Holy Land Foundation defense begins rebutting prosecution
Monday, November 3, 2008
By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News
KEY POINTS: HOLY LAND TRIAL
The allegation: The federal government says Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation and seven organizers illegally sent at least $12 million overseas to the militant Palestinian group Hamas. The U.S. declared Hamas a terrorist organization in 1995.
On trial: Ghassan Elashi, former Holy Land board chairman; Shukri Abu Baker, former Holy Land CEO; Mohammad El-Mezain, the foundation's original chairman who became director of endowments; Mufid Abdulqader, a top fundraiser and a former city of Dallas public works supervisor; and Abdulrahman Odeh, Holy Land's New Jersey representative. Two others are fugitives.
Possible sentence: The counts carry from three to 20 years in prison, and each defendant faces multiple counts.
---------------
Last year, prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation case told jurors during closing arguments, "Don't get hung up on the names."
For the retrial, following a hung jury in the first case, the government has tweaked its message.
Prosecutors are taking great pains to make sure jurors absorb all the details – including the blizzard of unfamiliar Arabic names – central to their allegations that five charity workers used the former Richardson-based foundation to funnel money to Hamas after it was banned by the U.S. in 1995.
Among the changes:
•Adding new witnesses aimed at plugging holes in their case that were expertly exploited by defense attorneys last year.
•Drumming names and connections into jurors through often exhaustive repetition.
•Rolling out new and more learning aids and charts designed to help jurors access relevant documents – often down to the page number – during what is sure to be extended deliberations.
Prosecutors have been "much more mindful" of how they are "telling the story to the jury," said Donna Diorio, a pro-Israeli blogger who is a regular trial watcher.
"In my view, the prosecution has the defense on the ropes," Ms. Diorio said.
But for Holy Land supporters, it's still the same old evidence.
Noor Elashi, daughter of defendant and Holy Land co-founder Ghassan Elashi, regularly points out what she says is government anti-Muslim bias and juror boredom, on her blog, freedomtogive.com.
"Some jurors sighed, yawned and constantly glanced up at the clock," she wrote after a particularly tedious day of testimony.
This year, prosecutors added six witnesses to their lineup of 10 from last year. Still they managed to shave about two weeks from their presentation, which began the week of Sept. 22 and ended Friday.
Treasury official
Key among the new witnesses was Robert McBrien, with the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees terrorist designation.
He testified that not every Hamas front group is individually outlawed and doesn't have to be for it to be illegal to send it money. This counters the defense argument that the defendants broke no laws because the Palestinian charity groups, known as zakat committees, to which Holy Land gave more than $12 million from 1995 to 2001, are not individually labeled as terrorist affiliates.
A subtle change the government made from last year was recategorizing its more than 500 pieces of evidence, much of which details the defendants' often virulent anti-Semitism and connections to top Hamas officials.
Last year, documents, videos and bank records were identified by a series of numbers. This year, for example, evidence is referred to by the location in which it was found, such as the Holy Land offices, or by the name of the co-conspirator from which it was confiscated. This means names are repeated over and over throughout the case.
To aid jurors during deliberations, prosecutors and federal agents this year also crafted a series of charts to help jurors pinpoint evidence of the most crucial aspect of the case – Hamas control of the zakat committees.
Charity work
For their part, defense attorneys kept the pressure on government witnesses through aggressive cross-examinations.
They routinely elicited testimony from the government's witnesses about Holy Land's aid to desperate Palestinian families caught in the Arab-Israeli conflict, bolstering their points with photos of charity work and thank-you letters from aid recipients.
More than once, they have reminded jurors that much of the government's case dates to the early 1990s.
The defense began presenting its case Friday and has several new witnesses on its roster, too.
Mohamed Elibiary, president of the Freedom and Justice Foundation, a Muslim group based in Plano, said that the government's tweaks mean little to Holy Land's backers.
"The prosecution this time around has presented its case in a more visually friendly and succinct manner. But at the core, there's still the same problem," he said. "The charges are much grander than the evidence is there to prove. What the government has presented, frankly, in the eyes of the [Muslim] community, are associations over past years," not crimes.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Iran tests ways of recovering weapons-grade uranium from spent nuclear fuel
October 31, 2008 Debka File.
Nuclear research reactor in Tehran
This intelligence assessment, disclosed to AP by a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), indicates that the Iranians are testing ways of using nuclear waste from the Bushehr reactor, which the Russians have pledged to finish by the end of the year or March, 2009, at latest.
Moscow has provided the necessary fuel. Both Moscow and Iran claim the Bushehr reactor is purely for peaceful purposes.
The spent fuel at issue as the source of the enriched uranium is not enough to yield the 30 kilos of weapons grade (90 percent enriched) material for a bomb, but is another step in that direction. DEBKAfile adds that Bushehr could provide enough nuclear waste for rapid production of several bombs or warheads.
In a Kol Israel radio interview this week, Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and member of Barack Obama’s Middle East team, disclosed that US intelligence now reckons Iran will have between one and three nuclear bombs by the end of 2009.
The tests, which loosely replicate Saddam Hussein’s attempt to build a bomb 20 years ago, were described by the source as “evaluating procedures for recycling fuel by dissolving fuel rods for irradiated waste, then reprocessing it for uranium metal,” which is used for nuclear warheads.
The source material, says the intelligence report, would be highly enriched, some at above 90 percent and the rest at 20 percent. “
“Sufficient data was collected for planning production lines for recovering the fuel,” according the assessment, which discloses the location of the experiments as Jaber ibn Hayan Laboratories in Tehran run by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. They will soon submit a report to the Iranian leadership for a decision on whether to go ahead with the project.
October 31, 2008 Debka File.
Nuclear research reactor in Tehran
This intelligence assessment, disclosed to AP by a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), indicates that the Iranians are testing ways of using nuclear waste from the Bushehr reactor, which the Russians have pledged to finish by the end of the year or March, 2009, at latest.
Moscow has provided the necessary fuel. Both Moscow and Iran claim the Bushehr reactor is purely for peaceful purposes.
The spent fuel at issue as the source of the enriched uranium is not enough to yield the 30 kilos of weapons grade (90 percent enriched) material for a bomb, but is another step in that direction. DEBKAfile adds that Bushehr could provide enough nuclear waste for rapid production of several bombs or warheads.
In a Kol Israel radio interview this week, Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and member of Barack Obama’s Middle East team, disclosed that US intelligence now reckons Iran will have between one and three nuclear bombs by the end of 2009.
The tests, which loosely replicate Saddam Hussein’s attempt to build a bomb 20 years ago, were described by the source as “evaluating procedures for recycling fuel by dissolving fuel rods for irradiated waste, then reprocessing it for uranium metal,” which is used for nuclear warheads.
The source material, says the intelligence report, would be highly enriched, some at above 90 percent and the rest at 20 percent. “
“Sufficient data was collected for planning production lines for recovering the fuel,” according the assessment, which discloses the location of the experiments as Jaber ibn Hayan Laboratories in Tehran run by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. They will soon submit a report to the Iranian leadership for a decision on whether to go ahead with the project.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Holy Land jurors get a sample of Hamas martyr propaganda
Thu, Oct 30, 2008 By Jason Trahan Dallas Morning News
Jurors in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial on Thursday saw some disturbing examples of Hamas propaganda glorifying young suicide bombers.
The poster shown here
is one of several that the Israeli military confiscated from the offices of the Islamic Charitable Society of Hebron, one of several groups in the Palestinian territories that received millions of dollars from Holy Land.
"Avi," one of two anonymous Israeli government witnesses, continued his testimony Thursday that these charity groups were fronts for Hamas, not only because of Hamas propaganda found there, but also because they were led by known Hamas operatives.
This particular poster features 18-year-old Abdel Mu'ti Muhammad Salih Shabanah. According to the FBI's translation, he is a "high school student who preferred the martyrdom certificate over the life's certificate."
It says he was preparing to finish up his school language testing when he "received the signal" to respond to the assassination attempt on Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi.
"So he headed to Jerusalem to attain martyrdom," the poster says.
Here's a news report on the teen's suicide mission. It was part of a wave of back-and-forth strikes between the Israelis and Hamas in 2003.
According to the BBC story, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar "predicted that Palestinian attacks on Israelis were imminent 'to show them that an eye is for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'"
According to the FBI, Holy Land sent the Islamic Charitable Society of Hebron, where this poster was found, about $1.6 million from 1991 to 2001.
Here are more posters found at the society:
ICS Hebron 10.pdf
In all, Holy Land is accused of sending more than $12 million to groups such as this and an assortment of charity groups called zakat committees from 1995 -- when Hamas was outlawed in the U.S. -- through Holy Land's closing in December 2001.
Defense attorneys have strongly criticized the Justice Department for relying on evidence supplied by the Israelis to prove a key point in this case -- that Hamas was in control of the groups Holy Land funded. They point out that none of them are individually listed on U.S. government roster of banned terrorist entities even today.
The government finished with Avi just before noon. Joshua Dratel, attorney for Mohammad El-Mezain, then began cross examination. Avi is thought to be the government's final witness.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Prosecution in Holy Land terror financing case nears conclusion
Monday, October 27, 2008
By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News
Prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing retrial have switched gears in the run-up to what is expected to be the final week of their case before the defense begins.
After more than a month of testimony meant to show that five former organizers for the now-defunct Richardson foundation – once the nation's largest Muslim charity – for years espoused extremist views and courted ties to Islamic militants, prosecutors must now prove how the defendants' actions and beliefs led them to break U.S. laws.
To get convictions, prosecutors need to convince jurors that Holy Land sent millions of dollars to Palestinian charity groups, known as zakat committees, knowing that they were controlled by Hamas after the U.S. designated it as a terrorist group in 1995.
Prosecutors last week unveiled a series of detailed charts that point jurors to the exact page of documents already in evidence allegedly showing the Hamas affiliations of the zakat committee leaders.
This roadmap to the nearly 500 documents, videos, wiretap transcripts and bank records – some with hundreds of pages – is a marked departure from last year's trial, which collapsed in a hung jury.
Last year's jurors had scant context to help them navigate the mind-numbing array of evidence and keep track of hundreds of Arabic names, leaving the defense team ample room to assert reasonable doubt.
The defense has long acknowledged that their clients sent more than $12 million to the zakat committees. But they say the money did not benefit Hamas. Rather, they say, the money bought much-needed food, school supplies, housing and libraries for Palestinian families and orphans living under Israeli occupation.
Charity groups
To counter that, the government last week called Georgetown University professor and terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, who did not testify last year. He told jurors that "almost without exception," successful terrorist groups throughout history have relied on charitable front groups to raise money and build good will among those they seek to control.
"They don't have the same name as the terrorist group," he said of these front groups. "But the communities know there is this connection."
Prosecutors last week told jurors that Holy Land supported more than 400 Hamas members that Israel deported to southern Lebanon in 1992. Jurors saw a video of several known Hamas deportees huddled in a tent, thanking the Richardson foundation for its support. Some said on tape they worked with the zakat committees to which Holy Land gave money.
Defense attorneys say that most of the government's proof of Hamas' control of zakat committees, including pro-Hamas posters and key chains, comes from the government of Israel – Hamas' sworn enemy. Last week, the defense questioned an Israeli Defense Forces major about armed raids of zakat committee offices and Islamic centers from 2002 to 2004.
Linda Moreno, attorney for Holy Land co-founder Ghassan Elashi, last week got the major to say that some of his troops stormed schools to gather their evidence.
The major is one of two Israeli government witnesses testifying under assumed names for security reasons, which defense attorneys say further discredits them.
A second undercover Israeli agent is set to testify in depth about zakat committee links to Hamas next week.
The defense says the zakat committees were established years before Hamas was created in the late 1980s.
Prosecutors say documents and wiretaps show that some of the defendants and their Islamist cohorts worked to put Hamas members on the zakat committee boards.
A 1991 roster seized from a co-conspirator's home referred to some committees as "ours," which the FBI says is a reference to Hamas. Defense attorneys pointed out that Hamas is never mentioned in the roster, whose author is unknown.
A key defense argument is that none of the committees Holy Land supported are on U.S. lists of banned terrorist entities, even today.
They do not have to be, as long as Hamas is banned, testified Robert McBrien, with the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees the lists. He also did not testify last year.
Treasury strategy
Trying to keep up with "transformers," or front groups with ever-changing names, "is a task beyond the wise use of resources," he told jurors. Treasury instead targets "umbrella aspects of an organization," which provides "the most bang for the buck" so "we can stop the most money flowing."
Defense attorneys point out that some Islamic groups purportedly linked to Hamas are individually designated as terrorist groups. They also told jurors that Mr. Elashi was among several Muslim leaders who met with Treasury officials after Hamas was banned in 1995, but he got no guidance on which Palestinian groups were off limits for Holy Land's fundraising efforts.
---
Link to previous stories in the Dallas Morning News on this topic.
Monday, October 27, 2008
By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News
Prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing retrial have switched gears in the run-up to what is expected to be the final week of their case before the defense begins.
After more than a month of testimony meant to show that five former organizers for the now-defunct Richardson foundation – once the nation's largest Muslim charity – for years espoused extremist views and courted ties to Islamic militants, prosecutors must now prove how the defendants' actions and beliefs led them to break U.S. laws.
To get convictions, prosecutors need to convince jurors that Holy Land sent millions of dollars to Palestinian charity groups, known as zakat committees, knowing that they were controlled by Hamas after the U.S. designated it as a terrorist group in 1995.
Prosecutors last week unveiled a series of detailed charts that point jurors to the exact page of documents already in evidence allegedly showing the Hamas affiliations of the zakat committee leaders.
This roadmap to the nearly 500 documents, videos, wiretap transcripts and bank records – some with hundreds of pages – is a marked departure from last year's trial, which collapsed in a hung jury.
Last year's jurors had scant context to help them navigate the mind-numbing array of evidence and keep track of hundreds of Arabic names, leaving the defense team ample room to assert reasonable doubt.
The defense has long acknowledged that their clients sent more than $12 million to the zakat committees. But they say the money did not benefit Hamas. Rather, they say, the money bought much-needed food, school supplies, housing and libraries for Palestinian families and orphans living under Israeli occupation.
Charity groups
To counter that, the government last week called Georgetown University professor and terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, who did not testify last year. He told jurors that "almost without exception," successful terrorist groups throughout history have relied on charitable front groups to raise money and build good will among those they seek to control.
"They don't have the same name as the terrorist group," he said of these front groups. "But the communities know there is this connection."
Prosecutors last week told jurors that Holy Land supported more than 400 Hamas members that Israel deported to southern Lebanon in 1992. Jurors saw a video of several known Hamas deportees huddled in a tent, thanking the Richardson foundation for its support. Some said on tape they worked with the zakat committees to which Holy Land gave money.
Defense attorneys say that most of the government's proof of Hamas' control of zakat committees, including pro-Hamas posters and key chains, comes from the government of Israel – Hamas' sworn enemy. Last week, the defense questioned an Israeli Defense Forces major about armed raids of zakat committee offices and Islamic centers from 2002 to 2004.
Linda Moreno, attorney for Holy Land co-founder Ghassan Elashi, last week got the major to say that some of his troops stormed schools to gather their evidence.
The major is one of two Israeli government witnesses testifying under assumed names for security reasons, which defense attorneys say further discredits them.
A second undercover Israeli agent is set to testify in depth about zakat committee links to Hamas next week.
The defense says the zakat committees were established years before Hamas was created in the late 1980s.
Prosecutors say documents and wiretaps show that some of the defendants and their Islamist cohorts worked to put Hamas members on the zakat committee boards.
A 1991 roster seized from a co-conspirator's home referred to some committees as "ours," which the FBI says is a reference to Hamas. Defense attorneys pointed out that Hamas is never mentioned in the roster, whose author is unknown.
A key defense argument is that none of the committees Holy Land supported are on U.S. lists of banned terrorist entities, even today.
They do not have to be, as long as Hamas is banned, testified Robert McBrien, with the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees the lists. He also did not testify last year.
Treasury strategy
Trying to keep up with "transformers," or front groups with ever-changing names, "is a task beyond the wise use of resources," he told jurors. Treasury instead targets "umbrella aspects of an organization," which provides "the most bang for the buck" so "we can stop the most money flowing."
Defense attorneys point out that some Islamic groups purportedly linked to Hamas are individually designated as terrorist groups. They also told jurors that Mr. Elashi was among several Muslim leaders who met with Treasury officials after Hamas was banned in 1995, but he got no guidance on which Palestinian groups were off limits for Holy Land's fundraising efforts.
---
Link to previous stories in the Dallas Morning News on this topic.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
About Jewish and Arab co-existence in Acco, Israel
Talking to the other
By Diana Bletter
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 opinion piece International Herald Tribune
SHAVEI ZION, Israel: It was a few days after the recent riots in Acre, Israel - a 10-minute drive from my house - and my youngest son and I were walking through the winding alleys of the souk in this ancient city.
There were several reasons why this was not such a smart idea. The riots pitched Arabs against Jews, the souk is predominantly Arab, and neither Ari nor I look the part.
But I wanted to go to eat humus at Said's Restaurant, the souk's most famous eatery. More crucially, I wanted to step over the invisible divide that has cleaved the city in two.
The riots began on Oct. 8 after Yom Kippur services had just ended. People and children were milling about on streets in Acre that had become pedestrian zones for the night. An Arab man drove through a Jewish neighborhood - witnesses say he was driving recklessly - and Jews surrounded his car and threw rocks.
Perhaps the Jews overreacted, but people were wary: Last year on Yom Kippur an Arab driver deliberately drove his vehicle through a similar crowd in a nearby town and killed a nine-year-old girl.
The latest incident left the driver unhurt but a rumor spread that he had been killed and Arab-instigated riots began. The first night, Arabs shouted "Death to the Jews," and smashed cars and store windows. The following two nights, Jews shouted "Death to the Arabs," and threw Molotov cocktails into several Arab homes.
As a well-seasoned peace protestor who grew up listening to John Lennon's "Imagine," I felt heartsick. I moved to Israel in 1991 thinking we can overcome, and yet I'm confronted daily with how much hatred and hurt there still is to overcome.
Jewish friends in Acre complain that their daughters cannot walk alone down the streets because Arab teenagers harass them (I've seen it happen). Arabs friends say that religious Jewish families are moving into Acre not so much for the real estate or for reconciliation but as a political move with no sensitivity toward their neighbors (I've seen that happen, too).
What could I do? I attended an emergency meeting of my Acre peace group consisting of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze women and we talked about rising religious extremism and fanaticism. We made plans to organize more meetings and workshops to bring both sides together. And the only other thing I could think of doing was...to eat humus.
There had been calls during the riots for Jews to boycott Arab businesses. Going to the souk, therefore, was not only a culinary outing but also an act of good will, an attempt to start the reconciliation process all over again.
As we walked through the passageway, normally crowded with noise and sounds and jostling but now eerily empty, I felt that my son Ari and I were goodwill ambassadors.
He's also aware that people's lives in this country are intertwined. I've tried to teach him and his siblings tolerance and the importance of communicating with "the other," which is why Ari began studying Arabic. Not for use in the military (he just finished his three-year service in the Israel Defense Forces), but because he wanted to speak the language of his fellow countrymen.
So there we were, eating humus at Said's. On an ordinary day, we'd have to wait a long while for a table but now we sat right down among Said's diverse crowd of Arabs and Jews. Ari talked and joked in Arabic to the waiters and to Sultan, the owner's son (who sometimes plays soccer with my oldest son and stepson), and I was kvelling over the linguistic skills of my nice American-born Jewish son.
After we left, we stepped into another store to buy a can opener. Ari spoke in Arabic to the store owner, who began searching for the opener. Then I stopped dead in my tracks.
In front of me was a map that looked like Israel with Arabic writing and the date 1948. To me, that date represents the birth of Israel, my adopted country.
But it was obvious that the map showed the land without Israel, thereby erasing our existence from reality. This wasn't a map of nostalgia, I realized, it was a map of negation.
So there I stood listening to my son chat away with the owner who said he didn't have a can opener but he'd be happy to order us one. I stood there trying my utmost to hold onto my naïve belief that we can work it out while feeling deep down that our predicament is far too overwhelming for a couple of well-meaning folks to tackle.
Diana Bletter is a writer living in Israel.
Talking to the other
By Diana Bletter
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 opinion piece International Herald Tribune
SHAVEI ZION, Israel: It was a few days after the recent riots in Acre, Israel - a 10-minute drive from my house - and my youngest son and I were walking through the winding alleys of the souk in this ancient city.
There were several reasons why this was not such a smart idea. The riots pitched Arabs against Jews, the souk is predominantly Arab, and neither Ari nor I look the part.
But I wanted to go to eat humus at Said's Restaurant, the souk's most famous eatery. More crucially, I wanted to step over the invisible divide that has cleaved the city in two.
The riots began on Oct. 8 after Yom Kippur services had just ended. People and children were milling about on streets in Acre that had become pedestrian zones for the night. An Arab man drove through a Jewish neighborhood - witnesses say he was driving recklessly - and Jews surrounded his car and threw rocks.
Perhaps the Jews overreacted, but people were wary: Last year on Yom Kippur an Arab driver deliberately drove his vehicle through a similar crowd in a nearby town and killed a nine-year-old girl.
The latest incident left the driver unhurt but a rumor spread that he had been killed and Arab-instigated riots began. The first night, Arabs shouted "Death to the Jews," and smashed cars and store windows. The following two nights, Jews shouted "Death to the Arabs," and threw Molotov cocktails into several Arab homes.
As a well-seasoned peace protestor who grew up listening to John Lennon's "Imagine," I felt heartsick. I moved to Israel in 1991 thinking we can overcome, and yet I'm confronted daily with how much hatred and hurt there still is to overcome.
Jewish friends in Acre complain that their daughters cannot walk alone down the streets because Arab teenagers harass them (I've seen it happen). Arabs friends say that religious Jewish families are moving into Acre not so much for the real estate or for reconciliation but as a political move with no sensitivity toward their neighbors (I've seen that happen, too).
What could I do? I attended an emergency meeting of my Acre peace group consisting of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze women and we talked about rising religious extremism and fanaticism. We made plans to organize more meetings and workshops to bring both sides together. And the only other thing I could think of doing was...to eat humus.
There had been calls during the riots for Jews to boycott Arab businesses. Going to the souk, therefore, was not only a culinary outing but also an act of good will, an attempt to start the reconciliation process all over again.
As we walked through the passageway, normally crowded with noise and sounds and jostling but now eerily empty, I felt that my son Ari and I were goodwill ambassadors.
He's also aware that people's lives in this country are intertwined. I've tried to teach him and his siblings tolerance and the importance of communicating with "the other," which is why Ari began studying Arabic. Not for use in the military (he just finished his three-year service in the Israel Defense Forces), but because he wanted to speak the language of his fellow countrymen.
So there we were, eating humus at Said's. On an ordinary day, we'd have to wait a long while for a table but now we sat right down among Said's diverse crowd of Arabs and Jews. Ari talked and joked in Arabic to the waiters and to Sultan, the owner's son (who sometimes plays soccer with my oldest son and stepson), and I was kvelling over the linguistic skills of my nice American-born Jewish son.
After we left, we stepped into another store to buy a can opener. Ari spoke in Arabic to the store owner, who began searching for the opener. Then I stopped dead in my tracks.
In front of me was a map that looked like Israel with Arabic writing and the date 1948. To me, that date represents the birth of Israel, my adopted country.
But it was obvious that the map showed the land without Israel, thereby erasing our existence from reality. This wasn't a map of nostalgia, I realized, it was a map of negation.
So there I stood listening to my son chat away with the owner who said he didn't have a can opener but he'd be happy to order us one. I stood there trying my utmost to hold onto my naïve belief that we can work it out while feeling deep down that our predicament is far too overwhelming for a couple of well-meaning folks to tackle.
Diana Bletter is a writer living in Israel.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Sometimes the truth comes looking for you.
1. Great headline from a Palestinian news source: Israeli peace activists throw Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers in Ni'lin
2. The following is from IslamOnline.net, an Islamic website. If you read the column carefully, you will learn the basic reasons there is Islamic hatred for Israel.
Meeting an Israeli for the First Time in My Life
Hisham Al-Masry - Copenhagen
I was outside setting on the coach enjoying the great view of Vallekilde when a girl with a long dark curly hair showed up, she looked at me, I saw the sadness in her eyes, and I felt there is something different about her, but couldn’t know what exactly what it was.
She came towards me, “Hello.. I want to talk to you..” she said, I told to her “Sure.. what do you want to talk about?”, I was really shocked when I heard what she had to say after that, because I didn’t expect that she will come to me and the first thing she had to say is “Do you hate me?”
The first thing that I should be clear about here is to understand and explain what she meant by the terms “you” and “me”, I am a Muslim, Arab and Egyptian young man, and she is an Israeli girl, both of us met for the first time.
There was something inside of me that wouldn’t let me go, but all other parts of my mind and soul were pushing me in this direction to meet someone from Israel, the people who have several wars with Egyptians. Actually, visiting Occupied Palestine is a dream for all Arabs and Muslims, but someone like me couldn’t have such a chance without having really big problems before and after returning back home with the security departments in Egypt. This is why they don’t give you an Israeli Visa on your Passport, but it will be given in another temporary Passport, and this meeting could destroy my whole career history and also could give me a bad reputation as a person who came closer to Israeli people, and that’s why I can not publish this under my name.
The good thing is that I didn’t have to travel to Israel because the meeting is at a neutral place in Denmark where the “Media For Dialogue” course was held, I also knew there would be a chance to meet Arabs from Occupied Palestine, which meant I would be able to have a close look at the conflict. It’s not just another documentary movie, but I would meet real people, and have the ability to interact with them all, hoping to bring something good out of it. This is how I was thinking and how I make it easy for my self to accept it.
I was remembering all of this after hearing the question from the Israeli girl I met in Denmark during the course. I told her “Of course I don’t hate you, but I hate occupation, and you know that our countries had a very bad historical wars against each other, I believe that all humans should live together in peace”. She completely agreed with me like she had the same opinion as mine.
I continued “I will be honest and tell you about what I really think because you are not the only one who feels the sadness, but I have also my deep sadness feeling, especially when I think about the future of Egyptians in coming generations.
I believe we will have another big war with Israel, maybe it will take some time until this happen, but no one can stop that, recording to prophet Mohammed -peace and blessings be upon him- “The Hour will not come to pass until you fight the Jews..” to the end of the Hadith (mentioned by Abu Hurayrah in: Whole true small number -7,414). This war will be totally religious and All Muslims will be part of it, it’s not the same war that we have now in the Middle East against the Israeli occupation. and this me feel bad some how, because the war will never end between Muslims and Jews. Of course no body wants war but what to do?!
She was surprised because of what I said so far, and she reminds me of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. I said “Yes.. I have to say that my country is living in a peace agreement with Israel for the mean time, but this exists only on papers. This couldn’t change the fact of hating Israel occupation and considering it the number one enemy of Egypt, and this is what they teach us at schools”. She interrupted me saying “Really?!.. You must be kidding!”, I said “No.. it’s true”. This probably will explain why I didn’t ask the “Do you hate me?” question first, and also I never feel neglected by the Israeli group because the relation from my side is broken.
The Israeli girl was surprised even more this time. She really made me feel that I gave her lots of surprises. This is very strange for an APC (Armored Personnel Carriers) teaching commander in the Israeli army, because I expected that she knows what I am talking about, but it seem that she was hearing all what I told her for the first time in her life, anyways. It was not a good feeling for me as I suppose I lived on the same planet since the moment of birth. I didn’t came from mars, I am only a normal Egyptian guy who is telling the simple truth of what he knows and believes, It’s not my fault that I raised holding hate in my mind and bad feelings in my soul to Israeli occupation. It’s also not the Israeli’s duty to think different. It’s a big fact that I can not nether deny or change.
--(h/t Elder of Ziyon)
2. The following is from IslamOnline.net, an Islamic website. If you read the column carefully, you will learn the basic reasons there is Islamic hatred for Israel.
I believe we will have another big war with Israel, maybe it will take some time until this happen, but no one can stop that, recording to prophet Mohammed -peace and blessings be upon him- “The Hour will not come to pass until you fight the Jews..” to the end of the Hadith (mentioned by Abu Hurayrah in: Whole true small number -7,414). This war will be totally religious and All Muslims will be part of it, it’s not the same war that we have now in the Middle East against the Israeli occupation. and this me feel bad some how, because the war will never end between Muslims and Jews. Of course no body wants war but what to do?!
Meeting an Israeli for the First Time in My Life
Hisham Al-Masry - Copenhagen
I was outside setting on the coach enjoying the great view of Vallekilde when a girl with a long dark curly hair showed up, she looked at me, I saw the sadness in her eyes, and I felt there is something different about her, but couldn’t know what exactly what it was.
She came towards me, “Hello.. I want to talk to you..” she said, I told to her “Sure.. what do you want to talk about?”, I was really shocked when I heard what she had to say after that, because I didn’t expect that she will come to me and the first thing she had to say is “Do you hate me?”
The first thing that I should be clear about here is to understand and explain what she meant by the terms “you” and “me”, I am a Muslim, Arab and Egyptian young man, and she is an Israeli girl, both of us met for the first time.
There was something inside of me that wouldn’t let me go, but all other parts of my mind and soul were pushing me in this direction to meet someone from Israel, the people who have several wars with Egyptians. Actually, visiting Occupied Palestine is a dream for all Arabs and Muslims, but someone like me couldn’t have such a chance without having really big problems before and after returning back home with the security departments in Egypt. This is why they don’t give you an Israeli Visa on your Passport, but it will be given in another temporary Passport, and this meeting could destroy my whole career history and also could give me a bad reputation as a person who came closer to Israeli people, and that’s why I can not publish this under my name.
The good thing is that I didn’t have to travel to Israel because the meeting is at a neutral place in Denmark where the “Media For Dialogue” course was held, I also knew there would be a chance to meet Arabs from Occupied Palestine, which meant I would be able to have a close look at the conflict. It’s not just another documentary movie, but I would meet real people, and have the ability to interact with them all, hoping to bring something good out of it. This is how I was thinking and how I make it easy for my self to accept it.
I was remembering all of this after hearing the question from the Israeli girl I met in Denmark during the course. I told her “Of course I don’t hate you, but I hate occupation, and you know that our countries had a very bad historical wars against each other, I believe that all humans should live together in peace”. She completely agreed with me like she had the same opinion as mine.
I continued “I will be honest and tell you about what I really think because you are not the only one who feels the sadness, but I have also my deep sadness feeling, especially when I think about the future of Egyptians in coming generations.
I believe we will have another big war with Israel, maybe it will take some time until this happen, but no one can stop that, recording to prophet Mohammed -peace and blessings be upon him- “The Hour will not come to pass until you fight the Jews..” to the end of the Hadith (mentioned by Abu Hurayrah in: Whole true small number -7,414). This war will be totally religious and All Muslims will be part of it, it’s not the same war that we have now in the Middle East against the Israeli occupation. and this me feel bad some how, because the war will never end between Muslims and Jews. Of course no body wants war but what to do?!
She was surprised because of what I said so far, and she reminds me of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. I said “Yes.. I have to say that my country is living in a peace agreement with Israel for the mean time, but this exists only on papers. This couldn’t change the fact of hating Israel occupation and considering it the number one enemy of Egypt, and this is what they teach us at schools”. She interrupted me saying “Really?!.. You must be kidding!”, I said “No.. it’s true”. This probably will explain why I didn’t ask the “Do you hate me?” question first, and also I never feel neglected by the Israeli group because the relation from my side is broken.
The Israeli girl was surprised even more this time. She really made me feel that I gave her lots of surprises. This is very strange for an APC (Armored Personnel Carriers) teaching commander in the Israeli army, because I expected that she knows what I am talking about, but it seem that she was hearing all what I told her for the first time in her life, anyways. It was not a good feeling for me as I suppose I lived on the same planet since the moment of birth. I didn’t came from mars, I am only a normal Egyptian guy who is telling the simple truth of what he knows and believes, It’s not my fault that I raised holding hate in my mind and bad feelings in my soul to Israeli occupation. It’s also not the Israeli’s duty to think different. It’s a big fact that I can not nether deny or change.
--(h/t Elder of Ziyon)
Monday, October 20, 2008
An older article (below), but one that is relevant again regarding the current trial of the Holy Land Foundation -- M. Finkelstein
Rod Dreher: What the Muslim Brotherhood means for the U.S.
Memo lays bare group's plans to destroy U.S. from within[The 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document captured by the FBI is archived (along with English translation) at http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/HLF/Akram_GeneralStrategicGoal.pdf]
11:17 AM CDT on Sunday, September 9, 2007
"Our strategy is this," President Bush said last month. "We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America."
He was talking about jihadists, of course. And Mr. Bush is behind the curve. The president apparently missed the smoking-gun 1991 document his own Justice Department introduced into evidence at the Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas. The FBI captured it in a raid on a Muslim suspect's home in Virginia.
This "explanatory memorandum," as it's titled, outlines the "strategic goal" for the North American operation of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan). Here's the key paragraph:
The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack.
The entire 18-page platform outlines a plan for the long haul. It prescribes the Muslim Brotherhood's comprehensive plan to set down roots in civil society. It begins by both founding and taking control of American Muslim organizations, for the sake of unifying and educating the U.S. Muslim community – this to prepare it for the establishment of a global Islamic state governed by sharia.
It sounds like a conspiracy theory out of a bad Hollywood movie – but it's real. Husain Haqqani, head of Boston University's Center for International Relations and a former Islamic radical, confirms that the Brotherhood "has run most significant Muslim organizations in the U.S." as part of the plan outlined in the strategy paper.
The HLF trial is exposing for the first time how the international Muslim Brotherhood – whose Palestinian division is Hamas – operates as a self-conscious revolutionary vanguard in the United States. The court documents indicate that many leading Muslim-American organizations – including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim American Society – are an integral part of the Brotherhood's efforts to wage jihad against America by nonviolent means.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an affiliation of at least 70 Islamist organizations around the world, all tracing their heritage to the original cell, founded in Egypt in 1928. Its credo: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Sayyid Qutb, hanged by the Egyptian government in 1966 as a revolutionary, remains its ideological godfather. His best-known work, Milestones, calls for Muslims to wage violent holy war until Islamic law governs the entire world.
According to a 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation, establishing the Brotherhood in the United States has been a 40-year project that has worked mostly underground – even beneath the notice of many Muslims. Richard Clarke, the former top U.S. national security official, told the Senate in 2003 that the Muslim Brotherhood is the common thread linking terrorist fundraising schemes in the United States – which likely explains why so many mainstream American Muslim organizations were named by the feds as "unindicted co-conspirators" in the HLF trial.
Is this just alarmist paranoia? Not at all.
This matters because high-profile organizations with roots explicitly in the Muslim Brotherhood have successfully established themselves in a paramount position to define Islam in America according to a radical politicized model. And they've done so without the American public having the slightest idea about their real agenda. Indeed, the Bush administration is unwittingly helping the Islamist cause by including their leaders in public events, thus conferring them legitimacy. On Labor Day weekend, the same Department of Justice that's presenting evidence of the ISNA's involvement with radical Islam at the Dallas trial sponsored a booth at – wait for it – ISNA's national convention in suburban Chicago.
Look, no rational person believes America is going to exchange the Constitution for a caliphate. Rational people aren't the point. As the London subway bombings showed, even a tiny cell of committed radicals can kill a lot of people. Mustafa Saied, an American Muslim who left the Brotherhood, told the Tribune that he worried about the radicalism the Brotherhood inculcated in its membership here. "With the extreme element," he said, "you never know when that ticking time bomb will go off."
As long as they commit no crimes, CAIR, ISNA and the other Brotherhood-related groups have the right to advocate for their beliefs. But they don't have the right to escape critical scrutiny, and they deserve informed opposition. Courageous Muslims like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy are sounding the alarm about radical Islam's stealth takeover of U.S. Muslim institutions. Why are the news media ignoring this? Fear of being called Islamophobic?
This has got to stop. Six years after 9/11, we're still asleep. Islamic radicals have declared war on us – and some are fighting here in what looks like a fifth column. Read their strategy document. It's there in black and white, for those with eyes to see.
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist. E-mail him at rdreher@dallasnews.com.
Rod Dreher: What the Muslim Brotherhood means for the U.S.
Memo lays bare group's plans to destroy U.S. from within[The 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document captured by the FBI is archived (along with English translation) at http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/HLF/Akram_GeneralStrategicGoal.pdf]
11:17 AM CDT on Sunday, September 9, 2007
"Our strategy is this," President Bush said last month. "We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America."
He was talking about jihadists, of course. And Mr. Bush is behind the curve. The president apparently missed the smoking-gun 1991 document his own Justice Department introduced into evidence at the Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas. The FBI captured it in a raid on a Muslim suspect's home in Virginia.
This "explanatory memorandum," as it's titled, outlines the "strategic goal" for the North American operation of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan). Here's the key paragraph:
The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack.
The entire 18-page platform outlines a plan for the long haul. It prescribes the Muslim Brotherhood's comprehensive plan to set down roots in civil society. It begins by both founding and taking control of American Muslim organizations, for the sake of unifying and educating the U.S. Muslim community – this to prepare it for the establishment of a global Islamic state governed by sharia.
It sounds like a conspiracy theory out of a bad Hollywood movie – but it's real. Husain Haqqani, head of Boston University's Center for International Relations and a former Islamic radical, confirms that the Brotherhood "has run most significant Muslim organizations in the U.S." as part of the plan outlined in the strategy paper.
The HLF trial is exposing for the first time how the international Muslim Brotherhood – whose Palestinian division is Hamas – operates as a self-conscious revolutionary vanguard in the United States. The court documents indicate that many leading Muslim-American organizations – including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim American Society – are an integral part of the Brotherhood's efforts to wage jihad against America by nonviolent means.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an affiliation of at least 70 Islamist organizations around the world, all tracing their heritage to the original cell, founded in Egypt in 1928. Its credo: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Sayyid Qutb, hanged by the Egyptian government in 1966 as a revolutionary, remains its ideological godfather. His best-known work, Milestones, calls for Muslims to wage violent holy war until Islamic law governs the entire world.
According to a 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation, establishing the Brotherhood in the United States has been a 40-year project that has worked mostly underground – even beneath the notice of many Muslims. Richard Clarke, the former top U.S. national security official, told the Senate in 2003 that the Muslim Brotherhood is the common thread linking terrorist fundraising schemes in the United States – which likely explains why so many mainstream American Muslim organizations were named by the feds as "unindicted co-conspirators" in the HLF trial.
Is this just alarmist paranoia? Not at all.
This matters because high-profile organizations with roots explicitly in the Muslim Brotherhood have successfully established themselves in a paramount position to define Islam in America according to a radical politicized model. And they've done so without the American public having the slightest idea about their real agenda. Indeed, the Bush administration is unwittingly helping the Islamist cause by including their leaders in public events, thus conferring them legitimacy. On Labor Day weekend, the same Department of Justice that's presenting evidence of the ISNA's involvement with radical Islam at the Dallas trial sponsored a booth at – wait for it – ISNA's national convention in suburban Chicago.
Look, no rational person believes America is going to exchange the Constitution for a caliphate. Rational people aren't the point. As the London subway bombings showed, even a tiny cell of committed radicals can kill a lot of people. Mustafa Saied, an American Muslim who left the Brotherhood, told the Tribune that he worried about the radicalism the Brotherhood inculcated in its membership here. "With the extreme element," he said, "you never know when that ticking time bomb will go off."
As long as they commit no crimes, CAIR, ISNA and the other Brotherhood-related groups have the right to advocate for their beliefs. But they don't have the right to escape critical scrutiny, and they deserve informed opposition. Courageous Muslims like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy are sounding the alarm about radical Islam's stealth takeover of U.S. Muslim institutions. Why are the news media ignoring this? Fear of being called Islamophobic?
This has got to stop. Six years after 9/11, we're still asleep. Islamic radicals have declared war on us – and some are fighting here in what looks like a fifth column. Read their strategy document. It's there in black and white, for those with eyes to see.
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist. E-mail him at rdreher@dallasnews.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)