the change,
said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the
chairman of the U.S. House of Rep-
resentatives Latin America subcom-
mittee, who has met with the fam-
fy-
"I'm going to continue to make
noise about it; it's the only thing that
can get him released," said Engel,
who raised the matter last month
with U.S. Secretary of State Hilary
Rodham Clinton when she testified
before the Foreign Affairs Commit-
tee.
The campaign emphasizes Gross'
Jewish commitment.
"He is helping the Jewish com-
munity [in Cuba] improve commu-
nications and Internet access," Judy
Gross said in the video. Later, after
outlining his anti-poverty activism,
she added that "Alan loves the Jew-
ish community. He's been involved
for as long as I can remember."
Gross was active as a young man
in the B'nai B'rith Youth Organiza-
tion and worked several years in the
1980s for the Greater Washington
Jewish Federation.
In a statement, the State Depart-
ment said Gross was working on "a
program designed to play a positive
constructive role in Cuban society
and governance by helping Cuban
citizens to gain access they seek to
information available to citizens
elsewhere in the world." Such proj-
ects are banned in Cuba.
The State Department did not
specify work with the Jewish com-
munity, but a backgrounder distrib-
uted by Gross' family, business asso-
ciates and supporters said he worked
"with peaceful, non-dissident, Jew-
ish groups" in Cuba. El Nuevo Her-
ald, the Spanish-language daily pub-
lished by the Miami Herald, quoted
one Cuban Jewish leader as saying
she had not heard of him.
Cuba's once thriving Jewish com-
munity was substantially depleted
after Fidel Castro's 1959 rise to pow-
er. Much of the community moved
to Miami. Israel struck a deal with
Cuba in the late 1990s that allowed
the emigration of all but about 1,500
Jews.
"His work was humanitarian and
non-political," the backgrounder
says. "Alan was helping Cuba's tiny
Jewish community set up an Intra-
net so that they could communicate
"He's lost 52
pounds. We're
very worried about
him."
Bonnie Rubinstein,
Alan's sister and
early childhood education
director at Temple Shalom
amongst themselves and with Jew-
ish communities abroad, providing
them the ability to access the Inter-
net."
Friends said he was organizing
access to Wikipedia, Encyclopedia
Britannica and Jewish music sites.
Gross' plight has galvanized at
least two communities: the greater
Washington area, where he lives
and is active in Am Kollel, a Jewish
Renewal community in suburban
Maryland; and Dallas, the home of
his sister and mother.
Gross' mother, Evelyn, 87, is ail-
ing from her concerns for Alan, who
called her every day before his arrest,
Rubinstein said.
"This is the kind of brother he
was," his sister said, her voice crack-
ing. "If anything was going on with
our parents, he would be the one to
call. He is fun-loving and sociable,
everyone loves him. He's a 'gut nesh-
amah"' (a good soul).
Last month, Gross' congressman,
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.),
and both of Maryland's Democratic
senators — Ben Cardin and Barbara
Mikulski—wrote to Secretary Clin-
ton expressing their "overwhelming
concern" about Gross. Van Hollen is
circulating a similar letter to his col-
leagues in the U.S. House of Repre-
sentatives.
Ron Halber, who directs Wash-
ington's Jewish Community Rela-
tions Council, said his JCRC is ask-
ing its counterparts nationwide to
urge lawmakers to sign the letter.
"This man's career has been
marked by humanitarian efforts,"
Halber said.
The Washington Post and the
Wall Street Journal have weighed in
with editorials.
"Only in the ancient, crumbling
regime of the Castro brothers could
this ridiculous charge be leveled,"
the Post said Feb. 22, referring to the
insinuations of espionage. "That's
because Cuba is virtually alone, even
among authoritarian countries, in
trying to prevent most of its popula-
tion from using the Internet even for
nonpolitical purposes."
Rubinstein said Gross had been
to Cuba several times prior to the
most recent visit, and that for the
first time in his career he seemed ap-
prehensive.
"He was concerned that whom-
ever he spoke to in Cuba, he couldn't
trust anyone there," she said. "He
had never felt nervous, not even in
Iran or Iraq."
A statement by Gross' company,
Joint Business Development Center,
on a Web site promoting volunta-
rism, said that it "has supported
Internet connectivity in locations
where there was little or no access.
In the past two years JBDC has in-
stalled more than 60 satellite termi-
nals, bringing Internet access, email,
VoIP, fax and the like to remote loca-
tions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Armenia,
see GROSS, p.5
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Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 64, No. 10, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 11, 2010, newspaper, March 11, 2010; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth188283/m1/4/: accessed July 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .