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January 15, 2006

UK: George Galloway, The Muslim Charity & Palestinian Violence

The Sunday Telegraph reports that MP George Galloway, who has stopped his parliamentary duties to play charades on "Celebrity Big Brother", is set to donate his six-figure television fee to a charity, Interpal.

Interpal, which is based in Kilburn, west London, came officially into existence in 1994, as a rebranding of the charity Palestine and Lebanon Relief Fund, which was started in 1981. It has been accused of funding Hamas, the Palestinian terror organisation.

The issue is regarded by many as so serious that the Israeli ambassador, Zvi Hefetz, will be meeting with a Treasury minister this week to demand action against Interpal.

There is a great deal of confusion over this charity, as British investigations, which have been rather dismissive of Israeli data which is available, have not found that Interpal is a front for terror group Hamas, as has been claimed by Israel and the US.

On December 17 Interpal's solicitors, Carter-Ruck, announced that they had reached a settlement out of court with the British Board of Jewish Deputies, who agreed that they had no documentary evidence to link Interpal with Hamas' terror activities and had slandered the charity by calling it a "terrorist organisation". Interpal had originally sued the Board of Deputies in 2003 for its claims.

In August 2003, the charity was outlawed in the United States, and designated as "an entity that commits, threatens to commit or supports terrorism."

In 1996, the British Charity Commission carried out an investigation into the group, and froze its bank accounts. They reported subsequently:

The US authorities were unable to provide evidence to support allegations made against Interpal within the agreed time scale. The commission concluded that in the absence of any clear evidence showing Interpal had links to Hamas's political or violent militant activities, Interpal's bank accounts should be unfrozen and the inquiry closed.

The commission did find that Interpal had received money from the Netherlands-based Al Aqsa Foundation a group banned in Britain for its Hamas links.

It should be noted that the Charity Commission said it could not find evidence "within the given time scale". Ibrahim Hewitt (pictured, right), the British convert to Islam (apparently a Muslim since 1981) who is chairman of Interpal, said at the time, according to World Net Daily that "it was possible" some of the money from Interpal may have have gone to Hamas, but claimed that Hamas social services were not managed by the terror group's "military wing".

This admission (made in an interview with the Guardian on August 7, 1997) is telling - an admission that Hewitt could not deny money was going to Hamas, which, despite its "charitable concerns", is a terrorist organisation.

The Charity Commission report came days before an announcement by the European Union to list Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Intelligence.org, which provides extensive documentation of Interpal's supposed direct links with Hamas, notes that Hewitt claimed in the Guardian interview "that Hamas' network of businesses and social and religious service organizations was managed separately from its "military" wing, saying it was like the difference between the Sinn Fein and the IRA."

World Net Daily states that a former chairman of Interpal's board of trustees and its vice-chairman (in December 2004) was Essam Silah Mustafa, a Hamas activist. Mustafa (also known as Abu Yussuf) has been described by Shin Bet as "one of the most prominent individuals in Hamas' financial system in the Western world."

It should also be noted that the Telegraph today quotes from the Charity Commission's findings:

"It had been alleged that some funds find their way to supporters of terrorism. This is possible in an area of benefit where a significant number of poor and disadvantaged people might support the aims of Hamas.

Poverty and need must, however, be the only criteria when deciding how the charity funds are distributed and aid must not be given because of a person's support for terrorism. We found no evidence in the charity of any pro-terrorist bias or indeed any bias of any kind."

Well, to be fair, the Charity Commission report came out before 2005, when Ibrahim Hewitt, while arguing for the abolishment of Britain's Holocaust Memorial Day (a bias?) claimed that the genocide of 6,000,000 Jews was comparable to the destruction and relocation of 500 Palestinian communities.

"There are 500 Palestinian towns and villages that have been wiped out over the years. That's pretty genocidal to me," Hewitt said, either showing an extreme bias or a total stupidity regarding the comparison of 500 communities (where no-one ended up in gas chambers or shot by firing squad) and 6 million+ deaths.

On its website, Interpal states: "INTERPAL is a non-political, non-profit making British charity that focuses solely on the provision of relief and development aid to the poor and needy of Palestine the world over, primarily in Palestine and the refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon."

In 2003, Interpal collected $8 million. If, as Hewitt claims, he cannot guarantee how many Hamas charities received funds from its fund-raising, one wonders how much money has been siphoned off by these charities to Hamas' terror wing.

Hewitt may be content to claim that the Hamas organisations are charities, but if he cannot guarantee that NO money has gone to the Hamas charities, his claims that NO money ended up in the terror wing of Hamas are dubious boasts, and should not be taken with full seriousness.

The Telegraph reported in 2003 that the Charity Commission approached the US for confirmation of its claims that Interpal was a designated terror entity, but were only shown press clippings, which were not taken as evidence.

A year ago, on January 24, 2005, Aaron Klein at World Net Daily wrote that recently declassified Israeli documents regarding Operation Defensive Shield from 2002 and other sources claimed that Interpal had transferred large sums to Hamas.

A receipt from January 15, 2001, acknowledges the transfer of $33,800 via the City Bank of New York to the Al-Islah Charitable Society in Ramallah. According to Israeli security sources, Al-Islah is a front to channel funds to Hamas. The receipt is printed on Interpal stationery.

Another document, found by Israeli forces in the Bethlehem offices of Al-Islah, details a series of $100 gifts presented by Interpal and a Saudi charity, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, in conjunction with Al-Islah, to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers on the occasion of a the three-day holiday ending the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in 2001. The document lists over two dozen family names, which security sources say includes the families of terrorist operatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and several families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

We reported last week that a group of Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism have filed a lawsuit against Britain's National Westminster Bank (Natwest), for allowing Interpal to have an account, despite being warned of its "possible" links with Hamas. Natwest is a pro-Muslim bank. It decided in October to remove all images of pigs and piggy banks from its advertising and outlets, in case they "offended Muslims". Natwest has had Jewish customers for years, who similarly regard pigs as unclean, but Natwest never thought to ban pigs for their sakes.

The court case, filed in New York's Federal Court will be an important test of which evidence is to be believed - US and Israeli security documents, or out-of-date pronouncements by the UK Charity Commission.

And ludicrous George Galloway remains in the Celebrity Big Brother house, playing stupid games and trying to claim that the scandal-linked former TV presenter Michael Barrymore, whose history of drug and alcohol abuse means he can hardly string enough words together to make one coherent sentence, should be back presenting TV shows.

In the meantime, the backlash against Galloway for demeaning his political role has affected his constituents, politicians and this weekend's media.

The fee which Galloway has chosen to donate to Interpal is fixed. No amount of boycotting the show will affect this. George, who supported Saddam Hussein during the UN embargo, knows that his Muslim constituents are not the greatest fans of Israel.

What better way of trying to appease them than by donating to a charity which claims to help Palestinians, and is also accused by the US (another bugbear for George and his Muslim constituents) of sponsoring terror against the "evil state of Israel"?

It should be mentioned that World Net Daily mentions that the now-exiled spiritual head of Al-Muhajiroun and its successors, The Saviour Sect and Al Ghurabaa, and also UK leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, made an enigmatic statement, which some have claimed (without substantiation) is a reference to Interpal. In December 2004, Bakri claimed that there was a "Muslim organisation in Britain" which had a special monetary fund which recruits for Hamas. Bakri did not name the charity.

Nick Cohen in today's Observer/Guardian comments on George Galloway and the Celebrity Big Brother issue. He says this:

George Galloway and his backers in the Socialist Workers Party are finished now. The alliance they organised between the Trotskyist far left and the Islamic far right, which produced the most disgraceful protest movement since the Thirties, can no longer count on the indulgence of polite society

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 15, 2006 10:50 AM

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