Abbas: Hamas Leaders Used Ambulances To Flee

The United Nations "fact-finding" mission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone issued a report last month accusing Israel of violating international law and committing war crimes while largely absolving Hamas' conduct during last winter's Gaza war.

Despite a significant body of evidence to the contrary, the Goldstone panel said it "did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities and that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes."

But the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas says Hamas ignored Palestinian suffering during the war and commandeered ambulances for military use.

"When the [Israeli] aggression took place, [Hamas] leaders in Gaza and abroad said: 'We don't care if Gaza is erased,' " Abbas said in an October 13 speech at the Arab American University in Jenin. "All they care about is that the Hamas movement continue[s] to exist."

Abbas added that senior Hamas leaders Ismail Haniya and Khaled Mishal belittled Palestinian suffering in Gaza.

"Yet the Hamas movement is alive and well," Abbas said. "The Hamas movement was hiding under the domes [of mosques]. The Hamas leaders – and I say this for the first time – fled to the Sinai in ambulances, leaving their people to be slaughtered. Then they say: 'We put up resistance.' "

On September 16 (the day after the U.N. issued the Goldstone report), Palestinian Media Watch re-released a series of reports it has issued dating back to last year about Hamas' use of civilians to shield military operations in the war against Israel. These include the following from the May 20, 2009 edition of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, a Palestinian newspaper associated with Abbas, about Hamas' use of ambulances as military vehicles:

"The [Palestinian] Health Ministry stated yesterday that Hamas militias had raided 46 ambulances, donated by Arab states during the recent aggression on the Gaza Strip, of the medical equipment that they contained…and used them as military vehicles to arrest civilians, after painting [the ambulances] black. The Ministry's director of public relations and information, Dr. Omar Nasr…said that medical equipment removed from the ambulances was expensive. He demanded that the Hamas militias declare, courageously and openly, what had become of the thousands of tons of medical equipment which had been brought into the Gaza Strip as assistance for the Palestinian people."

As it comes under scrutiny, the Goldstone report looks increasingly like an exercise in Israel-bashing and whitewashing Hamas' brutal subjugation of its own people. Read more here about how the Goldstone report largely ignored the many ways in which Hamas' conduct of the war brought death and suffering to Palestinian civilians.

Two New Terror Indictments Handed Down in Chicago and New York

Federal prosecutors in New York and Chicago announced Tuesday morning the indictments of two separate groups of men alleged to be engaged in terrorist activities both at home and abroad.

In the Southern District of New York, Patrick Nayyar and Conrad Stanisclaus Mulholland have been charged with providing weapons to Hizballah, a designated foreign terrorist organization based in Lebanon. Among the items which Nayyar and Mulholland attempted to transmit to Hizballah were guns, ammunition, vehicles, bulletproof vests, and night vision goggles.

In the Northern District of Illinois, David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana are accused of engaging in a conspiracy to commit terrorist acts against overseas targets, including Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the prophet Muhammed four years ago. The defendants, working with members of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harakut-ul Jihad Islami took a number of trips to Pakistan for training and conducting surveillance of potential targets.

As David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, explained: "This case is a reminder that the threat posed by international terrorist organizations is global in nature and requires constant vigilance at home and abroad." In fact, when considered in the context of recent cases, the threat of home grown terrorism is all too real. Each of the individuals arrested were residents of their respective cities having established ties to the communities in which they were operating. At least one of them, Nayyar, was residing in the U.S. illegally at the time of his arrest.

Recognizing the global scope of terrorism, these investigations thus far demonstrate international cooperation. Both investigations were run by respective offices of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and assisted by state, local, and international law enforcement officials. In particular, the investigation in Chicago included collaboration with Pakistani authorities who were assisting in tracking the whereabouts of the defendants while they were outside of the United States.

Each of these cases also highlights two very important counter-terrorism tools that have recently come under fire—the "material support" proscription and the use of confidential informants.

Both of the indictments released this morning include counts for violations of 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, the "material support" statute. In New York, the defendants have been accused of supporting Hizballah, while the Chicago defendants are alleged to have assisted Lashkar-e-Taiba. The "material support" statute is consistently used by federal law enforcement officials to dry up the support network of international terrorist organizations, and these latest arrests are indicative of that. With these arrests, for instance, federal prosecutors in New York have literally taken weapons out of the hands of those seeking to harm United States citizens both at home and abroad.

The second tool is the use of confidential informants. While civil liberties groups will likely come out shouting in unison about entrapment and other forms of police misconduct, the use of informants in these cases demonstrate their efficacy. During a series of meetings with a confidential informant working with the FBI, who represented himself as working for Hizballah, Nayyar and Mulholland agreed to sell guns, ammunition, vehicles, bulletproof vests, and night vision goggles, to the organization.

Although both of these cases are in the early stages and remain under investigation, they show a strong and effective counter-terrorism policy at work.

DOJ Should Show Congress Damning Evidence on CAIR, Reps Say

Internal documents from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) show that the group actively tries to place interns in congressional offices and that the group specifically wants to influence policy coming out of committees on the judiciary, homeland security and intelligence.

These disclosures, in the book Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America, prompted four House Republicans to ask Sergeant at Arms Wilson Livingood to investigate whether CAIR has successfully placed interns in offices tied to those committees.

Disclosures in Muslim Mafia came in part from documents and undercover recordings by one of the author's sons, who posed as a Muslim and worked at CAIR as an intern under an assumed name. In addition to detailing the organization's political goals, the book offers examples of how CAIR seeks to impede terrorism-related law enforcement investigations and mislead the public about its stature.

Critics have accused the representatives of waging a witch-hunt for Muslim staffers on Capitol Hill. Their remarks, however, have focused on CAIR's role in placing interns, noting evidence from the successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development that placed CAIR's founders in the midst of a secret Hamas-support network in the United States.

On that point, Representatives Sue Myrick (NC) Trent Franks (AZ) Paul Broun (GA) and John Shadegg (AZ) wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking that he "provide each Member of Congress a summary of the evidence and findings by the DOJ and FBI which led them to name CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism trial."

Both letters note that the HLF evidence, and the questions it raises about CAIR, prompted the FBI to cut off communication with CAIR that isn't tied to a criminal investigation.

See the letter to Attorney General Eric Holder here and the letter to the House Sergeant at Arms here.

Two Other Toledo Defendants Sentenced

As we reported Wednesday, an Ohio federal judge sentenced Mohammad Amawi to 20 years in prison for his role in conspiring to kill U.S. troops serving in Iraq. A prosecution sentencing memorandum detailed the various ways Amawi "has demonstrated a committed and serious desire to attack and kill Americans" with the intent of attacking his "perceived enemies of Islam – specifically U.S. troops in Iraq."

Later Wednesday, co-conspirator Marwan El-Hindi received a 12-year sentence for convictions in the same conspiracy. Both men could have faced life in prison if U.S. District Judge James Carr applied what is known as a "terrorism enhancement" to the sentencing guidelines, but he did not.

In their sentencing memorandum, prosecutors emphasized postings El-Hindi made on web page for "Ekhlass." Evidence presented during the trial showed that the site offered "online jihadist training, and featured, among other items, a photograph of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri on its banner."

El-Hindi, a Palestinian by birth, is a U.S. citizen. He was a regular user of the Ekhlass site and his user ID was used to post "numerous messages advocating violent jihad, including: wishing death upon an individual who has made insults to Islam; asking that God 'kill Jews and Americans' in response to a posted video link depicting the manufacture of a rocket launcher and an attack on a U.S. base in Iraq [and] declaring repeatedly 'I am a terrorist,'" prosecutors wrote.

El-Hindi allowed his children to be present when Amawi discussed his desire to kill Arab leaders, the memorandum said. "When Amawi expressed a desire to drink an Iraqi policeman's blood, El-Hindi warmly invited Amawi over to his family home. It is no surprise, then, that El-Hindi did not keep his views on violent jihad from his minor children and even encouraged his young wife to view videos of beheadings and battlefield deaths."

El-Hindi worked to make his dreams a reality, making "extraordinary efforts" to find and pay for jihad training.

Moreover, prosecutors wrote:

"El-Hindi also secured a step-by-step guide to the placement of an IED [improvised explosive device] against U.S. soldiers through his membership on the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI) email list. As the evidence showed at trial, the IAI is a group devoted to staging mass-casualty attacks in western Iraq – in short, a terrorist group. El-Hindi benefited from his membership on the IAI's mailing list to receive the IED 'slideshow,' entitled 'The Mujahidin in Iraq and the art of planting explosive charges ,' which he promptly provided to Griffin. Judging from the damage inflicted on the U.S. vehicle in the document, it would be no surprise to learn that…members of the U.S. military died in the attack."

The third man convicted in the case, Wassim Mazloum, "repeatedly indicated that his own personal objective was to obtain training in the construction of explosives and the setting of ambushes. He also made very clear his intention to join the fighting against the U.S. military in Iraq," the government noted. "Mazloum repeatedly sought information on contributing money to the jihadis killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, going so far as to offer his used car business as a cover."

Mazloum was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Mazloum, (who emphasized his family connections with Hizballah to fellow conspirators), said he wanted to wage jihad against Israeli forces in Lebanon or U.S. forces in Iraq. "The fact that Mazloum would later indicate a willingness to engage in jihad in those areas that were deemed occupied by the militaries of the United States or Israel, then, is completely in line with the objectives of the conspiracies – to murder and maim individuals outside the United States, including American service members," the government brief noted.

Human Rights Watch Called Out by its Founder

When a human rights watchdog spends more time criticizing a democracy with a vibrant press and judicial system than it does ruthless dictatorships suppressing rights and even attacking its own people, it's clear something is wrong.

And a scolding on that lost focuse has to resonate deeply when it comes from the person who created the watchdog group. In Monday's New York Times, Human Rights Watch Founder Robert L. Bernstein laments that his former organization has gone from working "to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters" to working in league with "those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state."

No state is perfect, he notes, but he contrasts the actions of a state with 80 human rights groups among a population of 7.4 million people with 350 million people in Iran and the Arab world, living in "brutal, closed and autocratic" states intolerant of dissent." (The latest evidence of that can be seen here.) But their plight is overshadowed as HRW "prepares report after report on Israel," Bernstein writes.

In fact, HRW officials recently went to Saudi Arabia to seek donations rather than report on human rights there. In appealing to their hosts, HRW officials boasted about their tough line toward Israel.

The problem started with the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and with the December/January battle against Hamas in Gaza. HRW, he finds, fails to distinguish between intentional and unintentional harm:

"Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch's criticism."

See the whole column here. Jeffrey Goldberg weighs in here.

Canadian Terror Case Raises Troubling Questions

Press accounts like this suggest that Wednesday's Canadian court decision ending the government's terror case against Adil Charkaoui constituted vindication for an innocent man. But the court victory for Charkaoui, accused of being part of an Al Qaeda "sleeper cell," raises more questions than it answers.

Charkaoui, a Moroccan citizen who came to Montreal in 1995, was interviewed in by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in April 2001 as part of an investigation of jihadist recruitment in Montreal's Arab community. Two years later he was arrested on suspicion of belonging to Al Qaeda. The Canadian government sought to deport Charkaoui to Morocco on grounds that he posed a security danger to Canada.

After serving two years in prison, Charkaoui was ordered released from jail in 2005 under strict surveillance conditions limiting his movements.

A series of Canadian court decisions this summer would have required CSIS to disclose confidential information to Charkaoui about its wiretaps and use of informants. Rather than make what it regarded as harmful disclosures that would compromise intelligence sources and methods, the Canadian government decided to drop the case against him.

But information on the public record raises serious questions about whether Charkaoui's knows more about jihadist recruitment in Canada than he is letting on. The National Post reported that in his April 2001 CSIS interview, for example, Charkaoui described to police how Arabs in Montreal were recruiting people for jihad.

"The person responsible for recruitment attends certain nerve centres, such as mosques. Someone whom the recruiter considers to have potential will be exposed to certain activities having to do with jihad. The person is tested. If any flaw is detected related to the security that he must respect to participate in jihad activities, he will be expelled from the group immediately."

Although Charkaoui did not admit to participating in the recruitment effort, "his comments reveal a depth of knowledge about the goings-on within Montreal's extremist community," the National Post reported last year.

Charkaoui also declined to confirm to CSIS agents whether a friend of his named Hisham Tahir had trained in an al Qaeda camp. In 2007, the newspaper La Presse reported that Tahir and Charkaoui had discussed a plot to hijack a commercial jetliner in June 2000.

In a September 14, 2001 interview the agency reported that "Charkaoui did not want to swear to never having been witness to a conversation dealing with plots to commit terrorist attacks including the possibility of blowing up a plane."

Al Qaeda operatives Ahmed Ressam and Abu Zubaydeh have identified Charkaoui as someone who participated in terrorist activities. Read more about Charkaoui here.

Wrong is Wrong

There's a lot of debate surrounding the new book Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America. As we reported Thursday, it offers an insider's account to the operations of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), finding among other things that the organization exaggerates its reach and actively works against law enforcement.

Readers of our site should know we don't trust CAIR and believe there's a long trail of documented proof that it deceives the American public about its true agenda. Now comes word from CAIR that spokesman Ibrahim Hooper received a death threat.

Let's be clear. Regardless of how we view CAIR, death threats are a despicable form of criminal behavior. As someone who has received numerous death threats, I condemn this incident.

Israeli Organ Harvesting: From Crazy Conspiracy Theory to Outright Bigotry

Even the wild imagination of the world's most vile anti-Semites couldn't have dreamed up a more perfect scenario: Jews stealing the organs of non-Jews all over the world, as part of a shadowy network with "tentacles everywhere" and a motivation of "revenge, restitution, reparation for the Holocaust." Yet, like in so many cases when something is 'too good to be true,' this story required such a twisting of logic and good taste that it reads like a long lost chapter of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

So when the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs ran the latest rant of conspiracy theorist Alison Weir, it invited the firestorm of criticism that comes from tying weak investigative reporting to blatantly racist rubbish.

Weir's very impetus for writing this story, "Israeli Organ Harvesting: From Moldova to Palestine," derives from a baseless Swedish tabloid piece. The author of that Swedish piece, Donald Bostrom, admitted in a Russian television interview, "It's not up to me to have any evidence. I'm not convinced even that it happened." Likewise, the family members of the supposed Palestinian victim in the story have gone on record stating, "I don't know if this is true," and "We don't have any evidence to support this."

If that's not enough, Weir also has a bad habit of quoting other conspiracy theorists and misusing their academic titles to enhance credibility. Take the following quote from Weir's article as an example:

"Dr. A. Clare Brandabur, an American professor, writes that information in the Swedish article resonated with reports she heard during the first intifada."

Weir fails to mention that her expert witness is a professor of English literature with no academic experience in the field other than her own personal bias of having taught in the Middle East and her penchant for crackpot conspiracies. On top of that, Brandabur also believes that the U.S. government carried out the September 11 attacks:

"So American fear and anger was directed toward 'Islamo-fascism' and 'Palestinian terrorists,' while behind the scenes, under the guise of revenge for a despicable attack—one that like Pearl Harbor would in Roosevelt's words 'live in infamy'-- the real perpetrators of 9/11 were officials in our own government, who had carefully staged a home-grown terrorist attack designed to justify force to acquire US control of all remaining energy reserves worldwide."

Aside from some of the questionable evidence that Weir presents, her intentions are laid bare by her discussion of Israeli "motivations" for organ harvesting. Weir cites as evidence a 2008 speech by Nancy Scheper-Hughes that explained Israeli's motivations as greed, as well as a desire for "revenge, restitution, reparation for the Holocaust," and an attitude of "a kind of 'eye for an eye' and a tooth for a tooth.' We're going to get every single kidney and liver and heart that we can. The world owes it to us."

Thus, Israel and as Scheper-Hughes says, its "tentacles reaching out worldwide" are stealing Palestinian organs for dying Israeli medical patients as a grand revenge for the Holocaust. Even the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous granddaddy of Jewish conspiracies, did not attribute such base and disgusting accusations against the Jews.

There can be no doubt that Weir's accusations are directed at the Jewish people and Judaism as a religion. As a defense for her accusations that at least some rabbis sanction the stealing of Jewish organs, Weir quotes an "unnamed Israeli scholar on Jewish scriptural views and ethnic chauvinism," who states, "The sad thing, is, these statements are in our books. He points out that while such Talmudic texts were 'purely theoretical' at the time they were written, now they're being cited 'in circumstances where Jews have a state and are empowered."

All of this raises the question of what motivates Weir's publishers at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and the web site Counterpunch, which also published her organ theft conspiracy piece. A magazine dedicated to "telling the truth," and "interpreting the Middle East for North Americans, and Interpreting North America for the Middle East," should pay closer attention to the message and the truth that it is sending out.

Minneapolis Indictment Stokes Somali Concerns

The indictment of a fourth Minneapolis-area Somali man has the local community wondering whether the flow of Somalis returning to their homeland to fight with the terrorist al-Shabaab movement continues.

About a year ago, law enforcement officials began investigating the disappearance of about 20 young Somali men after one, Shirwa Ahmed became the first known American to carry out a suicide bombing attack. He allegedly drove a truck bomb into a government compound in Mogadishu. Two other men are believed to have been shot and killed in Somalia this past summer.

Since then, three men have pled guilty to charges they provided material support to al-Shabaab or lied about their involvement with the group.

On Tuesday, Abdow Abdow was charged with providing false statements to federal investigators after he was questioned about a road trip. Abdow was pulled over by a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper Oct. 6. He claimed to have only one passenger with him, when there really were four passengers. Two of the travelers are believed to have crossed into Mexico, where they may have boarded a flight to Mexico City. Their ultimate destination remains a mystery, but the community response points to common sense.

Minnesota Public Radio quoted Minneapolis attorney Stephen Smith saying "it's not unrealistic to at least wonder whether the individuals that were allegedly with Mr. Abdow intended to leave this country, ultimately with the intent of heading to Somalia."

While the federal investigation has been in the news for nearly a year, and several of the young men have been killed, community officials say Abdow's case raises disturbing questions whether the flow of young Somalis to the battle zone has stopped.

"The numbers now are probably much higher than 20. Definitely," Omar Jamal director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

It's not clear whether Abdow will face additional charges. Najibullah Zazi, charged with plotting terrorist attacks in New York, originally was charged with providing false statements to law enforcement.

Hijab Debate Intensifies

An interesting and potentially significant debate about Muslim women and clothing is reverberating throughout the world, with heads of state and devout Muslims all at odds with each other.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has declared the burka unwelcome, saying France "cannot accept, in our country, women imprisoned behind a mesh, cut off from society, deprived of all identity. That is not the French republic's idea of women's dignity." Contrast that with President Obama's Cairo speech, where he drew applause when he boasted that the Justice Department "has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it."

The emerging debate among Muslims may be the more significant argument to watch.

In Canada, a Muslim organization is advocating a ban on hijabs (which cover the head) and niqabs (which cover the head and most of the face) in public. The Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) argues the clothes aren't about modesty but "are political symbols of Saudi inspired Islamic extremism."

The MCC cites a recent announcement by Sheikh Mohamed Tantawi, dean of Egypt's al-Azhar university, saying that he plans to issue a fatwa against the niqab. Tantawi's plans have drawn sharp criticism from Hizb-ut Tahrir, which casts Tantawi as a pawn of the West in its "desperate underhand attempts to push them towards secular values and away from Islam."

Canadian feminist and Muslim reformist Irshad Manji asked her readers what they thought of the MCC idea. Interestingly, more men who responded seemed to support it than women.

One woman favoring a ban is American journalist Asra Nomani. Writing last week in the Daily Beast, Nomani challenged the religious significance of the face and body covers, saying "it's an edict of only the most hardcore of Muslims, typically those adhering to the rigid schools of interpretation called Wahhabism and Salafism ... [which] essentially represent the KKK wing of Islam."

Nomani compares the Quranic text most commonly cited on the issue and finds the more recent, Saudi-financed Noble Qu'ran adds interpretations – "(..i.e. screen themselves completely except the eyes or one eye to see the way)" – that aren't in other translations, including this one by Lebanese scholar Tarif Khalidi.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), on the other hand, has made the defense of hijab wearing a staple in its civil rights portfolio. It has sued and lobbied courts where head coverings were barred and fought state efforts to require people to remove head coverings for driver's license pictures.

Nomani offers a pointed rebuttal to the argument that the state is curtailing religious freedom. The veil may be seen as an expression of faith for some, but it's something else to the rest of society:

"It's a security risk. Indeed, from Islamabad to Baghdad, the face veil has been used by militants to escape police action, stage attacks, and feign identities. Most importantly, the face veil represents a frightening brand of Islam that is taking hold even among young girls. It preaches a literal translation of the Koran that becomes troublesome when applied to problematic verses—which are used by militants to sanction domestic violence, intolerance, and even suicide bombings."

This debate offers a number of lessons. Muslims, like any else, are not a monolithic people. Dissident voices may be growing, however, both in number and in stature. And that can only help seize the mantle from self-appointed voices of Muslims from apologists for radicalism and its enablers.

Newer Postings   |   Older Postings