Our favorite columnist in the Middle East, Israel's Cassandra, tries to whack the White House out of its stupor regarding the reality in the Holy Land.
One of the first concrete acts that the Bush administration took in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks was to outlaw the Holy Land Fund for Relief and Development and freeze its financial assets. The HLF was one of the principal funding arms of Hamas. Israel had tracked its financial activities for over a decade, and had repeatedly requested that the US take action against it, but the requests came to nothing until after 9/11.
In an article in National Review from December 2002, terrorism investigators Ritz Katz and James Mitre documented that HLF, like several other US-registered non-profits that since September 11 have been closed down or placed under federal investigation, was funding arms not only for Hamas but also for al-Qaida. The Saudi-headquartered International Islamic Relief Organization; Benevolence International Foundation; and terror financier Yassin al-Qadi, to name just a few, were all funneling millions to both Hamas and al-Qaida.
Hamas and al-Qaida share more than financial networks. They share the same ideological roots. Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
. . . [And] a senior US counterterrorism official was quoted stating that Hamas is merging with elements of al-Qaida's "all inclusive military arm that will carry out military strikes" against the US.
So, a cursory glance at the wealth of documentation regarding Islamic terror organizations shows that Hamas and al-Qaida are linked financially, ideologically and operationally. This, at the same time as the know-it-alls from Washington to London to Riyadh insist that the Palestinian terror war against Israel has no connection to the global jihad being launched by the likes of "real" terrorists, such as Osama bin Laden and (Palestinian) Abu Musab Zarkawi.
But wait, there's more on the pretzel that the US has to twist reality into when dealing with the Middle East:
Gone is the president's strong rhetoric from three years ago about US support for Palestinian statehood being conditional on the transformation of Palestinian society into a democratic, liberal, terror-fighting society. The Bush administration has been pushing Israel to arm the PA security forces in spite of their overt connection with terror cells. The Bush administration has refused to back Israel's opposition to Hamas participation in the July legislative elections despite its links to al-Qaida. The Bush administration has insisted that Israel hand over the homes of the Israelis set for expulsion to the Palestinians, in spite of the fact that this means Israel will be handing their homes to the same terrorists who have been shooting and bombing them for the past four-and-a-half years.
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During his negotiations with the terror chiefs in Cairo in March, in the presence of Syria's foreign minister, PA chairman and US favorite Mahmoud Abbas invited the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command to relocate from Damascus to Gaza after Israel withdraws. How does this square with the US strategy to bar terrorists from receiving shelter?
Then there is Egypt's role as a spoiler in all this. This week, the Palestinians claimed that Egypt pressured the PA to release a Hamas terrorist it had apprehended en route to launching rockets at Sderot. This claim is believable given that it was Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak who pressured Yasser Arafat not to accept Israel's peace offer at Camp David in July 2000. And yet, in spite of the fact that Mubarak has played a central role in fomenting and eternalizing the Palestinian war with Israel, in his favored role as broker between Israel and the Palestinians and among the Palestinian terror groups, he has built a reputation in Washington as the irreplaceable peacemaker.
After Gaza becomes an international terror center in the wake of the Israeli pullout, Mubarak will be poised to increase US dependence on him. If this occurs, his payback will be Washington's shoving its plan to bring democracy to Egypt into a circular file in the recesses of the Old Executive Office Building.
On a psychological level, the images of an Israeli retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria will be footage for jihadi recruitment videos for years to come. In Iraq, a large proportion of the insurgent groups' energies are devoted to producing images that portray them as strong and the US forces as weak. Al-Jazeera and its clones – along with cameramen employed as stringers by Western news networks and agencies – work hand-in-glove with the terrorists to produce just such images. . .
[And] there can be no doubt that, as attractive as watching helpless hostages getting beheaded may be to potential recruits, the spectacle of Hamas and Fatah flags being foisted onto Israeli homes in Gaza and Samaria is even more alluring. And footage of Jews attacking one another as Israel comes apart at the seams will also serve the terrorists' purposes wonderfully well.
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