HLF, Palestine Terrorists, Hamas and Stealth Jihad

Remember the Holy Land Foundation receiving a bunch of not guilty verdicts coupled with a Hung Jury on the other indictments. A slew of Islamist groups that sell the notion they are moderate Mohammedans were unindicted co-conspirators with the HLF. You can imagine the wave of enthusiasm and elation when these Islamists heard that zero guilty verdicts were handed down.

This debacle in prosecution occurred nearly a year ago. On November 24, 2008 the funders of terrorist evil using Muslim-Americans and duped Leftists were finally found guilty in a new trial.

Expert on Islamic Civilization Robert Spencer called the guilty verdicts of five HLF Muslim ne’er-do-wells a “crushing defeat” for the American-Muslim supporters of the murdering terrorist organization Hamas (and I assume other Islamofascists).

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has some information.
Discover the Networks also has some background.
JRH 11/29/08

 

**SlantRight Editor: This is an update posting from the SlantRight.com archive site in case it is taken down. Update: 6/10/13

 

The Holy Land Verdict: A Setback for the Stealth Jihad

By Robert Spencer
November 26, 2008FrontPageMagazine.com

A federal jury in Dallas on Monday dealt the Stealth Jihad initiative in the United States a crushing defeat: it found five former officials of an Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), guilty of funneling at least $12 million of the charity’s funds to the jihad terror group Hamas. The notorious “Muslim civil rights” group, the Council on American Islamic Relations, is involved as well, since Ghassan Elashi, a founding director of CAIR as well as founder of the group’s Texas chapter, was among those found guilty; Elashi and his co-defendants face prison sentences of up to twenty years for providing support to terrorists.

HLF was once the largest Islamic charity in the United States. According to the Investigative Project, “prosecutors say HLF was part of a Palestine Committee – a conglomerate of U.S. based Muslim organizations and individuals committed to helping Hamas financially and politically. HLF was its fundraising arm, a designation formalized by Hamas deputy political director Mousa Abu Marzook in 1994.” After September 11, CAIR carried a link to HLF on its website, under the heading, “Donate to the NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund.” It seems likely that some people gave money to this thinking they were helping the injured and bereaved in New York and Washington, when they were actually giving money to Hamas. This weblink earned CAIR the designation of “unindicted co-conspirator” in the HLF case – which designation the group has tried unsuccessfully to have the Justice Department remove.

Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the blind Islamic cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, told The Investigative Project: “This is one of the most significant victories the Justice Department has won in the war on terror. Financing is the life-blood of jihadist organizations like Hamas. With the assistance of willing co-conspirators, they conceal their activities and use the Muslim obligation of charitable giving to mask support that is actually channeled to their murderous agenda. Today’s verdicts say, loudly and clearly, that Americans aren’t fooled and won’t tolerate it. As a former federal prosecutor, I am especially proud of the assistant U.S. attorneys who persevered through some real travails in securing justice for the American people.”

Another unsavory link between the HLF and the global jihad came to light during the first trial of the charity, which ended in a mistrial last year. Found among the HLF’s documents was the Muslim Brotherhood memorandum about its “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within” first came to light. It seems clear now that the HLF itself was one of the chief engines of this stealthy effort, enjoying a sterling reputation as a charitable organization while actually acting as a virtual fundraising engine for Hamas.

One chief operating procedure of this stealth jihad effort is constantly to portray oneself as being unjustly victimized by a racist and bigoted Justice Department. (Al-Qaeda manuals, similarly, advise imprisoned members to claim that they have been tortured whenever and wherever they may find themselves in an infidel prison.) The HLF’s allies began with this immediately as the verdicts were announced: a child of one of the defendants, unidentified in news reports, cried out in the courtroom, “My dad is not a criminal! He’s a human!” The tactic of portraying these jihadists as martyrs a la Alger Hiss was furthered also by William Moffitt, an attorney who represented the admitted Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian. “I suspect,” Moffitt opined, “that they will be viewed much the same way that Mandela was viewed by the black South African population – as freedom fighters who have dedicated their lives to the liberation of Palestine.” The HLF trial was, he said, one of many “show trials,” the purpose of which was “to further, in the minds of the public, the so-called ‘war on terrorism.’ There are legitimate terrorist organizations out there. But we’ve tried to make every group that doesn’t agree with us like al-Qaeda.”

Is the problem with Hamas really just that it “doesn’t agree with us”? When Hamas has for years gloried in the murders of innocent Israeli civilians? The answers are clear; but to obfuscate what is straightforward is a hallmark of the Stealth Jihad. That effort – the effort to soften American resistance to Islamic jihad activity and to insinuate Islamic law piece by piece into the United States – has been dealt a blow in the Holy Land Foundation verdict, but although it is down, it is by no means out.
______________________________________
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His next book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, is coming this November from Regnery Publishing.

Copyright©2008 FrontPageMagazine.com

Where is the Pardon President Bush?

As expected President Bush has abandoned Scooter Libby to the Leftist vengeance of not convicting a Neocon Republican for crimes that did not occur.

If there was a crime it was Richard Armitage outing Valerie Plame for her insignificant role in the CIA. Yet Armitage was an Arab loving Republican that did not agree with President Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

Fitzgerald – the Leftist stooge – would not go after a like minded Appeaser; thus Fitzgerald went after Libby about a three year old memory which proved to faulty.

Do any of you remember the specifics of a single important moment in your life three years ago (particularly if your job was involved in a multiple series of important moments)?

What is President Bush thinking allowing such an obvious political conviction persecution? George W. Bush is becoming more and more akin to a Benedict Arnold of the Conservative Republican base.

Whose Fall Guy

David Limbaugh weighs in on the rail road job performed by Left Wing bureaucrats upon I. Scooter Libby.

Law and Disorder: Sherman's March through the Law

It’s Law and Order time, Fred Thompson writes about the Libby conviction for AEI.
JRH
************************************************

Law and Disorder: Sherman's March through the Law

By Fred Thompson

Posted: Wednesday, March 7, 2007

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

Doesn't Patrick Fitzgerald look like a man who has dodged a bullet and is ready to get out of town? That was my first impression after watching the special-prosecutor's press conference after news came down Wednesday about Scooter Libby. It would seem that prosecuting a Bush official before a Washington jury is not necessarily a slam dunk after all when the gruel is this thin.

Two crucial decisions were made in order for this sorry state of affairs to have played out this way. The first was when the Justice Department folded under political and media pressure because of the Plame leak and appointed a special counsel. When DOJ made the appointment they knew that the leak did not constitute a violation of the law. Yet, instead of standing on that solid legal ground they abdicated their official responsibility.

The Plame/Wilson defenders wanted administration blood because the administration had had the audacity to question the credibility of Joe Wilson and defend themselves against his charges. Therefore, the Department of Justice, in order to completely inoculate themselves, gave power and independence to Fitzgerald that was not available to Ken Starr, Lawrence Walsh, or any prior independent counsel under the old independent-counsel law. Fitzgerald became unique in our judicial history in that he was accountable to no one. And here even if justice had retained some authority they could hardly have asked Fitzgerald why he continued to pursue a non-crime because they knew from the beginning there was no crime.

From there the players' moves were predictable. Fitzgerald began his Sherman's march through the law and the press until he thought he had finally come up with something to justify his lofty mandate--a case that would not have been brought in any other part of the country.

The media by then was suffering from Stockholm syndrome--they feared and loved Fitzgerald at the same time. He was establishing terrible precedent by his willingness to throw reporters in jail over much less than serious national-security matters--the Ashcroft standard! Yet Fitzgerald was doing the Lord's work in their eyes. This was a "bad leak" not a "good leak" like the kind they like to use. And it was much better to get the Tim Russert and Ari Fleischer treatment than it is to get the Judith Miller treatment. Fitzgerald paid no price for his prosecutorial inconsistencies, his erroneous public statements, or his possible conflicts of interest. And now they get to point out how this case revealed the "deep truths" about the White House.

The second decision was made by Libby himself. It was the decision to spend eight hours without counsel in a grand-jury room with Fitzgerald with this controversy swirling around him while trying to remember and recount conversations with various news reporters--reporters who he knew would be interviewed about these conversations themselves. These, of course, were reporters Libby had no right to expect to do him any favors. This sounds like a man with nothing to hide. This sounds like a man who doesn't appreciate the position he is in or what or whom he is dealing with.

It is ironic that what Libby is facing today is not due to the evil machinations so often attributed to the White House but rather due to an apparent naivety.

Like most Washington political fights, very few participants have been left unscathed. Among the results of this investigation and trial, there will be less cooperation by public officials in future investigations and less ability of reporters to get information. We should ask ourselves: Are our institutions or is our sense of justice stronger because of this prosecution?

Fred Thompson is a visiting fellow at AEI.

© 2005 (sic) American Enterprise Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Shooting Elephants in a Barrel

I was praying Ann Coulter would have an immediate response to Libby’s conviction. Coulter writes in much more erudite manner than my own reaction to this travesty of Justice.

Coulter points out all the heinous crimes that Democrats have been implicated in over the years with little to zero criminal investigation.

It is as if Democrats or those allied with Democrats are excluded from criminal charges. The thing that drives me nuts is that President Bush has allowed his Justice Department in continuing to coat Democrats in Teflon while Republicans are coated with stick’em.

READ IT!