Hillary Clinton sued for funding terrorism

The U.S. finances terrorism by providing insufficient safeguards in the distribution of foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority and United Nations Refugee Worker’s Administration (UNRWA) according to a lawsuit filed against Hillary Clinton and other Obama administration officials.

Money Jihad has been making this point for years: why is it a crime when ordinary citizens send money to terrorists, but when the federal government does nobody bats an eye?

This lawsuit is about unlawfully disbursed aid to the Palestinian territories, but the same wrongdoing applies to U.S. negotiations with the Taliban.  If you and I communicate with the Taliban and give them money in order to incentivize a certain behavior, we’d be in prison. If the State Department does uses taxpayer money to help bribe the Taliban to sit across from them at the negotiating table, they get praised by the foreign policy “experts.”

In either case, what federal officials are doing is providing material support—money—directly or indirectly to a terrorist organization in violation of U.S. law.

From Shurat HaDin on Nov. 27:

Hillary Clinton sued by Americans over funding of Palestinian terror groups

Federal suit alleges that the US State Dept violated the Anti-Terrorism Act, and abandoned Congressional safeguards, transparency and reporting requirements  

Tel Aviv, Nov. 27, 2012: A group of 24 Americans living in Israel, including victims of terrorism, filed a lawsuit today against the US government over its funding of Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza.

The civil action, filed in the district court of Washington DC, alleges that the US Department of State, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has ignored congressional safeguards and transparency requirements attached to US aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA). In addition, the plaintiffs claim that the White House has not been complying with the regulations and reporting obligations governing presidential waivers which facilitate emergency funding to the Palestinians. As a result of this non-compliance, US funds have been flowing to terror groups like Hamas, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestine Liberation Front.

According to the lawsuit, Americans living in proximity to these Palestinian terror groups are in the class of individuals that Congress sought to protect through the safeguards and regulations that the White House, State Department and USAID are disregarding.

The suit asks the federal court to review the conduct of  the State Department and the safeguards on funds being distributed by USAID in its programs to the PA and to the United Nations Refugee Worker’s Administration (UNRWA) and seeks to suspend future American aid to the PA and UNRWA until all the Congressionally legislated regulations and reporting requirements are fully complied with.

Click here to view the lawsuit

The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Norman Steiner of New York and Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Tel Aviv.

Darshan-Leitner, the director of Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center, stressed that “once handed over, US funding of the PA and UNRWA is difficult to trace and the State Department has been lax in requiring the Palestinians to utilize bank accounts and other transfer methods that ensure transparency.” The founder of the Israeli counter-terror group added that “elements of the US Government, particularly the State Department and USAID, are breaking the law and must cease all funding of the PA immediately. US aid to the Palestinians is killing innocent people.”

Steiner added: “The American people are opposed to terror and do not want to fund it via their taxes. The ongoing non-compliance of the White House and State Department with Congressionally mandated protections cannot be allowed to continue.”

The United States Department of State, under the  Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, is prohibited from providing “material support” to proscribed terrorist groups. It is estimated that since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the United States State Department, via USAID has given over $4 billion to Palestinians, with portions of that funding illegally landing in the hands of terrorists. During the last four fiscal years, average aid has been roughly $600 million per year. Additionally, the United States gives approximately $200 million to the United Nations body UNRWA, each year, and during the fiscal years 2008 and 2009, UNRWA gave roughly $500 million of their funding to recipients in the West Bank and Gaza.

Under the Anti-Terrorism Act, the State Department is required to certify that the Palestinian government is committed to a peace co-existence with Israel before distributing funds, and ensure that no part of funding is used for Palestinian terrorism.  The plaintiffs allege that these crucial safeguards, transparency obligations and reporting requirements are being negligently ignored.

One of the lawyers handling the case is Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the director of Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center, which appears on our blogroll.

Muslim charity honcho embraced by Obama

Abed Ayoub, CEO of Islamic Relief USA

Ryan Mauro reports that the executive branch of the federal government has been consulting with Abed Ayoub, the chief executive officer of North America’s largest Islamic charity, Islamic Relief USA (IR-USA), for the past two years.

IR-USA serves as a conduit for zakat donations from Muslim Americans to fund programs overseas—a portion of which is transferred to Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), its British-based parent organization.  IRW has been implicated by Israel for funding Hamas, and at least one high-ranking source in the Department of Justice equates Islamic Relief with the infamous Holy Land Foundation—formerly America’s largest Muslim charity before its leaders were convicted on all counts of financing Hamas.

The revelation of Mr. Ayoub’s involvement in lobbying U.S. officials on matters of diplomacy and foreign aid is disturbing but not surprising.  The State Department has previously issued press releases praising Islamic Relief’s operations, for example, in Haiti.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture has also worked directly with IR-USA on food programs.

Yeesh.  From RadicalIslam.org on Oct. 24:

Exclusive: Islamist Adviser to the State Dept and USAID Exposed

Abed Ayoub, the CEO of Islamic Relief USA, a powerful charity with links to Hamas is an official advisor to the State Department and USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), a RadicalIslam.org investigation has found.

Ayoub has been advising the Obama Administration since at least April 2010. He and his organization have been publicly embraced by President Obama and Vice President Biden.

Ayoub was born in a Palestinian refugee camp and raised in Jordan. After high school, he moved to Yugoslavia and Germany and ultimately ended up in California. He became a volunteer for the Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA) and went on to become its CEO in 2008. He is a governance committee member of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), IRUSA’s parent group. He is also on the Board of Trustees of the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty.

Ayoub joined the State Department’s Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group in November 2011, specifically the Sub-Group on Faith-Based Groups and Development and Humanitarian Assistance, according to IRUSA’s press release. It says he will “take part in dialogue and provide input on relevant topics including the challenges and opportunities for partnership. The group also will identify model action programs or projects for collaboration between the U.S. government and NGOs.” The release says it will “meet through November 2012.” The timing and phrasing suggests that this isn’t the group’s expiration date and that the election will determine whether its work continues next year.

According to his bio, Ayoub was appointed to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid in April 2010, where he “provides advice, analysis and recommendations to USAID on the most pressing development issues in the world today.” He was reappointed to another two-year term in May…

$45 million more for Islamist rebels

This announcement is consistent with prior Obama-Clinton payments for the pitchfork and torch bearers of the Arab Spring.  The foreign aid will supposedly provide peaceful Syrian dissidents with food, medicine, radios, and unspecified “technical support.”

Great!  What could go wrong?  Perhaps we should ask the family of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Clinton offers $45 million to Syrian rebels, who want more support

By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers

NEW YORK — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday announced $45 million in additional aid for Syrian opposition activists, the latest U.S. push for influence in a civil war that’s raged beyond the international community’s control.

Clinton announced the new aid package before meeting with visiting Syrian dissidents on the margins of this week’s U.N. General Assembly, where world leaders sounded bleaker than ever about the prospects for a negotiated political resolution to the 18-month uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

U.S. humanitarian aid for Syria now will total more than $132 million this year, though Syrian rebels are more interested in weapons and military training than in the American promises of more “nonlethal assistance.” Of the $45 million pledged Friday, $30 million is earmarked for humanitarian assistance and $15 million for radios, training and other technical support for opposition activists.

The U.S. government has refused to directly arm or fund the so-called Free Syrian Army, a loose confederation of rebel militias, largely out of fear that the assistance would make its way to Islamist extremist groups that have joined the battle to unseat Assad.

U.S. policy is in a “really tough spot,” said Joseph Holliday, a Washington-based researcher at the Institute for the Study of War who specializes in the Syrian conflict. While the administration’s instincts to withhold direct aid from rebel fighters is understandable, he said, that strategy is backfiring.

“The irony of our fear of supplying Islamist groups is that the others who are arming the opposition – the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks – are doing just that, providing weapons and ammunition to Islamists,” Holliday said. “Our lack of giving support is actually leading to the Islamicization of the opposition.”

Despite the resignation at the U.N. now to a drawn-out, increasingly bloody conflict, the Obama administration remains focused on courting remnants of the peaceful protest movement, whom analysts say don’t enjoy the same street credibility as the armed opposition forces confronting Assad’s military.

The United States is helping to train and organize nonviolent actors in hopes they’ll take the lead in an eventual post-Assad transition, though deep ideological and other divisions have so far prevented the Syrian activists from coalescing into a government-in-waiting, such as the one Libyans formed in the months before the fall of strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

Analysts describe the U.S. gamble on one segment of the opposition as part of a continued lack of U.S. strategy for Syria that’s left the administration with no real inroads to either the Assad regime or the rebel militias – the two sides to the civil war that’s already spilling beyond Syria’s borders.

Only recently, analysts say, did the government back off from the Syrian National Council, a collection of exiles and technocrats the U.S. government had tried in vain to whip into a viable transitional body.

Be aware that the aid pledge may violate U.S. law:  the Syrian Accountability Act prohibits aid to Syria without respect to the recipient unless Syria restores Lebanese sovereignty, renounces Hezbollah, and terminates its weapons of mass destruction programs.

2011: Folly of funding the Arab Spring

The year 2011 will be remembered for the Arab Spring, and it will only look worse as the fog clears.  We saw the power vacuum created by the ouster of Arab leaders.  Now we see the filling of the vacuum by Islamist elements bent on imposing sharia law, subjugating their non-Muslim minority populations, and putting peace agreements with Israel into a paper shredder.  What’s worse—we bankrolled it.

Whether it was Pres. Obama’s insistence on a massive G8 stimulus package for the Islamic world or Hillary Clinton’s halal food distribution to the Libyan rebels, 2011 is one for the record books in terms of funding the very same menacing global force that we’ve been fighting since 9/11.

Here are 2011′s low points of squandered, taxpayer-originated Western aid money to a region falling under the shadow of the Muslim Brotherhood:

• $135 million in U.S. financial aid to Libyan rebels and their newly forming Islamist government
• €70 million ($90 million USD) from the European Commission humanitarian aid department (ECHO), €20 million from Sweden, over $15 million from the U.K. in aircraft and ships, and other EU member aid for a sum of $195 million in total European aid to Libya
• Most notably, $20 billion in aid and loans for Egypt and Tunisia from the taxpayers of the G8 economies
• France provided at least “40 tonnes of weapons” to Libyan rebels
• For Tunisia, U.S. aid to the tune of $2 million in “Transitional Initiative” funds; and an additional $5 million to support “civil society” groups to peddle their influence with the new Islamist government
• Federal grants to facilitate remittance programs to Tunisia and Libya
• Pentagon officials announced in November that U.S. arms deals with Egypt will continue even though Egypt will most likely not honor its peace treaty with Israel

Supporters of the funding will say that this is helping to promote “reform” in the Arab world.

But recall that the Taliban itself was originally seen in the 1990s by several observers as a “reform movement” that would purge Afghanistan of its violent history of rival warlords that competed along ethnic, tribal, and regional lines.  There are many to this day (including State Department employees in private) who say we shouldn’t be worried about the Taliban because they’re more concerned with controlling Afghanistan than they are in exporting terrorism.

But the simple fact of 9/11, which the Taliban enabled by playing handmaiden to Al Qaeda, disproved the delusional concept that Islamist government presents no risk to the West.

We paid for the new Islamist regimes, and it’s time we demand a refund.

Hillary begs Obama to keep funding Hamas

Responding to the foreign aid spending reductions proposed by Republicans in the House of Representatives, Hillary Clinton has written a letter demanding that Pres. Obama veto any legislation that would limit her multi-billion dollar State Department budget.

In other words, not only does Sec. Clinton want to keep spending money during a time of national financial calamity, but it also means that she is rejecting the Republican proposal that the U.S. first certify that money will not go to Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Muslim Brotherhood before it distributes foreign aid.

From the Washington Post (h/t Israel Matzav) on July 27:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is blasting a House bill that would impose strict new requirements on U.S. aid  to countries including Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen, warning that she will urge a veto if the measure reaches President Obama’s desk.

Clinton to spend $25 million on halal food for Libyan rebels

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised $25 million American tax dollars for services and goods for Libyan rebels including halal food, radios, and body armor.  Meanwhile, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and the leader of the Libyan rebels have both said that Al Qaeda serve among the ranks of the Libyan resistance.  The U.S. has pledged the largest amount of any country to a United Nations emergency fund for Libya.

Do you think the bigtime Saudi and Kuwaiti charities ponied up to provide wine and bread for Holy Communion for earthquake victims in Haiti?  No.  So why the heck are we bending over backwards to feed Al Qaeda fighters’ fundamentalist appetites?

From the Politico on Apr. 20 (h/t RoP):

U.S. pledges $25M to Libyan rebels

The Obama administration plans to send $25 million in assistance to Libyan rebels fighting the regime of longtime leader Muammar Qadhafi, the State Department confirmed Wednesday, though the support will not include arms or other military backing.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked President Barack Obama to approve the funding. “This is not a blank check. This is not $25 million in actual cash or money. It’s actually in goods and services that would be drawn down from items already in government stocks that correspond with the needs” of the rebel movement.

If approved, the U.S. government will provide halal food and equipment such as radios and body armor to the disorganized and ill-equipped rebel forces that have come together under the umbrella of the Transitional National Council.

The State Department sent a letter last Friday informing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the plans to send the aid, which would come from the existing inventory and resources of U.S. government agencies.

Pentagon spokesman Capt. Darryn James said items to be delivered include medical supplies, protective vests, binoculars and halal rations. “We expect that most or all of these will be from [Defense Department] stocks, though contributions may come from other agencies,” he said.

Through April 4, the Defense Department had spent $608 million on operations in Libya, a Pentagon spokeswoman told POLITICO. If operations continue at planned levels, they will cost about $40 million per month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a House hearing last month.

Hillary’s millions will fund Hamas

Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton announced an additional $150 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority.  Caroline Glick has written an extensive piece about everything that’s wrong with that plan (hat tip to Israel Matzav and to all who sent this in).  Of particular interest is her analysis of how the aid ends up in the pockets of Hamas:

…The simple truth is that it is impossible to prevent US budgetary assistance to the PA from financing Hamas, in contravention of US law. Each month Fayyad transfers funds to Hamas-controlled Gaza to pay the salaries of PA employees there. Fayyad has argued that this assistance cannot be considered material aid to Hamas, since the employees are employed by the PA. But this is nonsense.

These employees serve at the pleasure of Hamas. Paying their salaries contravenes US law as well as international law, which prohibits states from providing any assistance whatsoever to areas controlled by terrorists. This is true even if the actual money he transfers to Gaza comes from other income sources. Without the direct US budgetary assistance, he wouldn’t be able to funnel money to Gaza.

PROVIDING DIRECT budgetary assistance to Fayyad isn’t the only way the US finances Hamas. It also contributes to Hamas by funding UNRWA.

Treasury imposes sanctions, Geithner doesn’t know how much

The U.S. State Department and Treasury Department have announced financial sanctions against eight human rights abusers in Iran.  During a press conference on Wednesday, one reporter asked Sec. Tim Geithner if he knew the value of the assets he is freezing.

The answer went along the lines of We’re making a real impact.  I can’t give you the numbers.  I don’t have an estimate.  But I’m sure it’s a lot.  Trust me.  I’m smart.

Actually, Geithner’s real answer was even lamer.  Watch Tiny Tim grin and say a bunch of words in search of a proper answer:

U.S. Molasses Dept. designates Pakistani Taliban

All right, American banks and businesses.  Time to review your customers’ names to make sure you freeze the accounts and suspend your transactions with of the Pakistani Taliban’s designated thugs.  The U.S. State Department released this statement on Sept. 1:

The Secretary of State has designated Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The Secretary also designated TTP as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under E.O. 13224. Furthermore, the Secretary designated two senior TTP leaders, Hakimullah Mehsud and Wali Ur Rehman, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under E.O. 13224. Secretary Clinton took these actions in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury. These actions will help stem the flow of finances to TTP and provide the Department of Justice with a critical tool to prosecute those who knowingly provide material support to TTP and its senior leaders.

National Review Online was not impressed by the lengthy delay in making this designation, offering this analysis:

Clinton may designate Haqqani Network as terrorist organization

In an interview with BBC World Service on July 18, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the State Department is (finally) considering designating the virulently Islamist Haqqani Network in Pakistan as a terrorist entity:

The Haqqani Network is widely recognized as a threat to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the U.S., and was involved with the Taliban in carrying out deadly attacks in Kabul earlier this summer.  Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-California) requested the designation back in May.  Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and Gen. Petraeus have made similar requests over the last two weeks.  If the State Department is ready to pull the trigger, it’s overdue but somewhat encouraging. 

The Haqqani Network has close ties to Al Qaeda and is probably funded by Pakistan’s spy service, the ISI.  Treasury official David S. Cohen has claimed that the U.S. is active in curtailing the network, but currently there are no financial sanctions, asset freezes, or restrictions on Americans doing business with Haqqani Network (other than a recent freeze of just one Haqqani Network’s members).  Recently, a reporter at a State Department press briefing asked Asst. Sec. Philip Crowley, “Don’t you think the delay in this [Haqqani designation] would help these organizations to have transfer of funds and even raise funds here in the U.S.?”  Crowley’s answer?  Spin and boilerplate.

Apparently our executive branch has taken this slow approach in order to retain warm relations with Pakistan.

Governments go to bat for jihadists on both sides of the pond

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is lobbying in behalf of the removal of several individuals’ names from the United Nations terrorist blacklist and for the Bank of England to “un-freeze” their assets.

The only problem is that the individuals in question are known jihadists who have participated in plots against the West.  One of them was even convicted by Morocco for involvement in the 2003 Casablanca bombings.  From the Telegraph:

The seven men were placed on the United Nations list because they were suspected of having links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

As a result they have been barred from leaving Britain and their assets have been frozen by the Bank of England and HM Treasury.

They include individuals who were:

• convicted of involvement in the 2003 Casablanca bombings and of possessing terrorist documents in the UK,
• accused of assisting the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa and of being an associate of Osama bin Laden,
• found guilty by a military court of plotting terror attacks.

But an attempt by the men to have their names removed from the UN list has now won the backing of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

The FCO has insisted that it is acting because it has reviewed the men’s cases and does not think they are dangerous.