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Israel Targets Terror Labs Funded by U.S. Islamic Group
The labs were made possible by millions from a Saudi-financed charity in ... Ohio.
In an August 2007 policy report for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy entitled “Better Late than Never: Keeping USAID Funds out of Terrorist Hands,” Matthew Levitt, former deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Treasury Department and author of Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale Univ. Press), detailed the integral role that IUG plays as part of the Hamas terrorist infrastructure:
Indeed, Israeli and Palestinian scholars alike characterize the IUG as a Hamas institution. Meir Hatina described it as one of the key institutions that “coordinated [Muslim] Brotherhood activities in the Gaza Strip and later constituted a springboard for Hamas.” Similarly, in his book Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza, Ziad Abu Amr depicted the IUG as “the principal Muslim Brotherhood stronghold,” referring to the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, which became Hamas in December 1987. “The University’s administration, most of the employees who work there, and the majority of students are Brotherhood supporters,” he concluded.
Hamas itself has corroborated these ties. In a 2003 interview in the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal boasted of the group’s participation in building the IUG in 1978. And according to FBI surveillance of a 1993 Hamas meeting in Philadelphia, Muin Kamel Muhammad Shabib, a member of the organization’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, briefed attendees on “the situation in Palestine” and the status of “Islamic works” tied to Hamas, naming the IUG as one of “our institutions.” In fact, even a cursory search of articles on LexisNexis through March 2007 produces 149 articles mentioning the IUG and Hamas together. Yet, only after congressional and media scrutiny exposed the taxpayer-funded awards to the Hamas-linked institution was USAID funding for the university terminated.
Other reports have detailed how the IUG has also been used for weapons storage, launching rockets, and holding hostages. In February 2007, Palestinian security forces captured seven Iranian military trainers and confiscated 1,000 Qassam rockets located at the IUG. Another article reported that 2,000 AK-47s were also confiscated, as well as evidence that captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, abducted by Hamas in June 2006, had previously been held at the university.
A May 2007 International Herald Tribune article described IUG’s centrality in the Fatah-Hamas factional fighting in Gaza, with the university used to launch attacks against their rivals and for military training:
Hamas fighters have been inside Islamic University for days, trying to protect it from another Fatah attack like one last year that badly damaged the school, one of the prime means for Hamas to convert Palestinians to its Islamist cause. Hamas guards at the university have been killed by snipers in previous days, and on Friday, Fatah fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades and mortars at the school, setting a building on fire, and exchanged gunshots with Hamas men inside.
Fatah said that Hamas fighters were using the university as a base for attacks on nearby police stations.
After the IUG strikes on Monday, IDF spokeswoman Avital Leibovich gave an interview to investigative reporter Aaron Klein, characterizing the militant nature of the IUG and the use of its facilities for the manufacture of Hamas explosives. “This is the first university in world that gives out bachelor’s degrees in rocket manufacture,” she said.
IUG figured prominently in the recent Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial, with federal prosecutors entering documents into evidence showing that Holy Land officials used the IUG to funnel funds to Hamas.
With Israel declaring “all-out war” against Hamas, the present conflict will hopefully provide incentive for law enforcement officials to further roll back the extensive Hamas support network in the U.S. Considering the success that prosecutors had in securing convictions on all 108 counts against the Holy Land Foundation defendants, investigating the degree of involvement of Arab Student Aid International in the financing and construction of the IUG Hamas terror labs might be a good place to start.
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Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
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14 Comments
1. vcb-tn:dahmn…ming!, but “who” cares?
Dec 30, 2008 - 12:52 am 2. SamIam:Since Hamas is an officially designated terrorist group I expect to be reading about indictments of this “charity” shortly. Right? Hello, feds?
Dec 30, 2008 - 2:07 am 3. steveoh:Our friends the Saudi’s. Jimmah Carter started this mess while Bush, Baker and Co made it worse. Now W and Condi (screw the Jews) Rice have continued their special relationship with Israel while at the same time kissing Saudi A**? We reap what we sow. Now with Barak Hussein on his way in the party is really going to get going. May Israel take care of business swiftly and with total use of overwhelming force. As for this Jew, I will be happy to show any anti semite what Jews do in the 21st century when faced with this thousands year old bull.
Dec 30, 2008 - 3:35 am 4. aramkr:Unless these labs were hit while occupied by the greatest number of “scientists” at “work”, it seems only a temporary fix and barely worth the trouble. This should be kept in mind if anyone ever gets around to taking care of the Iranian nuke facilities.
Dec 30, 2008 - 6:23 am 5. CTN:“The first university in world that gives out bachelor’s degrees in rocket manufacture” — and according to IUG’s website, “ASAI, in Ohio in the United States, is a charitable public foundation.”
God save us from Islam’s charity.
Dec 30, 2008 - 7:38 am 6. FeFe:Since we have no room in our prisons for DUI and drug users, can’t law enforcement focus on the Holy Land Foundation non-indicted co-conspirators?
Dec 30, 2008 - 9:34 am 7. Paul_Unalaska:Where the *ell’s the indictments for the numerous individuals for the Ohio university? I’m not speaking of this due to the recent Israeli/Palestinian conflict but the reams of evidence tying this school to Hamas through the years?!
Collectivism kills. Like sheep to the slaughter our bureaucratic leaders are allowing and encouraging it when doing nothing. I feel dirty after reading this piece.
Dude, where’s my country?
Dec 30, 2008 - 11:50 am 8. Cybergeezer:Israel is finally speaking in terms Hamas can understand. And while they’re in this chit chat, make a full seminar.
Dec 30, 2008 - 3:55 pm 9. thegr8 1:I agree the University needed to be bombed while the scientists were at work. Same thing goes with Iran’s nuclear facilities. First sign of incoming bombs to Iran the scientists will scatter like the rats they are.
Dec 30, 2008 - 5:59 pm 10. Modern solutions:Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity’
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted December 16, 2008.
Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.
“This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality,” I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the U.S. Council for the National Interest Foundation to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. “I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago.”
The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”
Falk, while condemning the rocket attacks by the militant group Hamas, which he points out are also criminal violations of international law, goes on to say that “such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel’s imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.”
“It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,” Falk said when I reached him by phone in California shortly before he left for Israel. “This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.”
Gaza now spends 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza’s three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children—half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17—are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.
“It is macabre,” Falk said. “I don’t know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times.”
“There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances,” the rapporteur added. “The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable.”
The point of this Israeli siege, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel. Palestinians have launched more than 200 rockets on Israel since the latest round of violence began. There have been no Israeli casualties.
“This is a crime of survival,” Falk said of the rocket attacks. “Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances.”
Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip onto Egypt. There are now dozens of tunnels, the principal means for food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel permits the tunnels to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off from Israel.
“Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic process that gives the Palestinians a viable state,” Falk said. “They [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a viable state cannot emerge.”
The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a “martyr”?
The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.
http://www.alternet.org/audits/113143&title=Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity’
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. His latest book is Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.
Dec 30, 2008 - 6:07 pm 11. thegr8 1:Does anybody think that what happened in Mumbai to the Jewish people who were killed, tortured, and mutilated made them say “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore” and they are taking it out on Hamas? What would we do if Mexico lobbed millsiles at San Antonio or San Diego or Canada bombed International Falls or Duluth?
Dec 30, 2008 - 6:09 pm 12. paul_unalaska:Modern Solutions, is this article though more akin to ‘Martyrdom piece’ intentioned to cry ‘foul’ by the Israelis?
When you allow a nation, perhaps your own nation to be saturated with single celled-like organisms, in this case, ‘Hamas’ for a long period of time, there are bound to be civilian casualties when eradicating the disease.
Oh, and I love the title of Chris Hedges latest book. Great stuff.
Your mindset has me thinking of the comments flung around during the Preidential election about racism. Of course Obama pounced on it everyday to give simpleton’s a guilt in some shape or form. Different in degree for each person. i.e. ‘It’s time’, ‘Make history with me’ et al.
America can attempt to transcending the ‘race barrier’ with electing Obama. Though the black caucus, NAACP, ACLU, La Raza, and infinite other special interest groups, including Jewish coffers mind you, will continue to remind us we haven’t.
Happy New Year nonetheless.
Dec 30, 2008 - 9:28 pm 13. Joe C.:Hamas was ELECTED with 62% of the voters in Gaza (big turnout); there fore this is what the people wanted. They knew or should have known that Hamas was going to attack Israeli civilians and that Israel would defend itself by firing back at the military targets that are “hidden” in “civilian” areas. I blame the “Palestinians” for their own civilian deaths. Elections have consequences. You can’t elect a terrorist government, and then complain when the victims retaliate. There are no innocents in Palestine.
I feel sorry for the little children whose parents thought so little of their lives that they voted to have them be used as human shields. We should get out of the way, and just let Israel win this thing once and for all. In the long run, more lives will be saved.
Dec 31, 2008 - 4:35 am 14. DoubleTapper:All we did was try to clean up the mess we made in 2005 when we left Hamas in charge of Gaza.
Dec 31, 2008 - 6:09 amAnd yet some people have the ignorance to do this
How can we let this pass?
DoubleTapper
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