By Paul Van Olson
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| HLF Supporters Celebrate |
The declaration of a mistrial Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Joe Fish in the U.S. government case against leaders of the Holy Land Foundation marks yet another stumble in the effort of the U.S. government to focus public attention on the persistent influence of militant Islamists within the U.S. and other Western nations. While the prosecution struggled to persuade the jury of the cozy relationship between the Holy Land Foundation and the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas to the satisfaction of the Texas jury, the connections documented leave observers with strong reason to consider the HLF and related organizations, as Stephen Schwartz of the Center for Islamic Pluralism put it, front organizations "comparable in the Islamist field to the Soviet-controlled Communist Party, USA" during the Cold War. It will remain for a retrial to determine finally whether the ongoing relationships documented between organizations such as the HLF and violent organizations such as Hamas rise to the level of criminal complicity with terror.
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| Holy Land Foundation |
The key issue in the Holy Land Foundation trial was the extent to which donations made by the foundation were known to be of use to Hamas, which operates with the long-term goal of the destruction of the state of Israel. Political opposition to the existence of Israel by itself does not constitute a direct violation of American laws, but the violent attacks on civilians undertaken by Hamas have led to its being declared a terrorist organization, and witting support for declared terrorist organizations is in fact a crime.
The challenge the prosecution was unable to meet in the initial trial was to demonstrate the control Hamas exercises over the activities of local charitable organizations—the zakat committees to which the Holy Land Foundation's donations were made in Palestine. If Hamas control could be shown to be reasonably expected to be known by the HLF's due diligence in its activities, then any aid deliberately given to those organizations would constitute aid to Hamas, even if the aid was known to be used for non-violent activities.
The key obstacle the prosecution seemed unable to surmount was the reluctance of the jurors to conclude beyond reasonable doubt that Hamas control of those charities was known by the defendants, Ghassan Elashi, Shukri Abu Baker, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh and Mohammad El-Mezain. Testimony during the trial to that effect by members of Israel's domestic security agency Shin Bet was opposed by contrary testimony by Edward Abington, the former U.S. Consul-General in Jerusalem and until this year a consultant and lobbyist for the government of the Palestinian Authority.
The jury seemed unwilling to accept Israeli security service testimony as more credible than that of a former paid representative of Palestinian interests. Regardless of the conflicting testimony, the question of the responsibility of the HLF to exercise due diligence seems not to have been considered by the jury, which seems to have preferred to adopt the most innocent explanation of the defendants' associations with Hamas, to the point of unreasonable naiveté. The defendants were long-time veterans of Palestinian affairs, and the notion that they would be ignorant of Hamas' violent influence throughout Palestine seems less a case of reasonable doubt than of wishful thinking.
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| Ghassan Elashi - Founder of the Holy Land Foundation |
Ghassan Elashi, a founder of the HLF, had been convicted along with his wife in 2005 of 21 counts of financially abetting Hamas Deputy Political Bureau Chief Mousa Abu Marzook.
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| Shukri Abu Baker of the Holy Land Foundation |
Shukri Abu Baker was recorded in 1999 instructing HLF operatives in Palestine to prevent Dallas Morning News reporter Steve McGonigle, then in Palestine researching links between the HLF and Hamas, from meeting with members of families of suicide bombers being supported by HLF. In April 2000 the HLF launched a libel suit against McGonigle, three other reporters and The Dallas Morning News, which was settled out of court.
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| Mufid Abdulqader of the Holy Land Foundation |
Mufid Abulqader's half-brother is the political director of Hamas, and Mr. Abdulqader spent much of the 1990s as a performer at Hamas fundraisers before the organization was declared a terrorist organization in 1995, and at Palestinian conferences thereafter.
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| Mohammad El Mezain of the Holy Land Foundation |
Mohammad El-Mezain claimed in the 1990s to have raised over $1 million for Hamas, and served HLF's first chairman.
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