Michael Kraft at the Counterterrorism Blog writes about how the Lashkar-e Tayyiba gets funding through charity organizations in Britain, much the same way the Holy Land Foundation provided funds for Hamas. He writes that when the law was drafted that an attempt was made to make a provision for humanitarian aid to the “charities” if they could prove that the money was really being used for medical supplies or similar worthy purchases. However that provision was rejected.
Actually, when Justice and State Department officials (I was one of them) drafted the original 1996 administration bill they included a licensing provision allowing donors to contribute to specific charitable activities such as medical supplies and other humanitarian assistance provided that the organizations provided documentation that the contribution actually was being used for those purposes.
This attempt to accommodate humanitarian concerns ultimately was dropped however during discussions between State and Justice Department officials and the Senate Judiciary Committee staff. A key staffer who worked for Republican Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, a state with a large Arab-American population rejected the provision. She said that the recipient “charity†organizations would not stand for opening their books to inspection. Thus the proposed exceptions for humanitarian assistance went by the wayside because of opposition from a Senate staffer who apparently was sympathetic to those who wanted to contribute to Hamas.
(emphausis mine)
This is important to remember whenever apologists talk about how the money raised here is used to fund Hamas’s good works.
Why wouldn’t the Holy Land Foundation wish to open its books?
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Got a link?
Soccerdad links to the Counterterrorism Blog and the quoted passages come from there. The author of that post appears to be speaking from personal experience about the Senate staffer.
What they have to hide is probably very simple. There is no real distinction between the “humanitarian” and the “terrorist” sides of these groups. Under Islamic law contributions to both efforts count as charity (zakat) and the jihadists consider terrorism much more important than humanitarian aid. They can always count on the kaffirs (i.e. us) to step in and rescue Muslims from their desperate straits if things get bad enough. Why waste money on anything but jihad?