The United States vs. the Holy Land Foundation
On Monday October 22, 2007, the U.S. government’s case against the Holy Land charity was declared a mistrial in a Dallas federal court. This was the biggest “war on terror” case since 9-11.
It was an absolute travesty of justice, and unfortunately the nightmare is not over. By declaring a mistrial, the judge opened the door for a new trial with a new jury.
The Holy Land charity’s “crime” was that it fed Palestinian widows and orphans. It also helped deliver medical supplies to Gaza, and helped the U.S. Agency for International Development build a hospital in Palestine.
Zionists in the USA, plus the Israeli government, used the President of the United States to destroy the Holy Land Charity as an example to Muslim charities all over the world.
Here’s what happened...
BACKGROUND
In 1989 a handful of Palestinians in California established a charity called the Occupied Land Fund. Later the charity’s name was changed to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF).
In 1992 the charity (HLF) moved its headquarters to Richardson Texas, near Dallas. HLF also had offices in California, plus New Jersey and Illinois, plus individual representatives throughout the United States, the West Bank, and Gaza.
HLF provided humanitarian relief to Palestinians, and to Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. It also provided relief to victims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Turkey, and the USA during Iowa floods, Texas tornadoes, the Oklahoma City bombing, and so forth. Recipients of this humanitarian aid were Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
The Israeli government licensed HLF as a legitimate zakat (charity) to distribute aid to Palestinians. The Israelis also allowed HLF to help fund a Hamas-affiliated hospital that the U.S. Agency for International Development was also funding.
HLF became the USA’s largest Muslim charity, and formed partnerships with non-Muslim charities across the USA. (Meanwhile Jewish Zionist and Christian Zionist organizations in the USA send money to build illegal Jewish settlements on confiscated Palestinian land.)
In December 2001 during a visit to Washington, Ariel Sharon ordered Bush to declare HLF a terrorist organization. Three days later, Bush shut down the charity, seized all its assets, and held a special press briefing in the White House rose garden, where Bush triumphantly announced, "Another step in the war on terror." Meanwhile the European Commission seized all the charity’s assets in Europe.
The FBI and Treasury officials admitted that a "substantial amount" of HLF money went to worthy causes, but said these worthy causes indirectly help Hamas. (In 1995, President Clinton, following Israeli orders, declared Hamas a “terrorist” organization.) Next the FBI, working closely with the Israeli government, charged American HLF members as terrorists.
Originally, U.S. terrorism laws passed in the mid-1990s required that a person sending money overseas had to know the money would be used to support a violent act. Later the U.S. laws were changed. Now it is illegal to send money to anyone in any place (for any reason) where a “terrorist group” is known to operate. A “terrorist” group is any group that the U.S. or Israeli government designates a “terrorist group.” Thus, the HLS defendants were charged with sending aid to Palestinian organizations that operated in an area where Hamas exists. The U.S. and Israeli governments claim that if a dollar is sent to help a starving and crippled child in occupied Palestine, then a dollar is freed that Hamas can use for resistance (i.e., “terrorism”).
On July 27, 2004, a federal grand jury in Dallas Texas returned a 42-count indictment against HLF. Charges included conspiracy, tax evasion, money laundering, and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The indictment set the stage for a federal trial.
The FBI immediately arrested five men associated with HLF…
> Shukri Abu Baker, HLF president
> Ghassan Elashi, HLF Chairman
> Mohammad el-Mezain, HLF Director of Endowments
> Abdulraham Odeh, HLF representative in New Jersey
> Mufid Abdulqader, HLF fundraiser and liaison with other charities
The FBI also wanted Akram Mishal, plus HLF Executive Director Haitham Maghawri, but these two escaped, and are now on the FBI list of fugitive terrorists.
The five arrested men were charged with sending $12 million in food, money, medical supplies, and other relief to humanitarian groups in Gaza and the West Bank. The U.S. government claimed that these humanitarian groups had connections with Hamas.
The HLF defendants deny all charges. They say the FBI falsified evidence in an attempt to show that HLF financed Palestinian suicide-bombers. They say prosecutors’ “evidence” included transcripts of conversations taped through warrantless wiretapping. They say FBI translators deliberately made gross errors, turning trivial conversations into calls for suicide bombing. They also note that documents produced by Dallas-area activist groups, such as Hungry-4-Justice, were found to be in the prosecution's possession before the activists had even distributed them.
(Hungry-For -Justice has no formal connection with HLF. It is an American group created in April 2007 to support the defendants. Its name derives from the fact that HLF’s main activity was to feed Palestinians under the nonstop Israeli siege. See http://h4jusa.com/ )
[Digression: A common Zionist practice is to sue American Muslims when a Jew dies in Palestine. In 1996, a U.S. teenager named David Boim, age 17, caught a bullet at a bus stop outside Jerusalem and died. Back in the USA, Boim’s parents got government help, and sought to collect millions of dollars from Muslim organizations in the USA. In December 2004, a federal judge in Chicago ruled that HLF was liable for $156 million dollars for the death of Boim. The judge said HLF had helped murder Boim because HLF had helped Hamas-connected relief groups in Palestine. The parents had only demanded $52 million, but judge Arlander Keys tripled this amount. Unfortunately for the greedy parents, the U.S. government is even greedier. It already seized HLF assets, and will give none of that money to the parents.]
THE TRIAL
Prosecutors knew it would be difficult to convince the jury that money for soccer balls, backpacks, and food was really a tool for “terrorism.” Hence, before the trial started, prosecutors asked all prospective jurors whether they could convict the defendants for supporting “terrorism” if the defendants were simply giving humanitarian aid to suffering people. Many potential panelists said they could not convict, and were excused.
Prosecutors named 306 individuals and organizations as un-indicted “co-conspirators.” The list includes several major American Muslim organizations in the USA.
On July 23, 2007 the trial began in Dallas. Prosecutors went to Palestine, obtained an official from Shin Bet, and flew him to Dallas. The Shin Bet man, testifying under the false name of “Avi,” claimed that HLF money went to humanitarian groups in Palestine with connections to Hamas. This was a foreign agent from a foreign government, delivering secret evidence under a false name in a trial that began six years after the HLF charity had been shut down.
Defense attorney Gregory Westfall produced Edward Abington, the former No. 2 intelligence official at the State Department. Abington told jurors that he got CIA briefings every day for years while stationed in Jerusalem as consul general, and was never once told that the Palestinian charity committees Holy Land gave money to were connected with Hamas.
The case went on for two months. Prosecutors submitted thousands of pages of documents, many of which they translated from Arabic. Only the prosecutors’ translations were admissible in court. Prosecutors also offered as “evidence” videos from “fair and balanced” Fox News (!) that showed skits put on by a charity known as the Islamic Association for Palestine. Prosecutors said the skits were “anti-Semitic,” and that the Islamic Association for Palestine was a “sister organization” to the HLF, and was a Hamas front. The prosecution’s “proof” of all this was that the ADL said it. (Literally.) Prosecutors also submitted as “evidence” many HLS activities that happened before 1995, when Hamas was not even a “terrorist” organization. Prosecutors also charged that HLS had links with “Al Qaeda.”
All this was so laughable that the jury in Dallas (eight women and four men) acquitted three of the Holy Land defendants, and was evenly split on charges against Shukri Abu Baker and former Holy Land Chairman Ghassan Elashi.
Former Holy Land chairman Mohammed El-Mezain was acquitted on all but one charge.
Juror William Neal’s father worked in military intelligence. He said some jurors were dead-set for convictions even before they began deliberating. These jurors brought up stuff that wasn't even in the case, such as 9-11. I thought the defendants were not guilty across the board. The government’s case was strung together with macaroni noodles. There was so little evidence." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21439691 )
=[Digression: Defendant Ghassan Elashi already lives in prison. In 2005, he and two of his brothers were convicted on 21 counts of federal terrorism charges related to funding Hamas, and to exporting electronics equipment to Hamas. On Oct 13, 2006, Elashi was sentenced to 7 years in prison. This was separate from the HLF case. Elashi’s personal business was destroyed, and his family ruined. YouTube has a short tape of his daughter in Texas at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4Sq7ZBbDGo]
You may see the five defendants and some of their children here… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yA43MS4Tg4
Some of the defendants were originally from Palestine. Ghassan Elashi, for example, had been uprooted during the 1967 Israeli war of aggression, and eventually found his way to the USA. Four of the five defendants are U.S. citizens. Their children were born and raised in the USA, and are average teenagers and young adults. They cannot understand why their fathers are being tried as terrorists, simply because their fathers help feed starving people in Palestine, and even fed disaster victims in the USA. All five defendants held respectable jobs. Defendant Mufid Abdulqader, for example, was a City of Dallas public works supervisor. ]=
Last Monday (October 22) as federal District Judge A. Joe Fish read the jury’s findings, it appeared that jurors had acquitted Abdulqader on all charges, plus El-Mezain and Abdulrahman Odeh on most charges, and failed to reach decisions on any counts involving Baker, Elashi or Holy Land itself.
Judge Fish was not happy. The jury had been asked to make 197 decisions on guilt or innocence, so the judge asked each juror whether he or she agreed with all 197 decisions. During these interrogations, three jurors changed their minds and disagreed with some of the 197 decisions.
Therefore Judge Fish sent the jury back for more discussions, but after an hour the jurors could not reach an agreement. The judge’s plan worked. He was allowed to declare a mistrial, which opened the door for prosecutor James Jacks to try the defendants again with a new jury. If convicted, the defendants face life in prison.
Former prosecutor Matthew D. Orwig lamented that the mistrial was, “A stunning setback for the government.” Orwig, who is Jewish, is a partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. Until recently he was a United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas.
ZIONIST CONSPIRACY
In the YouTube videos, the defendants say they are victims of “post-9/11 hysteria.” They dare not speak the truth in the videos: that they are victims of U.S. Zionists and the Israeli government.
During the trial, however, defendant Ghassan Elashi became frustrated. Judge Fish refused to allow into evidence a document that proved the Israeli government sanctioned some of the work by one of the Palestinian charity committees that Holy Land is accused of illegally funding.
The judge also refused to allow evidence of the aid work that Holy Land performed – but the judge did allow the prosecution to show videos of Hamas rallies found at Palestinian charities in Palestine.
Whenever the Shin Bet man from Israel gave testimony, the judge cleared the courtroom of all spectators. During one of these sessions, Ghassan Elashi commented that he and his co-defendants were targets of a Zionist conspiracy. This “anti-Semitism” was relayed to Judge Fish, who threatened to banish defendant Ghassan Elashi from the courtroom for the rest of the trial.
During the trial, Dallas Morning News reporter Steve McGonigle testified about a 1999 trip he made to Palestine to interview Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. (Yassin was nearly blind, and was a paraplegic, confined all his life to a wheelchair after a playground accident in his youth. He was murdered by an Israeli helicopter gunship in March 2004.) In 2000, McGonigle, the reporter, published stories about Yassin in the Dallas Morning News . The stories noted that Mr. Yassin denied having any ties to HLS. In the trial on cross-examination, Mr. McGonigle told defense attorneys about the dire poverty he saw among Palestinians.
All this brings up a horrifying situation for Muslims in the USA. Jews, more than any other group, dominate the American legal profession, especially at the federal level. When a Muslim is charged with any crime in federal court, he is or she is almost certain to appear before a Jewish judge. Several Muslims have tried to get a change of venue on the grounds that Jewish judges are prejudiced against Muslims, but these efforts always fail, since they are dismissed as “anti-Semitism.” Anyone who suggests Jewish bias against Muslims is also called a “conspiracy theorist.”
The sad thing is that many Muslims in the USA have a false sense of security. They think they will be treated justly if they are hauled into an American court. Very quickly they learn the awful truth.
Any honest study of federal court cases will reveal that statistically, Muslims are doomed whenever they go before Jewish judges in the USA. Since 2002, an estimated 500 cases have been brought against Muslims in America. Half have been dismissed as being without merit. The rest have all resulted in either acquittals or negotiated pleas on minor charges unrelated to the original indictment. Of the 500 cases, it is estimated that some 30 of them may have had some reasonable foundation in law. In no other area of prosecution has the Department of Justice produced such a high percentage of dismissed cases, and cases resulting in guilty pleas on unrelated charges.
Note also that prosecutors can use Israeli laws to convict American citizens, but defense attorneys cannot use Israeli laws to protect Americans. For example, one of the HLF defense attorneys, Linda Moreno, asked the Shin Bet agent whether his soldiers had warrants when they raided Palestinian charities. The prosecution objected to this, on the grounds that Israeli laws have no bearing in the USA. Judge Fish asked Moreno, "You're not contending that the Fourth Amendment applies outside the United States, are you?" The judge was referring the U.S. Constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Judge Fish upheld the prosecution’s objections, saying he didn't see the relevance of whether the Israeli soldiers had warrants.
ASSAULT ON MUSLIM CHARITIES
By naming 306 other American Muslims as “unindicted co-conspirators,” U.S. prosecutors threatened all Muslims in the USA who oppose Zionist terror. No one designated an “unindicted co-conspirator” can challenge this in a court of law. Thus they have no way to restore their reputation to its earlier standing.
The latest designation was meant to intimidate Muslim organizations such as The Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust -- and specially the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
A $5,000 donation from HLF allowed CAIR to open its first office in 1994. CAIR was co-founded by Ibrahim Hooper, Nihad Awad, and Omar Ahmad, all of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which is one of the targets in the case against HLF.
Despite this assault, CAIR now has thirty-one affiliates, including a branch in Canada, with more steadily being added. In addition to its national headquarters in Washington DC, CAIR has offices in other cities; the New York office, for example, is in the 19-story Interchurch Center on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive. Senator Charles Schumer describes CAIR as an organization “which we know has ties to terrorism.”
The Israeli government has shut down all charitable donations to Palestine from the USA. Now Palstinians in Gaza are barely surviving. (See a slide show of Palestinians under extreme poverty at http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/09/13/world/middleeast/20060914_GA...
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No American is safe from Zionist assault. People who committed “crimes” decades ago are routinely hauled into court to face militant Jewish judges. For example, in 1996 the U.S. government deported Ferenc Koreh, 86, a retired Radio Free Europe producer and broadcaster from Englewood, NJ. Mr. Koreh became a U.S. citizen in 1956. He was charged with writing articles during World War II that encouraged Hungarians to collaborate with the Nazis against Hungarian Jews.
The U.S. "Office of Special Investigations" is an agency of Jewish vengeance supported by U.S. tax dollars. Between 1979 and 1996 this Zionist organization had stripped fifty-three Americans of their citizenship and deported forty-five of them, usually to face political trials in hostile countries. That’s an average of over three U.S. victims per year. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._DOJ_Office_of_Special_Investigations )
Ironically, Koreh’s “crime” was that he wrote articles suggesting that Jews be deported from Hungary during World War II. He did this in Hungary fifty years ago, yet he was charged under current U.S. law.
Of course, when Jews commit violence in the USA, especially against Muslims, they are excused. (See http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/69 )
It's very instructive — very revealing. And thanks for all the links.
AIPAC = Apartheid Israel Placing America in the Crosshairs
Yes, supporting people under duress whom our "allies" oppress is a criminal act. (economic) Aiding and abetting the enemy so to speak. Therefore, achieving this criminal designation Israel can then continue its snail pace but calculated plan to detach Palestinians from their homeland by making conditions so difficult, so unbearable that they become willing refugees. Through these sneaky devices as well as other cowardly and overt means the Zionists etch out inch by inch and grain by sand grain their nightmare of an Eretz Yisrael devoid of the indigenous "Arab enemy."
It stinks all the way to the bank - it's a brinks job fait d'acomplit.
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"As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, most of mankind are Nazis"
--Isaac Bashevis
khic_ago is a nest of vipers!
The whole chizoo_outfit needs
to be shut down and indicted
for TREASON and WAR_CRiMES!
What they're saying is:
THE CHOSEN MAY STARVE GOY TO DEATH;
AS COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT
WE MAY PUNISH ANYONE WHO DOES NOT KNEEL BEFORE THE CHOSEN ONES
ONLY THE CHOSEN ONES HAVE RIGHTS,
ALL OTHERS ARE AMALEK.
Kenati Krypto Kenazi
