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Let Them Eat Rubber Bullets
By Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
13/12/2001
How do you think the world would respond if someone shut down Catholic charities because of an unproven allegation that they were recruiting people for the Irish Republican Army? Imagine the horror and indignation if the U.S. government issued orders shutting down the Red Cross just as it was trying to assist the victims of the Sept. 11 attack because of an unproven allegation that a senior official was also involved with the Ku Klux Klan? How is it possible then that the Bush Administration has been able to deprive orphans and the wounded civilians of Palestine from aid given them by the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development by freezing their assets before any trial on the accusations against the foundation has been held?
The injury of this shutdown affects not only Palestinians, but many other worthy causes that the Holy Land Foundation has supported including, ironically, New York City's WTC funds. That injury is compounded by the insult of shutting it down during the month of Ramadan when Muslims concentrate their charitable giving in fulfillment of the third pillar of Islam.
For years the usual gang of Islam-bashers have attempted to provoke action against the Holy Land Foundation with the charge that its charitable activities indirectly aid Hamas. The Holy Land Foundation has denied allegations that it provides financial aid to Hamas and has also denied that they condone terrorism. The foundation's chief executive, Shukri Abu-Bakr, stated at a press conference last week that "The foundation is strictly a humanitarian organization, and we have never supported Hamas…"
A broad assortment of leading American Muslim organizations have joined together in issuing a statement protesting this scandalous treatment of one of the largest Muslim charitable organizations in America. The text reads, in part: "No relief group anywhere in the world should be asked to question hungry orphans about their parent's religious beliefs, political affiliations or legal status. Those questions are not asked of recipients of public assistance whose parents are imprisoned or executed in the United States, and they should not be a litmus test for relief in Palestine."
The FBI has released a 49-page report that alleges that "most of the funds Holy Land sends to the territories - about $8 million last year - are funneled to Hamas causes, and that there is a close link between Hamas's charitable work and its support for suicide bombers" (Mintz 2001). This electrifying conclusion seems to be based on FBI monitoring of a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia at which "top officials" of the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and Hamas allegedly met for the purpose of developing a strategy for undermining the Oslo accords.
Yet one searches in vain for specific illegal actions by the Holy Land Foundation. The closest we get is the "recollection" by an "unnamed FBI informant" that Shukri Abu Bakr was introduced at a 1994 conference in California as the equivalent of a "senior vice president" of Hamas (Mintz 2001). Even if this allegation were more specific - and true - it might call for action against Abu Bakr, not the Holy Land Foundation.
It appears that the government has decided to break the back of the Islamic charity by means that do not require it to prove that the organization itself has done anything wrong. Instead they "will seek to deport group leaders who have violated immigration laws and will file administrative actions against the groups like the one brought this week" (Mintz 2001).
One cannot escape the conclusion that the government has bought into the strange argument that Zionists have been using in their call to shut down Islamic charitable organizations. The argument goes something like this: Every blanket given a sick child by Islamic charities frees up money that Hamas can use to buy explosives to use against Israeli civilians. It is shocking that anyone would accept such perverse reasoning, and for years the federal government did not cave into it.
It was sufficiently shameful that the U.S. government has been manipulated into its persecution of strong and healthy innocents like Mazen
al-Najjar. This latest development of depriving the poor, the needy, the wounded, orphans, widows, and the elderly from obtaining the food, clothing, shelter, and medical relief - which in many cases our own assistance to Israel has made necessary - is disgraceful in the extreme. The words that Thomas Jefferson (1782) wrote about the evils of slavery apply as well to this most recent assault on the downtrodden:
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. - But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind.
References
Thomas Jefferson 1782, Thomas Jefferson: Notes on the State of Virginia.
John Mintz 2001, "Long FBI Probe Led to U.S. Move Against Islamic Charity," Washington Post (12/6) A34.
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