HOLY UNJUSTIFIED

We’ve seen the movies – they just don’t like folks being a bit ‘different’ down in Texas. Last week a Dallas court gave the founders of a charity sending humanitarian aid to Palestine a legal lynching as they sent ‘em down, with scant evidence, for seriously draconian sentences. Two of the defendants got 65 year sentences, one 20, and two others 15 – one for merely being a voluntary fundraiser for the group.

This was obviously the ‘right’ result as far as the government was concerned, with this being the culmination of the most costly US ‘terror financing’ investigation ever.  

The Holy Land Foundation, once the biggest Muslim charity in America, was shut down shortly after 2001 in the wave of patriotic Homeland Security paranoia as (Texas boy) George Bush looked for scapegoatable terror targets close to home. Despite being nothing to do with Saudi nationals flying planes into buildings (like Saddam Hussein), the charity was accused of being a front for sending cash to support ‘terrorist’ Hamas in its battle against the Israeli occupiers. 

A ten year investigation turned up nothing more than proof that the charity did exactly what it claimed to, i.e. sent money to officially recognised Palestinian charities which was provably distributed to provide humanitarian aid – charities which the US government itself also gave help to through USAID for some years after Holy Land was pounced on. Even using ‘secret’ (ie undisclosed) Israeli intelligence and disputed documents from FBI tapping operations, the founders could only be charged with indirectly supporting terror by dealing with organisations which may have been in touch with or under the control of Hamas – something they, nor anyone else, could really know or avoid even if they wanted to.

A previous trial of the defendants had ended in aquittal on some charges and a split jury on others, leading to a mistrial – so the government just decided to do it all again only this time a with more carefully selected jury.

At his sentencing hearing, ex charity chairman Ghassan Elashi, himself Palestinian born, said, “Nothing was more rewarding than… turning the charitable contributions of American Muslims into life assistance for the Palestinians. We gave the essentials of life: oil, rice, flour. The occupation was providing them with death and destruction.” For his heinous crime, he was sentenced to 65 years in prison. What a great victory for the Land of the Free.

* For more see: www.democracynow.org/2009/5/29/holy_land

* Meanwhile, just how cosy that US / Israeli alliance has been revealed this week as the Israeli government looked for a way to derail Obama’s demands for a freeze on all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified continued settlement construction by citing secret agreements between prior Israeli governments and the Bush administration. The Israeli government says it agreed to the 2003 US-backed Road Map that called for a settlement freeze only on condition that it be allowed to violate the plan’s ban on expanding existing settlements. No problemo! said Geroge... Diplomacy in action.