The Long Reach of Islamist Terror Funding in North America
"We reject the distinction between 'civilian' and 'militant'. We reject the distinction between 'settler' and 'soldier'.""Every Palestinian is a civilian even if they hold arms.""A settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches."Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)"Certainly, any steps that you can make toward disrupting a terrorist organization, those are accomplishments.""But, in reality, what I knew, was that this infrastructure [the Holy Land Foundation] had been operating since 1988. That's a long time.""The roots that this infrastructure had planted throughout the U.S. were deep and vast."Lara Burns, former FBI special agent"[The court filing should trigger greater interest among America's intelligence agencies about the possible] ties between Hamas and some of the so-called student groups now leading antisemitic violence and intimidation on our campuses."Paul Moore, former chief investigative counsel, U.S. Department of Education
On
the very day of the Hamas incursion into southern Israel to carry out a
bloodbath -- replete with mass rape, torture, the burning of farming
villages and kidnapping of Israeli civilians young and old -- across the
United States, National Students for Justice in Palestine sprang into
action to co-ordinate a swift 'public relations' campaign feeding off
the terrorist action. They issued guidelines on campus walkouts across
both the United States and Canada, along with graphic templates as
critical propaganda tools.
A Towfan Al Aqsa statement (code for the name Hamas labelled its attack) was issued by the SJP chapter at University of California, Berkeley to honour the "Palestinians
who are working on the ground on several axes of the so-called 'Gaza
envelope' alongside our comrades in blood and arms, and what is coming
is greater. Victory or martyrdom". George Washington University's SJP chapter caught up two days later with its own declaration.
Students
for Justice in Palestine is now recognized as the most prominent
anti-Israel group operating throughout North America, where it has
gained international attention in its mobilization of college campus
encampments. It has taken fully four decades since the seed for such a
widespread network of unified placeholders to act in support of Islamist
terrorism in the Palestinian Territories, culminating in the primacy of
Hamas in Gaza.
In
2001, U.S. government efforts based on intelligence of foreign
terrorist networks' infiltration into the United States led to the
closing down of the Holy Land Foundation, and the Islamic Association of
Palestine following several years later. By then it was too late; the
two fundraising arms of Islamist 'charities' benefiting terrorism were
cut off, but more than ample arms remained, deeply integrated and
quietly doing their work in support of Hamas and what it represents.
Senior
leaders of both outlawed groups simply reorganized and became American
Muslims for Palestine (AMP) which is the largest sponsor of Students for
Justice in Palestine, totally invested in demanding that American
universities divest from Israel. Initially, overt antisemitism was
averted in favour of a civil exterior which the left found much in
common with and suddenly young college left-leaning activists and the
conservative Muslim community leadership began acting in support of one
another.
AMP
established the umbrella group National SJP with a view to
co-ordinating messaging and strategy among its 200-plus chapters in the
U.S. and Canada; a network of growing influence.
"Before 2010, SJP operated with individual campus chapters and little
cross-campus co-ordination. It was not until 2010 that a national effort
to unite SJP campus branches emerged". explained Dan Diker, researcher at think tank JCPA in Jerusalem.
In
the 1980s, the U.S. became a fundraising bonanza for Islamic
fundamentalists where al-Qaeda leaders sent members on tour, stopping at
dozens of mosques to promote funding for the mujahideen then fighting
the USSR in Afghanistan. In later years, Hamas leaders emulated the
success of the earlier al-Qaeda fundraising ventures to their own
advantage. And Hamas's fundraising and advocacy infrastructure was
slowly established in the U.S. and Canada.
American
Muslims for Palestine strategically engineered a slander program that
found acceptability in polite society, among academia and the union
landscape, packaging raw antisemitism as recognition of Jews, Israel,
Zionism and the Holocaust in linkage to decolonization and
anti-oppression, quickly taken up as effective verbal tools that found
credibility across the continent, where groups of Israel bashers took to
Israel as a colonizing occupier while asserting there was nothing
antisemitic in their focus on the Jewish state.
Zionists have been compared to Nazis, to the KKK, and enthusiastic apartheid racists. "If
there were Nazis, white nationalists and KKK members on campus, would
their identity have been accepted and respected? Then why would we
respect the view of Zionists?", the SJP chapter at
Stony Brook University in New York posted on social media, demanding the
expulsion of Jewish student group Hillel from campus.
"This [law]suit, targeting key nodes in the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood U.S. network, is frankly long overdue. The close connections between these defendants and Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other designated foreign terrorist organizations are no secret.""For years, SJP and AMP [American Muslims for Palestine] have bragged about supporting Hamas.""And in many respects, these groups are the tip of a very dirty iceberg."Reed Rubenstein, former deputy associate attorney general, U.S. Department of Education
Photo by Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press |
Labels: American Muslims for Palestine, Antisemitism, Fundraising for Islamist Terror, Hamas, Islamist Stealth Infiltration, Leftist Academia, Propaganda, Students for Justice in Palestine
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