Author: Steven Emerson
with Tamar Tesler
Publication: Moment
Magazine
Date: August 2000
"United for Al-Quds"
announced the flyer for the May 29, 1999, conference. Al-Quds, is
the Arabic name for Jerusalem often used by Muslims who hope the city will
one day be the capital of a Palestinian state. Billed as a fund-raiser,
the conference sounded no different from a Jewish conference called, say,
Jerusalem: Eternal and Undivided - an expression of hopes and political
aspirations. But sometimes titles don't reveal everything.
Some 1,200 people showed
up for the Al-Quds conference, where speaker after speaker bemoaned the
existence of the Zionist cabal to subjugate Muslims-reciting a litany of
war crimes committed against Palestinians. Yusuf Islam, who once
delighted American audiences with songs like "Peace Train" (back then,
before he converted to Islam, he was known as Cat Stevens), set the tone
with the keynote speech. "The Jews were punished so severely [throughout
history] due to their disobedience," said Islam. "When the Jews placed
their love of life and their national identity above that of obedience
to Allah and the prophets, they were lowered to abject levels of disgrace
and dishonor."
The crowd ate it up.
But there was more. After Islam1s speech, the audience was treated
to a video produced by the Texas-based Islamic Association for Palestine
(IAP). According to former FBI assistant director Oliver Revell,
IAP is a front for Hamas. The IAP has sponsored rallies praising
Hamas suicide bombers and has released Hamas communiqués and training
and recruitment tapes. The IAP video hammered away with the classic
Hamas religious prohibition against compromise with Israel: "No Muslim,
Arab, or Palestinian in Jerusalem or in Palestine has the right to forsake,
sell, or concede any inch of Palestine."
Before and after the
video, speakers hammered away at a central theme: the Zionist "conspiracy"
against Palestinians. "The Day of Judgment will not happen until
you fight the Jews," said Near East studies professor Hatem Bazian, citing
a phrase that Muslim clerics have used to justify suicide bombings against
Israeli civilians. "They are on the west side of the river, the Jordan
River, and you1re on the east side. The Day of Judgment will not
happen until the trees and stones will say, O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding
behind me. Come and kill him."
Perhaps this type of
Jew-baiting would be expected in Gaza. But the United for Al-Quds
conference took place in Santa Clara, California. And the 26 Islamic
charities and relief groups that organized the affair are based in America.
U.S. government
officials believe that the majority of the more than 10,000 Islamic charities
worldwide are legitimate, and providing emergency relief in places like
Kosovo and Chechnya. Similarly, the overwhelming numbers of American
Muslims who donate to these charities are honest, upstanding individuals
who earnestly want to help. But officials told the New York Times
recently that the U.S. government is investigating some 30 groups
worldwide for possible links to Middle East terrorists. At least
two of these groups are based in the United States: the Holy Land Foundation
for Relief and Development (HLF), in Richardson, Texas; and the Global
Relief Fund, in Bridgeview, Illinois. The Washington Post, in an
article published in October 1998, disclosed that the FBI was "scrutinizing"
20 U.S.-based groups with links to terrorists -including several linked
to Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the bombing of U.S.
embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. One official
who monitors terrorism closely recently told the New York Times: "These
charities and relief groups are a crucial part of terrorism's infrastructure.
Money people give for worthy causes should not wind up buying explosives
or phony passports."
The groups "allegedly
only [do] fund-raising," said Paul Bremer, a former State Department official.
"And they probably tell people who give money that the fund-raising is
only going to nice soft things, like hospitals and child care. But
in fact, money raised in this way is fungible. It can be used to
buy AK-47s or bomb-making [equipment]."
Information about terrorist
links to Islamic charities is not new. In the March 1995 issue of
Middle East Quarterly, Revell wrote: "Numerous front groups supporting
Hamas have been established in the United States and several collect funds
as tax-exempt 501 (c)(3) organizations. These front organizations
claim to be supporting only humanitarian efforts but a careful analysis
of their actions reveals a different story." What is new, however, is that
the government has stepped up its investigation of Muslim charity and civil
rights groups. Judith Miller of the New York Times wrote on February
19, 2000, that the "inquiry is a major expansion of the government1s counter
terrorism efforts."
The U.S. State
Department revealed its investigation after I requested documents pertaining
to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, under the Freedom
of Information Act. According to a U.S. government affidavit,
the group has been the subject of a criminal investigation for its ties
to Hamas for nearly four years. A document declassified September
20, 1999, shows that the State Department is currently determining whether
to designate HLF as an organization "acting for or on behalf of Hamas."
The government released the affidavit to stave off my request for information,
citing its ongoing investigation into HLF as the reason it could not divulge
more information. At one point, according to federal officials, government
agents were ready to padlock HLF's offices but at the last moment were
told to hold off by the Treasury Department and the FBI. But that
does not mean the FBI is not hot on the trail of these front groups.
Steve McGonigle, a reporter
for the Dallas Morning News, reported in October 1999 that "FBI agents
have quizzed donors to Islamic charities ...in Muslim neighborhoods across
the nation" -including donors to HLF. In another case, the FBI is
investigating Mohammad Salah of Bridgeview, Illinois, who is connected
to the Illinois-based Quranic Literacy Institute, for allegedly sending
at least $45,000 in donations to Hamas for Uzis and other weapons, according
to published reports. (Authorities have seized $1.4 million from
Salah and the Institute, including Salah's bank accounts, his van, and
his Illinois home.) Authorities are also focusing on Wadih el Hage of Texas,
who has been charged in connection with the embassy bombings. The
Global Relief Foundation, one of the two U.S. charities named by
the Times, supported the fund-raising efforts of an Islamic school run
by el-Hage's Islamic Society of Arlington, Texas, according to the foundation's
quarterly publication. "What we target are violations of federal
criminal law," Dale Watson, deputy assistant director of counter terrorism
at the FBI, told the Dallas Morning News. "This is not a witch hunt.
It's a serious matter."
In June, a blue-ribbon
commission created by Congress recommended that the federal government
take more aggressive steps to combat terrorism. The National Commission
on Terrorism, created two years ago after the U.S. embassies were
bombed in Africa, found that today's terrorists rely less on direct state
sponsorship and more on "loosely affiliated, transnational terrorists networks
[that] are difficult to predict, track, and penetrate." "Their networks
of support include both front organizations and legitimate business and
nongovernment organizations," the panel concluded in a 64-page report.
The government is finally
starting to take other concrete actions as well. Earlier this year,
U.S. Treasury Department officials visited several Middle Eastern
countries, inquiring about specific charities. According to the New
York Times, the State Department's Agency for International Development
recently cut off a grant to a Columbia, Missouri, organization called the
Islamic African Relief Agency, which, documents show, has links to Sudan's
ruling Islamic party. (Sudan is on the State Department1s list of
countries that support international terrorism.) The charity had been included
on a list of 50 organizations through which Americans could aid refugees
from Kosovo.
"Although the administration
has previously investigated alleged links between individual Islamic charities
and specific terrorist groups," wrote Miller in the February 19, 2000,
New York Times, "this is the first time that it is scrutinizing a block
of such groups to determine whether they are being used, wittingly or not,
by Islamic terrorist networks." The only question is, what took them so
long?
I first began looking
into these issues in December 1992, when I was in Oklahoma City during
an unrelated assignment for CNN. On Christmas day, in search of some
fast food, I drove to downtown Oklahoma City near the Convention Center,
where I noticed thousands of people dressed in traditional Islamic clothing.
Out of curiosity, I followed a trail of people into the convention hall.
I quickly discovered I had entered an Islamic religious convention of sorts.
According to a brochure I picked up at the information booth, this was
the annual convention of a group called the Muslim Arab Youth Association
(MAYA).
Before long, a young
American Muslim - a convert from Judaism - took me under his wing and chaperoned
me through the "bazaar" - a wide open space, much like any other convention
center floor, where distributors hawked their wares, including books and
tapes in Arabic calling for the death of America, the destruction of Israel
and Egypt, and a jihad (holy war) against the West. I acted sympathetic.
The highlight of the conference was an evening event called Palestine Night,
at which Khalid Mishal, a top-ranking Hamas official, exhorted the crowd
of thousands to rejoice in the use of knives and Molotov cocktails; and
Kamal Hilbawi, an Egyptian leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, called for
Muslims to carry out a war against the "Jews and their co-conspirators."
(Later, during a trial related to the bombing of the World Trade Center,
I discovered that several of the defendants (who were later convicted)
had attended the convention.)
After returning to Washington,
I asked a senior FBI official whether he was aware of any recent activity
in Oklahoma City involving Islamic militants. He answered with one
simple word: "None." Then in January 1993 Israel revealed it had arrested
Hamas militants from the United States on charges of abetting Hamas terrorism
by laundering money and conveying instructions for terrorist attacks.
Israeli officials said Hamas leaders had been using the United States as
a sanctuary and safe-haven. When I went back to the FBI official
with the information, he was, again, dismissive: "Nonsense," he said.
The government's tune
changed suddenly, however, on February 26, 1993, when the World Trade Center
was bombed. After covering the World Trade Center investigation for
several months, CNN asked me to do a one-hour special on the roots and
origins of the bombing. I came back several weeks later with an outline
that focused on the secret emergence of militant Islamic groups on American
soil - largely through non-profit Muslim organizations - during the late
1980s and early 1990s. The militant groups included Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, the Al-Gama'at Al-Islamiyya (a radical Egyptian group striving to
set up a strict Islamic state in that country), and virtually every other
member of the Islamic fundamentalist spectrum. This surge in fundamentalism
was partly in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Muslim
resistance to it; when Russia invaded, a veritable anti-Soviet jihad bloomed
among Muslims worldwide - including in America.
CNN liked my outline,
but wanted to focus only on the Afghanistan connection. I responded
that the more important? and new? information concerned how the amalgam
of Islamic fundamentalist groups had been able to organize on American
soil. A CNN official told me that it did not want to focus on the
American-based Islamic groups because of "political sensitivities" - a
euphemism for fear of offending American Islamic groups.
So I took the story to
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On November 21, 1994, my
one-hour documentary "Jihad in America" aired on PBS. It included
video footage of Islamic leaders inciting American Muslims to wage jihad
?not in the West Bank or Gaza, but in places like Detroit, Michigan, Atlanta,
Georgia, and Brooklyn, New York. There was Tamim Al-Adnadi, a Palestinian
Afghan Mujahideen (holy warrior), sitting in a living room in Kansas: "Our
problems are solved in the trenches, fighting," he said, "not in the hotels,
around the tables." There was Omar Abdul Rahman, spiritual leader of Al-Gama'at
Al-Islamiyya, in Detroit, in 1991, standing beneath a banner that read
"Islamic Charity Project International:" "The obligation of Allah is upon
us to wage jihad," he said. "It is one of the obligations we must
undoubtedly fulfill." (Rahman was later convicted for conspiring to blow
up several New York City landmarks.) There was the IAP conference in New
Jersey in November 1993, where Hamas supporters chanted: "We solve our
problems with the Kalishnikov. We buy paradise with the blood of
the Jews."
Soon after the documentary
aired, life became more complicated for me, as I was the target of a serious
assassination threat. And since I testified on January 26, 2000,
at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on international terrorism, I
have been the subject of a sustained campaign of vilification by militant
Muslim organizations. I have continued investigating the story as
an independent journalist.
Publicly, especially
in interviews with the American media, these "mainstream" groups and officials
have all claimed that they are against extremism and have bitterly protested
the media's stereotyping of Muslims as supporters of terrorism and extremism.
"We are against terrorist attacks on civilians," said Nihad Awad, founder
and executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in
the March 27, 1995 Dallas Morning News. "But like all other people,
we would like to protect our rights." In a similar vein, Abdurahman Alamoudi,
secretary of the board of directors of the American Muslim Council, wrote
in a letter to the Forward: "As a matter of principle, AMC has repeatedly
condemned all the acts of terrorism and attacks against civilian populations,
whether they are committed by Hamas, the IRA, or Israel. Motives
are inconsequential when human lives are at stake." Donya Witherspoon,
an attorney for HLF, told Dallas Morning News reporter Steve McGonigle:
"These people are not terrorists. These people are running a nonprofits
corporation that helps starving people, that helps people in crisis, including
our own citizens." Some Muslims were so incensed by McGonigle1s continuing
coverage of HLF that they set up their own Web site, which lists the news
reporter as "public enemy #1." The site pillories McGonigle for linking
"the Islamic concept of zakat (charity) to fund-raising for terrorism."
Further, some Muslims
say that calls for "jihad" against Israel and the Jews are not necessarily
exhortations to violence. "I don't see 'holy war' was a concept in
Islam," said Awad. "It is not. It does not exist. 'Jihad'
is severely misunderstood. 'Jihad' means legitimate struggle." But
a closer look reveals strong evidence supporting the government's decision
to open an inquiry.
Take HLF, for instance.
The "charity," originally incorporated as the Occupied Land Fund in 1989,
changed its name to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development
in 1991. The head of the group, Shukri Abu Baker, wrote in the March/April
1998 HLF newsletter that the organization is the leading American Muslim
philanthropic organization. According to its 1997tax form, HLF's
revenues that year were in excess of $5 million. Of that, it sent
at least $2 million to its counterpart in the West Bank, making it one
of the leading Muslim American donors to Palestinian causes, according
to published reports.
The Holy Land Foundation
has even prevailed upon mainstream corporations to enhance its bed get.
Many corporations will match employee gifts to tax-exempt organizations.
HLF has the capacity to raise millions of dollars from individual donors
and large corporations, who may or may not know exactly where the money
is going. In its monthly newsletter, HLF claims to receive gifts
in-kind from Ericsson, MCI, and American Express, among others, and frequent
flyer mile donations from American Airlines (although the airline announced
earlier this year that it was severing its ties to HLF in light of the
suspicions about links to terrorism).
HLF continues to raise
money in the United States, despite the fact that on May 11, 1997, Israel
officially declared it an illegal organization. The group, Israeli
officials said, was providing financial backing to Hamas. Seven months
later, on December 10, 1997, Israeli authorities arrested Mohammad Anati,
chairman of HLF1s Jerusalem office. Israeli prosecutors wrote that:
"In 1993 the accused was appointed Director General, Israeli branch, of
The Holy Land Foundation? the center of which is in the United States.
It identifies with Hamas and its aims, with its propaganda and method of
activities. In Israel its goal is to support activities for Hamas
and the social activities of the organization of Hamas."
Documenting the money
trail between HLF and Hamas is not easy. Documents seized by Israel
from Anati1s HLF office, as well as information disclosed by Anati during
his interrogation, are the best available evidence of thegroup1s monetary
links with Hamas. In a prior investigation, the Israelis found a
master list of payments made to the Moslem Youth Society in Hebron, which
contains the names of Hamas "martyrs" - terrorists who have died in the
fight against Israel. The Moslem Youth Society is one of the martyrs'
families' chief benefactors. This list includes three known Hamas
terrorists.
* Eiyad Hasin Abdal Aziz
Hadid. Israeli officials say he was involved in the murder of Mordechai
Lapid and his son, who were shot to death near Kiryat Arba on December
6, 1993. He was killed in during a day-long shoot out with the Israeli
Defense Forces on March 24, 1994.
* Marwan Muhamad Halil
Abu Ramila. Officials say he was involved in the attack on Ephraim
Zarviv in November, 1993. He, also was killed by the IDF on March
24, 1994.
* Khatem Kader Ya'akov
Makhtaseb. Israeli officials say he was an activist with the Izz
al-Din al-Qassem brigades of Hamas - the unit responsible for suicide bombings
against Israeli civilians. He was also killed in a shoot out with
the IDF.
Anati confirmed that
the money trail began in the United States and eventually led to the families
of the martyrs on the master list. He said funds went directly from
the U.S.-branch of HLF to charitable committees in the West Bank, and then
to the families of martyrs affiliated with Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Anati also said that HLF funds went to support the family of Yehiya Ayyash,
better known as "the Engineer," who masterminded several of the deadliest
bus bombings in Israeli history before the Shin Bet tracked him down and
killed him by placing a bomb in his cell phone in 1996.
HLF's support guarantees
future martyrs that their families will be provided for, providing incentive
for Mujahideen - holy warriors to carry out attacks. Among the organizations
that HLF backs is a West Bank group called the Islamic Relief Agency of
Nazareth, which was shut down by Israeli authorities on March 17, 1996.
The court decision to shut the agency down read in part: " ... that
the Islamic Relief Agency is involved in providing massive assistance to
families of Hamas activists that committed or planned to commit several
attacks and were arrested, killed, or deported, and that the main funding
of the Islamic Relief Agency is from donations from organizations abroad."
Where exactly was the money coming from? The court continued: "A list was
presented that was found at the offices of the Islamic Relief Agency [of]
what was sent to it by the American foundation - the Holy Land Foundation.
In this list the American Foundation itemized the amounts of money to be
transferred to 28 families in the territories ... at least 25 of
the families were families of Hamas activists that were killed, arrested,
or deported."
And there is evidence
that victims of terrorism are starting to take note. In May of this
year, the parents of an Israeli-American teenager killed in a 1996 terrorist
attack filed suit against HLF and several other Islamic individuals and
groups (including the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Quranic
Literacy Institute), alleging a "network of front organizations" that finance
terrorism. Lawyers for the parents of David Boim, who was shot to
death as he waited for a bus in Jerusalem, told the New York Times on May
13, 2000 that their suit was the first of its kind by individuals using
federal anti-terrorism laws. Nathan Lewin, the prominent attorney
who also represented Holocaust survivors in a class action suit against
Swiss banks, said he hoped that anyone who sent money to groups like Hamas
could be held accountable for the group's terrorist activities.
Terrorist experts say
Hamas raises $10 million tax free annually in the United States, via a
network of non-profit tax-deductible organizations. (The other sources
are west European nations, the oil-producing Persian Gulf nations, and
Iran.) And when you throw in U.S. fund-raising by other terrorist
groups, experts say the total may run into the tens of millions.
Authorities say there are two problems in trying to prosecute these organizations.
When it comes to the "charities," like HLF, it can be difficult to track
the money trail because the organizations are tax-exempt nonprofits.
The "civil rights" groups,
such as the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), benefit from
the freedom of speech that is fundamental to our democracy. "Many
organizations that support Middle East terrorist groups attempt to take
advantage of our system to obfuscate their real purpose(s), conceal their
true agenda and activities, and avoid law enforcement scrutiny," wrote
Steve Operant, former FBI chief of counter terrorism, in the spring 1998
issue of the Journal of Counter terrorism & Security International.
"The methods employed by these organizations include ...branding as 'anti-Islamic
bigots' those who expose their true purpose; misrepresenting their actual
goals and activities; asserting that their fund-raising efforts are for
benign charitable purposes rather than for the support of terrorism; [and]
attempting to wrap themselves in the mantle of religion to disguise their
true nature."
According to Pomerantz,
"CAIR is but one of a new generation of new groups in the United States
that hide under a veneer of 'civil rights' or 'academic' status but in
fact are tethered to a platform that support[s]terrorism." Yet, whenever
the media are critical of these groups, they cry foul. CAIR, for
instance, has attacked "anti-Muslim" articles appearing in the New Republic,
U.S. News & World Report, the Atlantic Monthly, the Dallas Morning
News and many other publications. (Abe Rosenthal of the New York
Times was specifically attacked for praising "Jihad in America.") CAIR
"criticizes 'stereotyping' of Muslims but its definitions of stereotyping
includes all articles that expose or detail Islamic extremism, discuss
terrorism and cite other issues deemed 'offensive,'" according to the Journal
of Counter terrorism & Security International. And so the "charitable"
fund-raising continues. The question today is, where will it all
lead?
Daniel Pipes, director
of the Middle East Forum and author of three books on Islam, believes the
answer is not promising. He told the New York Jewish Week in March
that groups like the CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee are "more
pernicious, with their soft talk and political correctness," than more
outspoken anti-Semitic groups. These radical Islamists, Pipes said,
are becoming an increasingly vocal minority. "It's a freight train
coming down the track," Pipes said, "and heading for us."
