Andrew McCarthy is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and prosecuted the Sheik and the first WTC bombers. What follows are excerpts from his 2010 book The Grand Jihad. He reprinted these excerpts in National Review in 2014, after Brandeis College caved in to CAIR, and reneged on its announced plan to present an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the heroic human-rights activist.
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In January 1993, a new, left-leaning U.S. administration, inclined to be more sympathetic to the Islamist clause, came to power. But before he could bat an eye, President Bill Clinton was confronted by the murder and depraved mutilation of American soldiers in Somalia. A few weeks later, on February 26, jihadists bombed the World Trade Center. The public was angry and appeasing Islamists would have to wait.
******
Anxious to chase the holy grail of Middle East peace and suddenly in need of demonstrating toughness against jihadist terror, the new “progressive” president was made to order for the wily Marxist terror master. If Arafat could resell his “I renounce terrorism” carpet yet again, chances were he could cash in. And so he did, purporting to commit the Palestinians to the 1993 Oslo Accords — an empty promise of peaceful coexistence exchanged for hundreds of millions in aid (much of which he pocketed), an open invitation to the Clinton White House (where he became a regular visitor), international recognition (as a statesman, no less!), and a ludicrous Nobel Peace Prize (forever degrading a once prestigious honor into a punch line).
The Muslim Brotherhood, for one, was not amused. Islamists had murdered Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 for striking a peace pact with Israel. Sure, they knew Arafat and understood what chicanery he was up to. But acceptance of the Zionist entity’s right to exist was utterly unacceptable, even if done as a ploy.
Israel, the Brotherhood also realized, would not be the only thing squeezed by Clinton at Arafat’s urging. After a shaky start, the new president was winning global plaudits for his Orwellian “peace process.” Clinton must have known that Arafat was stringing him along, but with the theater of negotiation and ostensible progress drawing rave reviews, that was a problem for another day. The immediate concern was that Hamas jihadists could spoil the show with their implacable jihad, their blunt insistence that nothing less than Israel’s obliteration would satisfy them. That gave the fledgling administration a powerful incentive to crack down on them. Arafat would be the beneficiary as the Americans squeezed his rivals for power.
A ‘Media Twinkle’ in Philadelphia
Though the United States had been a cash cow for Hamas, it was thus a perilous time for the organization when 25 of its members and supporters gathered at a Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia on October 27, 1993. They were unaware that the FBI was monitoring their deliberations. The confab was a brainstorming exercise: How best to back Hamas and derail Oslo while concealing these activities from the American government?
A little more background to the Philadelphia meeting: For nearly two decades until his extradition in 1997, Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook was the most consequential Muslim Brotherhood operative in the United States. Now living in Egypt, he remains to this day deputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau. In the early Nineties, he actually ran the terrorist organization from his home in Virginia.
During his time in the U.S., Marzook formed several organizations to promote the Palestinian jihad against Israel. In 1981, for public-relations purposes, he established the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) in conjunction with two other jihadists: future Hamas chief Khalid al-Mishal and Sami al-Arian (the latter was eventually convicted of conspiring to support Palestinian Islamic Jihad).
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It was under the auspices of the Palestine Committee that the 1993 Philadelphia meeting was convened. It was clear even then that Marzook’s Hamas network was anticipating the birth of yet another organization. The Palestine Committee’s amended by-laws declared that an as-yet-unnamed entity was already in the larval stage, “operat[ing] through” the IAP, and soon to “become an official organization for political work, and its headquarters will be in Washington, insha Allah.”
*****
The then-unnamed and still evolving new entity was a project of the IAP, which was well represented at the Philadelphia conference. Omar Ahmed, the IAP’s president, was among the surveillance-conscious attendees who carefully avoided saying the word “Hamas” out loud, using the inversion “Samah” instead. Ahmed even referred to himself as “Omar Yahya,” the better to conceal his true identity from any hidden microphones. The codes apparently wreaked havoc on his memory: Ahmad would later testify that he couldn’t recall being in Philadelphia. In fact, the tapes showed he was not only there but called the meeting to order.
Ahmad also gave his confederates thoughtful advice that underscored the extent to which communications strategy was weighing on his mind. It would be better, he counseled, to say, “I want to restore the ’48 land” (i.e., return Israel to its original, indefensible 1948 boundaries) than to make crude (i.e., honest) statements like, “I want to destroy Israel.” In the same vein, he warned that a new organization in the U.S. could not afford to admit publicly that “We represent Samah [i.e., Hamas],” or to tell a congressman that, say, “I am Omar Yahya . . . and Yasser Arafat doesn’t represent me but [Hamas founder] Ahmed Yassin does.”
CAIR Is Born
In 1994, less than a year after the Philadelphia Hamas meeting, the Islamists unleashed their new organization: the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Just as the Palestine Committee by-laws had foretold, CAIR sprang from the womb of IAP and set up its headquarters in the nation’s capital.
Actually, CAIR was already in existence and firmly in the Brotherhood fold even before its incorporation was announced. We know that because, in preparing for a meeting held on July 30, 1994, the Palestine Committee prepared a written agenda that was later seized by the FBI. It stated that a top discussion topic would be “suggestions to develop work” for several named “organizations.” Included among these was “CAIR,” in addition to the IAP and HLF, among others. The agenda elucidated that “complete coordination” was sought among the various groups. Critically, it stressed that the effort was under Brotherhood direction: “This is not a separate movement from the mother Group.”
The principal aim of that Palestine Committee meeting was the development of a plan to counter efforts by Israel and American Jewish groups to normalize relations between Jews and Muslims. According to the Committee, such normalization would break what Edward Said, the late Islamist academic, called the “psychological barrier” — the mindset that prevents Muslims from accepting Israel’s right to exist.
****
The role of CAIR was already coming into focus: The last element of the Committee’s “Confrontation Work Plan” was “activating the role of the Association [IAP] . . . to take up its media role in this area.” Six weeks later, CAIR was incorporated and began appearing publicly as a new Muslim “civil rights” organization.
CAIR’s official founders were three IAP leaders: the aforementioned Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad (who eventually succeeded Ahmad as CAIR’s executive director), and Rafeeq Jaber, who had been IAP president before Ahmad. Another former IAP employee and television producer, Douglas Hooper, who became known as “Ibrahim Hooper” after converting to Islam, also came along as CAIR’s communications director. Hooper remains CAIR’s ubiquitous mouthpiece. (See, e.g., his contentious interviews just this week with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, here and here.) Ghassan Elashi — Marzook’s aforementioned brother-in-law who was eventually convicted of funding Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation case — came aboard as the founding director of CAIR’s Texas chapter.
As Steve Emerson has shown, $5,000 in seed money for CAIR came from the HLF — whose assets were finally frozen in 2001 based on the U.S. Treasury Department’s conclusion that it provided “millions of dollars annually that is used by HAMAS.” Interestingly, in September 2003, by which time he was CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad indignantly denied Emerson’s claim of a CAIR/HLF funding connection. He called the seed-money claim an “outright lie” and insisted, “Our organization did not receive any seed money from HLFRD. CAIR raises its own funds and we challenge Mr. Emerson to provide even a shred of evidence to support his ridiculous claim.” Emerson promptly produced some pretty good shreds — like the documentation showing a $5,000 wire transfer from HLF to CAIR, and the required IRS form on which HLF disclosed the contribution. Duly shredded, Awad was forced to concede, in later Senate testimony, that “the amount in question was a donation like any other.”
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Link to rest of article:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/04/roots-cairs-intimidation-campaign-andrew-c-mccarthy/
---------
In January 1993, a new, left-leaning U.S. administration, inclined to be more sympathetic to the Islamist clause, came to power. But before he could bat an eye, President Bill Clinton was confronted by the murder and depraved mutilation of American soldiers in Somalia. A few weeks later, on February 26, jihadists bombed the World Trade Center. The public was angry and appeasing Islamists would have to wait.
******
Anxious to chase the holy grail of Middle East peace and suddenly in need of demonstrating toughness against jihadist terror, the new “progressive” president was made to order for the wily Marxist terror master. If Arafat could resell his “I renounce terrorism” carpet yet again, chances were he could cash in. And so he did, purporting to commit the Palestinians to the 1993 Oslo Accords — an empty promise of peaceful coexistence exchanged for hundreds of millions in aid (much of which he pocketed), an open invitation to the Clinton White House (where he became a regular visitor), international recognition (as a statesman, no less!), and a ludicrous Nobel Peace Prize (forever degrading a once prestigious honor into a punch line).
The Muslim Brotherhood, for one, was not amused. Islamists had murdered Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 for striking a peace pact with Israel. Sure, they knew Arafat and understood what chicanery he was up to. But acceptance of the Zionist entity’s right to exist was utterly unacceptable, even if done as a ploy.
Israel, the Brotherhood also realized, would not be the only thing squeezed by Clinton at Arafat’s urging. After a shaky start, the new president was winning global plaudits for his Orwellian “peace process.” Clinton must have known that Arafat was stringing him along, but with the theater of negotiation and ostensible progress drawing rave reviews, that was a problem for another day. The immediate concern was that Hamas jihadists could spoil the show with their implacable jihad, their blunt insistence that nothing less than Israel’s obliteration would satisfy them. That gave the fledgling administration a powerful incentive to crack down on them. Arafat would be the beneficiary as the Americans squeezed his rivals for power.
A ‘Media Twinkle’ in Philadelphia
Though the United States had been a cash cow for Hamas, it was thus a perilous time for the organization when 25 of its members and supporters gathered at a Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia on October 27, 1993. They were unaware that the FBI was monitoring their deliberations. The confab was a brainstorming exercise: How best to back Hamas and derail Oslo while concealing these activities from the American government?
A little more background to the Philadelphia meeting: For nearly two decades until his extradition in 1997, Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook was the most consequential Muslim Brotherhood operative in the United States. Now living in Egypt, he remains to this day deputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau. In the early Nineties, he actually ran the terrorist organization from his home in Virginia.
During his time in the U.S., Marzook formed several organizations to promote the Palestinian jihad against Israel. In 1981, for public-relations purposes, he established the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) in conjunction with two other jihadists: future Hamas chief Khalid al-Mishal and Sami al-Arian (the latter was eventually convicted of conspiring to support Palestinian Islamic Jihad).
*****
It was under the auspices of the Palestine Committee that the 1993 Philadelphia meeting was convened. It was clear even then that Marzook’s Hamas network was anticipating the birth of yet another organization. The Palestine Committee’s amended by-laws declared that an as-yet-unnamed entity was already in the larval stage, “operat[ing] through” the IAP, and soon to “become an official organization for political work, and its headquarters will be in Washington, insha Allah.”
*****
The then-unnamed and still evolving new entity was a project of the IAP, which was well represented at the Philadelphia conference. Omar Ahmed, the IAP’s president, was among the surveillance-conscious attendees who carefully avoided saying the word “Hamas” out loud, using the inversion “Samah” instead. Ahmed even referred to himself as “Omar Yahya,” the better to conceal his true identity from any hidden microphones. The codes apparently wreaked havoc on his memory: Ahmad would later testify that he couldn’t recall being in Philadelphia. In fact, the tapes showed he was not only there but called the meeting to order.
Ahmad also gave his confederates thoughtful advice that underscored the extent to which communications strategy was weighing on his mind. It would be better, he counseled, to say, “I want to restore the ’48 land” (i.e., return Israel to its original, indefensible 1948 boundaries) than to make crude (i.e., honest) statements like, “I want to destroy Israel.” In the same vein, he warned that a new organization in the U.S. could not afford to admit publicly that “We represent Samah [i.e., Hamas],” or to tell a congressman that, say, “I am Omar Yahya . . . and Yasser Arafat doesn’t represent me but [Hamas founder] Ahmed Yassin does.”
CAIR Is Born
In 1994, less than a year after the Philadelphia Hamas meeting, the Islamists unleashed their new organization: the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Just as the Palestine Committee by-laws had foretold, CAIR sprang from the womb of IAP and set up its headquarters in the nation’s capital.
Actually, CAIR was already in existence and firmly in the Brotherhood fold even before its incorporation was announced. We know that because, in preparing for a meeting held on July 30, 1994, the Palestine Committee prepared a written agenda that was later seized by the FBI. It stated that a top discussion topic would be “suggestions to develop work” for several named “organizations.” Included among these was “CAIR,” in addition to the IAP and HLF, among others. The agenda elucidated that “complete coordination” was sought among the various groups. Critically, it stressed that the effort was under Brotherhood direction: “This is not a separate movement from the mother Group.”
The principal aim of that Palestine Committee meeting was the development of a plan to counter efforts by Israel and American Jewish groups to normalize relations between Jews and Muslims. According to the Committee, such normalization would break what Edward Said, the late Islamist academic, called the “psychological barrier” — the mindset that prevents Muslims from accepting Israel’s right to exist.
****
The role of CAIR was already coming into focus: The last element of the Committee’s “Confrontation Work Plan” was “activating the role of the Association [IAP] . . . to take up its media role in this area.” Six weeks later, CAIR was incorporated and began appearing publicly as a new Muslim “civil rights” organization.
CAIR’s official founders were three IAP leaders: the aforementioned Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad (who eventually succeeded Ahmad as CAIR’s executive director), and Rafeeq Jaber, who had been IAP president before Ahmad. Another former IAP employee and television producer, Douglas Hooper, who became known as “Ibrahim Hooper” after converting to Islam, also came along as CAIR’s communications director. Hooper remains CAIR’s ubiquitous mouthpiece. (See, e.g., his contentious interviews just this week with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, here and here.) Ghassan Elashi — Marzook’s aforementioned brother-in-law who was eventually convicted of funding Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation case — came aboard as the founding director of CAIR’s Texas chapter.
As Steve Emerson has shown, $5,000 in seed money for CAIR came from the HLF — whose assets were finally frozen in 2001 based on the U.S. Treasury Department’s conclusion that it provided “millions of dollars annually that is used by HAMAS.” Interestingly, in September 2003, by which time he was CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad indignantly denied Emerson’s claim of a CAIR/HLF funding connection. He called the seed-money claim an “outright lie” and insisted, “Our organization did not receive any seed money from HLFRD. CAIR raises its own funds and we challenge Mr. Emerson to provide even a shred of evidence to support his ridiculous claim.” Emerson promptly produced some pretty good shreds — like the documentation showing a $5,000 wire transfer from HLF to CAIR, and the required IRS form on which HLF disclosed the contribution. Duly shredded, Awad was forced to concede, in later Senate testimony, that “the amount in question was a donation like any other.”
---------
Link to rest of article:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/04/roots-cairs-intimidation-campaign-andrew-c-mccarthy/
