Death cult charity trial starts in Dallas

Houston Chronicle:

A Richardson-based Muslim charity and five of its officers are scheduled to go on trial here today on charges related to claims that it funneled at least $12.4 million to Hamas, a Palestinian group the U.S. government says is a terrorist organization.

The trial comes at the end of a long-running federal investigation that began with FBI agents surveiling officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development at a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia.

A 2004 federal indictment alleges the group was set up in 1988 to provide financial and material support to Hamas, a radical Islamist group that sponsors suicide bombings in Israel and has gained political power in the Palestinian territories.

President Bush closed the charity by executive order in December 2001 and froze $4 million of its assets. At the time it was the largest Muslim charity in the U.S.

Leaders of the foundation have maintained they aided only health clinics, orphanages and others in need.

"This case involves whether humanitarian assistance in Palestine is going to be treated as a crime," said defense lawyer John Boyd, who is representing both the charity and its chief executive and co-founder, Shukri Abu Baker, a 48-year-old Garland resident.

"There is no allegation that the Holy Land Foundation gave money to Hamas or that any of its funds were used for terrorism," Boyd said.

The 42-count indictment alleges that the foundation supported Hamas through donations to charity committees and other organizations in the West Bank and Gaza under Hamas' control. It also accuses the group of funding "family members of individuals who were either 'martyred' or jailed for terrorist related activities."

The group's intent was allegedly to "effectively reward past, and encourage future suicide bombings and terrorist activities" by Hamas.

"Not only did HLF operate to support the Hamas agenda, but it was created for that very purpose," a government brief contends.

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Hamas is a genocidal death cult that sent its children out to explode in Israeli pizza shops and other gatherings of non combatants. To say that it also had charitable institutions that it supported is like saying that Mussolini got the trains to run on time or Hitler built nice roads.

Money is a fungible commodity and Hamas used its charitable functions as a recruiting tool for its death cult operations. It was integral to its growth in a community that through lack of enterprise has become a beggar society. In a beggar culture, charity is power and that is how Hamas accumulated its power. Its main enterprise was harvesting human ordinance to explode around Israeli non combatants and its other functions merely supported that enterprise.

I think I would probably not be the defenses ideal candidate to sit on this jury.

Josh Gerstein from the NY Sun looks at Hamas on trial in Texas.