Murders in Savannah.
Black on black crime is both rampant, senseless
and tragic. The police cannot stop it. They can
only arrest after the fact. (See 1 below.)
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Bo Derek is a Hollywood Conservative who has been blackballed by Hollywood Liberals.
I wonder if the same happens to James Woods who also happens to be a better actor?
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A new way of thinking, a new approach to finding solutions to a new period of rage. (See 2 below.)
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An important message to Republican Voters at The Landings.
In Georgia you can select your ballot and in the upcoming election on May 24 (early voting begins Tuesday, May 3) I urge you consider selecting a Democrat Ballot. Why? There are no significant candidates, except Sen Johnny Isakson, who is a shoe in for nomination, on The Republican Ballot.
Democrat Tony Center is running against the incumbent Democrat Chair of Chatham County and there is no Republican candidate opposition. We at The Landings have political clout if we use it. Witness the response of the current County Commission to our rejection of the turn circle proposal. In an apparent display of spite the county eliminated the left turn lane and now we have a traffic jam as cars approach the main gate. The two tragic accidents that happened recently were not caused by something a turnaround will solve.
Helen Stone and Pat Farrell are attentive to Landings Residents but possibly could be more effective with Tony Center as Chairman. Tony has many personal friends at The Landings, is honest, a tireless worker, approachable and should be far more receptive to Landings'issues and needs than the current Chair who has few if any ties to Skidaway.
I have known Tony for more years than I want to admit and we do not agree on many issues but as Chair of The County he will serve our and the entire community well and hopefully has the good sense to work effectively with our current Mayor..
Tony's big compliant is that the current Chair, though competent, is not one to work with other commissioners. He holds his cards too close to his chest and is too unilateral in his decision making.
The race card, as in the Muller campaign, is also being raised as a result of the lamentable power struggle Savannah is subjected to when local elections occur. Competency and clear vision ought to be the issue, not color but, all too frequently, it clouds the issue.
Savannah is a great city with greater potential. Our economy rests on a broad foundation which many communities only wish they had, ie. tourism, military, education, port facilities and historic uniqueness and culture. Landings residents contribute so much to Savannah and seek little from the county because we are fairly well self-contained and managed. Nevertheless, when we have problems and issues our collective voice should be heard and should have influence. This is why I am supporting Tony Center and commend you consider doing the same by selecting a Democrat Ballot.
Peter Muller's name is on all ballots.
Thanks in advance for any consideration of this request.
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Also, though I will be out of town myself, I urge you attend this important and informative public service presentation:
The Skidaway Island Republican Club is hosting its fourth True Perspectives Seminar of 2016 on Tuesday May 10 at the Plantation Club, 5 pm (Cash Bar starts 4:30 pm)
===The Topic: FBI assessment on domestic terrorism
Speaker: FBI Senior Agent Gene KowelAll are welcomeCosts: SIRC Sustaining members - free; regular SIRC members - $5; all others - $10.For reservations, contact Dick Miller at 598-5049 or hrmatthelandings@gmail.com.
As always Caroline Glick is a worth while read. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) Editorial: Stop the insanity: Murder of working mom
All Savannahians should be outraged and saddened by the senseless slaying of a working mother of five children who was murdered as she got home from work early Thursday morning in front of her house in a working class neighborhood in West Savannah, off Augusta Avenue.
Police said that 36-year-old Hannah Cornell Brown was struck by bullets multiple times after she pulled up in front of her house in the 1300 block of Newcastle St. around 1:30 a.m.
Investigators aren’t saying much and have not indicated a motive for the shooting or whether Ms. Brown was an intended or accidental victim.
Police officials did say in a press release that, “following the incident, family members inside the residence heard a vehicle fleeing the scene at a high rate of speed.”
But in the end, motive doesn’t really matter that much. Instead, another citizen in Savannah is dead because of violence, which continues to grip too many neighborhoods and claim too many lives.
Ms. Brown, in fact, was the city’s 17th homicide victim in the city this year — apparently part of the same trend of increasing violence that made 2015 one of the most violent in recent Savannah history and helped cost Mayor Edna Jackson and other city aldermen their jobs in last year’s city election. And later Thursday, the city recorded its 18th homicide, when Steven Grant died of a gunshot wound he suffered in another part of town.
The details surrounding Mr. Grant’s shooting remain muddled. Police identified him as the man they’d reported finding severely wounded about 5 a.m. in Paradise Park in the southside. Officers who were already in the area investigating reports of a prowler were rerouted to a shooting call. They discovered Grant, 32, critically injured outside a home on Kandlewood Drive near Cindy Avenue. Investigators are working to determine if there are any links between the shooting and the alleged prowling incidents.
If there is a link, that doesn’t make Mr. Grant’s death less tragic or noteworthy. It suggests that some citizens may be so fed up by crime and criminals and the lack of an effective response from city officials that they may be taking matters into their own hands. But vigilantism and shooting at strangers in your backyard isn’t a reasonable solution to the problem of violent crime.
Instead, it requires the equivalent of a full-court press by the entire community — elected officials, Metro police, federal and state prosecutors, judges, and the state parole board, which must stop sending the message that violent criminals in Georgia don’t have to face the full consequences of their actions. To a limited extent, local officials are doing that, with programs that target violent repeat offenders and ex-felons who carry firearms either in place or just kicking off. The same goes for some of the anti-poverty youth programs now underway.
But there’s more that city officials can do, such as supporting Police Chief Joseph Lumpkin’s request to City Council earlier this month for more police officers and police vehicles, along with 200 additional security cameras the department would buy, install and monitor.
At the same time, County Commission Chairman Al Scott is supporting an effort to make sure that Metro has enough police officers to sufficiently police a community of Savannah’s size, including people who are here seasonally, like tourists and college students. Mr. Scott’s idea is worth supporting, and right-sizing Metro police must be a priority.
Regular citizens can help fight crime by cooperating with investigators and prosecutors to help catch the creeps who kill and to keep them locked up for a long time. Forming strong neighborhood groups can help, too, and they can act like another set of eyes and ears and be like an extra layer of security as more neighbors watch out for one another.
What such groups can do is to pay attention to trends and patterns and to assist police when they can.
For example, West Savannah has been particularly violent this week. Just two nights before Ms. Brown was killed, a 22-year-old man was shot and critically wounded in the 200 block of Fell Street, about half a mile from the 1300 block of New Castle Street,
Ronald Williams, president of the west Savannah community organization, said he has been keeping in touch with police and he naturally wonders if the two shootings might be connected.
Meanwhile, Chief Lumpkin and his officers must continue to come up with ways to combat these violent crimes, which rip holes in families and tear at the fabric of this community. On-the-street police intelligence must improve, which is why the need to have a sufficient number of police officers on duty to do labor-intensive community policing is so critical.
Much is at stake here.
“Five little children don’t have their mother, and that’s a community-wide tragedy,” Alderman Van Johnson said about this heartbreaking slaying.
We agree. It is a community-wide tragedy as well as a loud and clear signal to Mayor Eddie DeLoach and the new City Council that much is unfinished and that winning elections isn’t enough. They still have work to do to improve public safety throughout the whole community.
Linda Wilder Bryan, whose son was shot and killed in August, has been vocal in uniting mothers of Savannah’s homicide victims over the last few months and pushing for an end to senseless bloodshed.
“It really disheartens me,” Bryan said Thursday night. She’s not the only one. “We keep talking about sons, and it’s getting so bad now they’re actually killing mothers. When does it stop?”
Not soon enough. But stop, it must.
Last year was the most violent year in Savannah since 1991, when a soaring homicide rate was blamed largely on a crack gang. Police have said drugs were behind many of last year’s shootings.
What’s behind the latest wave of violence remains unclear.
According to Metro police, there has been nearly 100 more violent crimes reported by April 23 this year than there were by this time in 2015. Aggravated assaults, homicides and street robberies are all up, police said. That should tell the police chief and other city officials that whatever they are doing to improve public safety, it’s not enough, and that existing anti-crime efforts must be beefed up and accelerated. Savannah has lost enough of its sons to mindless violence. Now that mothers are being murdered, mindlessness lapses into pure insanity, which no community can tolerate.
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2) ISRAELHAYOM
FACING THE GROWING CHALLENGES OF A NEW WORLD
TODAY'S DECISION MAKERS ARE OPERATING IN A WORLD IN WHICH ORGANIZATIONS ARE STRONGER THAN COUNTRIES, THE ECONOMY IS FLAILING, AND THE U.S. IS SHIRKING ITS "POLICEMAN" RESPONSIBILITIES • THE OLD RULES NO LONGER APPLY, AND ISRAEL WOULD BE WISE TO ACCEPT THAT.
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PEOPLE OFTEN ASK HOW EXPERTS IN WORLD AFFAIRS, AND IN MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS IN PARTICULAR, WERE CAUGHT SO OFF GUARD. NO ONE SAW THE EVENTS OF THE ARAB SPRING COMING. NO ONE PREDICTED THE RISE OF THE ISLAMIC STATE GROUP. NO ONE EXPECTED EUROPE TO BE FLOODED WITH REFUGEES. NO EXPERT COULD HAVE DREAMED WHAT IS CURRENTLY HAPPENING IN THE UNITED STATES. THERE IS NO ESCAPING THE ONLY POSSIBLE CONCLUSION: SOMETHING PROFOUND HAS HAPPENED AND MADE THE WORLD ALMOST INCOMPREHENSIBLE.
THE LAST TIME THE WORLD WAS IN SUCH A STATE WAS AFTER WORLD WAR I, WHEN THE OLD WORLD ORDER DISAPPEARED AND A NEW ONE EMERGED. THE 1919 VERSAILLES PEACE CONFERENCE LACKED THE TOOLS TO DEAL WITH THE NEW WORLD, IN WHICH THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION REACHED NEW HEIGHTS, MOTORIZED TRANSPORTATION REPLACED HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGES AND PLANES MADE DISTANCES FAR LESS SIGNIFICANT. TO SOME DEGREE, THE VERSAILLES CONFERENCE REPRESENTED AN ATTEMPT BY THE OLD WORLD LEADERS, MAINLY BRITAIN AND FRANCE, TO RETAIN THEIR ECONOMIC STATUS AND SAFEGUARD THE RULES OF THE GAME THAT HAD BEGUN A CENTURY EARLIER.
THIS ATTEMPT TO IMPLEMENT OLD TOOLS IN A NEW WORLD DID NOT GO OVER WELL. TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES, WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO BRING WORLD PEACE, A TERRIBLE WAR DESCENDED ON THE WORLD. TO SOME EXTENT, ADOLF HITLER UNDERSTOOD THE RULES OF THE NEW GAME BETTER THAN ANYONE (BUT FAILED TO TAKE AMERICA'S INDUSTRIAL ADVANTAGE INTO ACCOUNT). THE SURRENDER OF GERMANY AND TWO AMERICAN NUCLEAR BOMBS OVER JAPAN BROUGHT THE WAR TO AN END, AND NEW RULES WERE SET, WHICH HAVE SO FAR PREVENTED SERIOUS WAR FROM ERUPTING FOR OVER 70 YEARS.
IN THE RESULTING DUAL-POWER WORLD, IT WAS CLEAR THAT NEITHER SIDE WOULD GO AFTER REGIONS OF POWER BELONGING TO THE OTHER, AND LEADERS LEARNED TO LIVE IN A SYSTEM WITH TWO FOCAL POINTS -- ONE IN WASHINGTON AND THE OTHER IN MOSCOW -- BOTH OF WHICH COULD DESTROY THE WORLD SEVEN TIMES OVER WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS THAT NO ONE WANTED TO ACTUALLY USE AFTER HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI.
A CULTURE OF RAGE
BUT THE WORLD THAT EMERGED AFTER WORLD WAR II HAS NOW DISAPPEARED. THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENT THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THIS CHANGE WAS THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION IN THE EARLY 1990S. THIS COLLAPSE, VIEWED THEN AS A PURE AMERICAN VICTORY AND PROOF OF THE FAILURE OF THE COMMUNIST SYSTEM, WAS CONNECTED TO THE MIDDLE EAST, EVEN IF NO ONE NOTICED THE CONNECTION AT THE TIME. ITS SIGNIFICANCE BECAME CLEAR IN RETROSPECT.
AFTER THE RUSSIANS INVADED AFGHANISTAN IN 1979, LOCAL FORCES, WITH THE HELP OF THE U.S., WERE ABLE TO DEFEAT THEM, AND THE SOVIETS RETREATED IN SHAME ON THE EVE OF THE SOVIET COLLAPSE. IN THE MUSLIM WORLD, THIS DEFEAT WAS VIEWED AS AN ISLAMIC VICTORY OVER A SUPERPOWER AND THE MAIN REASON BEHIND THE SUBSEQUENT COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION. THIS SUCCESS LED THE MUSLIM WORLD TO VIEW ITSELF DIFFERENTLY, AND THAT IS PRECISELY WHERE THE SEEDS WERE SOWN FOR RENEWED EFFORTS TO CULTIVATE THE POLITICAL, SUNNI, FUNDAMENTALIST, VICIOUS, UNCOMPROMISING BRAND OF ISLAM. THE MOVEMENTS THAT EMERGED IN VARIOUS FORMS FROM THESE EFFORTS RANGED ANYWHERE FROM THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, THROUGH AL-QAIDA AND ALL THE WAY TO ISLAMIC STATE.
ABOUT A DECADE BEFORE THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION, A SHIITE CLERGYMAN SUCCEEDED IN SPEARHEADING A REVOLUTION AND GAINING CONTROL OVER IRAN, THE LARGEST SHIITE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. SHIITES MAKE UP ABOUT 15% OF ALL MUSLIMS, AND FOR CENTURIES THEY WERE AN OPPRESSED MINORITY THAT DEVELOPED A CULTURE OF VICTIMHOOD AND RAGE. BUT NO MORE -- AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI CHANGED THE ATTITUDE ENTIRELY, AND, LED BY IRAN, THE SHIITES BECAME A DYNAMIC FORCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST.
AT CERTAIN POINTS IN HISTORY THEY TRIED TO EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE TO NON-SHIITE COUNTRIES LIKE ALGERIA AND SUDAN (ALL THAT REMAINS NOW IS THEIR LINK TO SUNNI PALESTINIAN GROUPS SUCH AS HAMAS AND ISLAMIC JIHAD). BUT ULTIMATELY, THEY FOCUSED ON BUILDING A SHIITE ARC STRETCHING FROM TEHRAN THROUGH BAGHDAD TO DAMASCUS AND BEIRUT. THEIR BIGGEST SUCCESS TO DATE IN "EXPORTING" THE REVOLUTION HAS BEEN HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON.
MINORITIES BECOME THE MAJORITY
TODAY, THE DYNAMICS OF THE MIDDLE EAST ARE A RESULT OF THREE FACTORS: POLITICAL ISLAM FIGHTING AGAINST THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MODERN STATE; FRICTION TO THE POINT OF WAR ANYWHERE THERE ARE SUNNIS LIVING ALONGSIDE SHIITES; AND LOCAL CONDITIONS STEMMING FROM THE FACT THAT NONE OF THE REGION'S GOVERNMENTS HAVE BEEN ABLE TO PROVIDE HOPE FOR A BETTER FUTURE. IN MOST COUNTRIES IN THE REGION, THE CITIZENS FEEL THAT THEIR GOVERNMENTS DON'T CARE ENOUGH ABOUT THEM -- EITHER LOOKING OUT ONLY FOR THEIR OWN, OR BEING ACTIVELY UNJUST, IF NOT CRUEL.
THE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES HAVE MADE THE SITUATION EVEN MORE COMPLICATED, AS SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS PERMIT THE DISSEMINATION OF LARGE QUANTITIES OF INFORMATION, AND ALLOW DORMANT OR OPPRESSED VOICES TO RISE UP SUDDENLY AND INFLUENCE THE MASSES. THE RULERS HAVE LOST THEIR EXCLUSIVE CONTROL OVER INFORMATION, AND WITH THAT HAVE LOST THEIR LONG-HELD ABILITY TO MANIPULATE IT AND RETAIN CONTROL ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST.
MEANWHILE, THE U.S. HAS ALSO CHANGED. MINORITIES ARE ON THEIR WAY TO BECOMING THE MAJORITY, THE ECONOMY IS FLAILING, AND THE WEALTH GAP IS GROWING DEEPER. THE PRICE PAID IN BLOOD IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN HAS MADE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WARY OF ENTERING NEW WARS. AMERICAN DEPENDENCE ON MIDDLE EASTERN ENERGY SOURCES HAS DIMINISHED SIGNIFICANTLY, AND THE FOCUS HAS NOW SHIFTED TOWARD ASIA.
AS A RESULT, WITH THE REGION'S "POLICEMAN" NO LONGER PRESENT, ALL THE CENTERS OF POWER ARE NOW SHIFTING. THE IRANIANS AND RADICAL ISLAM ARE TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE AMERICAN ABSENCE TO ESTABLISH POWER AT THE EXPENSE OF THOSE COUNTRIES THAT REMAINED INTACT AFTER THE ARAB SPRING. MEANWHILE, THESE SUNNI COUNTRIES ARE LOOKING TO STRENGTHEN THE STATUS QUO.
THINK DIFFERENT
DECISION MAKERS ARE NOW FACING A NEW WORLD, ONE IN WHICH ORGANIZATIONS ARE STRONGER THAN COUNTRIES. A WORLD IN WHICH THE U.S. IS NOT FUNCTIONING IN ITS PREVIOUS ROLE AND MANY AMERICANS ARE FED UP WITH THEIR OWN COUNTRY'S POLITICAL SYSTEM. A WORLD IN WHICH SHIITES ARE SUCCESSFUL BECAUSE THEY ARE THE DYNAMIC FORCE, THE PRICE OF OIL IS TUMBLING, RICH GULF STATES ARE NERVOUS, AND RADICAL SUNNI ISLAM CONTROLS A LARGE SWATH OF LAND BETWEEN IRAQ AND SYRIA, IN SINAI AND IN LIBYA. A WORLD IN WHICH EUROPE'S MOST PRESSING ORDER OF BUSINESS IS STEMMING THE MASSIVE INFLUX OF REFUGEES.
IN A WORLD LIKE THIS, THE OLD RULES NO LONGER WORK, BUT NO NEW RULES HAVE BEEN SET YET. THAT IS WHY THE PAST ISN'T ALWAYS RELEVANT TO UNDERSTANDING THE FUTURE, AND LOGIC DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK (THE OLD ADAGE STATING THAT THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND IS NO LONGER APPLICABLE, FOR EXAMPLE). WHEN EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT, IT IS TIME TO THINK DIFFERENTLY AND ACT DIFFERENTLY.
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3)
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To defeat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, it is first necessary to understand it. The BDS campaign is an extraordinary phenomenon. Activists from US coast to coast robotically parrot the same lies, employ the same tactics of bullying, intimidating and silencing pro-Israel activists and speakers on campus after campus. Their goals are uniform. They seek to silence pro-Israel voices in US academia as a means to destroy general public support for Israel in America. And they seek to make Jew-hatred socially acceptable in elite circles in America for the first time since the Holocaust. This month it was leftist MK Tzipi Livni’s turn to fall victim to BDS bigotry and defamation. During a public appearance at Harvard Law School, one of the heads of BDS movement at the school, Husam el-Qoulaq, asked her why she is “smelly.” Qoulaq is the head of Students for Justice in Palestine at Harvard Law School. SJP is the central engine of the BDS movement. Its members are the ones who organize the “divest from Israel” resolutions routinely passed by ignorant or intimidated student representatives on college councils. SJP members are the ones who regularly harass pro-Israel students and riot or otherwise disrupt pro-Israel events on campuses. They are the ones who willingly and purposely engage in rank anti-Semitic demonization of Jews and Israel to normalize Jew-hatred in America. Given SJP’s lead role in the campaign against Israel and American Jewry on college campuses, students and Jewish groups trying to combat the racist movement focus their attention on SJP. But it works out that SJP doesn’t formally exist. There is no nonprofit group called Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP doesn’t file tax forms. It doesn’t have a paper trail. In other words, SJP is a ghost organization, an illusion. To bring it down you need to find its controllers. The Canary Mission (canarymission.org) is a website managed by students and activists. It was formed “to document people and groups that are promoting hatred of the USA, Israel and the Jewish people, particularly on college campuses in North America.” According to the website, SJP was founded in 2001 by UC Berkeley Prof. Hatem Bazian. Bazian’s organizational pedigree reads like the who’s who of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in America. Bazian fund-raised for a Hamas front group called KindHearts. In 2008, like a number of other Islamic groups that were found guilty of providing material support for terrorism in the framework of the Holy Land Foundation trial, KindHearts was forced to disband. KindHearts was found to have raised money for Hamas. Another of Bazian’s former employers, the Islamic Association for Palestine, also disbanded after it was found guilty of funding Hamas. According to the Canary Mission’s findings, Bazian founded SJP to distance the BDS movement from its Islamic masters. His idea was to brand it as a radical group that could easily collaborate with other radical groups on campus and so turn the radical establishment into an engine for anti-Israel activism. Although Bazian went to great lengths to brand SJP as a non-Islamic movement, he had no intention of ceding control of the BDS movement to non-Islamic forces. To ensure control over SJP, and through it, the BDS movement as a whole, according to the Canary Mission, Bazian formed American Muslims for Palestine. On April 19, during a hearing before the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, American Muslims for Palestine’s nature became clear. Jonathan Schanzer served as a terrorism finance analyst for the Department of the Treasury from 2004 to 2007. He currently works as the vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. In testimony before the subcommittee, Schanzer revealed that the heads of AMP are alumni of three Islamist groups that were banned following their convictions for terrorism financing during the course of the Holy Land Foundation trial that ended in 2008. AMP’s leadership held key positions at the Holy Land Foundation, KindHearts and the Islamic Association for Palestine. These groups and their employees transferred millions of dollars to al-Qaida, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Although Schanzer could find no indication that AMP is continuing its predecessors’ practice of sending funds to foreign terrorist groups, he demonstrated how the heir of Hamas-USA now direct the BDS movement. Through AMP, they control SJP. In his words, “AMP is a Chicago-based organization that is a leading driver of the BDS campaign. AMP is arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine, which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States. AMP provides speakers, training, printed materials, a so-called ‘Apartheid Wall,’ and grants to SJP activists.” Schanzer added, “AMP even has a campus coordinator on staff whose job is to work directly with SJP and other pro-BDS campus groups across the country.” The reason that SJP activists utilize the same tactics and rhetoric from sea to shining sea is because officials from the heir to disbanded terrorism funding groups tells them what to say and do. Everything from their “Apartheid Walls” and Die-Ins to their posters and slogans and tactic of shutting down pro-Israel events is dictated to them by AMP. Whereas SJP doesn’t exist at all on paper, AMP’s existence is eyebrow-raising from a legal perspective. AMP is not registered as a nonprofit so it is impossible to know its funding sources or the size of its donations, because it is not required to publicize them. As Schanzer explained, funds for AMP are raised through yet another organization called Americans for Justice in Palestine Education Foundation, or AJP, whose nature and behavior are also strange. AJP’s chairman is Bazian. AJP and AMP share the same office in the Chicago suburb of Palos Hill. Unlike AMP, AJP is a registered nonprofit. In its 2014 990 tax form, attached to Schanzer’s testimony, it reports raising in excess of $3.2 million between 2010 and 2014. But, in apparent breach of the law, AJP did not report how it spent the money or where it received the funds from. Like AMP, AJP members worked in the past for the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic Association for Palestine and KindHearts. Indeed, most of them are the same people. Not only do AMP-AFP fail to divulge their financing sources or outlays, they revel in their practice of operating at the edges of the law. At AMP’s 2014 annual conference in Chicago, participants were invited to “come and navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.” Given SJP’s raging success, it isn’t a surprise that Bazian isn’t the only one claiming to have founded it. For instance, Senan Shaqdeh claims that he founded SJP. As Schanzer testified, Shaqdeh, who also lives in Chicago, is listed as a terrorist from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine by the PLO’s Ministry of Expatriate Affairs’ website. Shaqdeh is also the coordinator of the Chicago- based US Coalition to Boycott Israel. In 2014, Shaqdeh traveled to Ramallah where he met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. The chairman of the US Coalition to Boycott Israel is Ghassan Barakat. According to Schanzer, Barakat is a PLO consular official in Chicago. Like SJP, the Coalition is not a legal entity. It is not registered with state or local tax authorities. But given Barakat’s and Shaqdeh’s associations with the PLO and the PA, it is likely that it is funded by the US-funded PA. Perhaps money from the PLO to SJP and other BDS outlets is transferred through an opaque New York state registered nonprofit called Wespac. Currently, a delegation of Palestinian students, organized by Bir Zeit University, paid for by Wespac and managed by SJP is traveling through the US lobbying students to boycott Israel. Schanzer’s testimony should lead anti-BDS efforts in three directions. Two of them are legal, and one is political. On the legal front, AMP and AJP’s commingling is curious, to say the least. Their failure to report the sources of their funding or how the funds are used appear, at a minimum, to be a breach of reporting requirements. These irregularities, along with the fact that officers of these organizations were in the past officers of organizations disbanded due to their provision of material support for terrorism, warrant criminal investigations by both tax authorities and counterterrorism investigators. Unfortunately, shortly after he entered office in 2009, President Barack Obama’s then-attorney- general Eric Holder ordered the Department of Justice to stop investigating Islamist nonprofit groups. Accordingly, it is highly unlikely that any investigation will be conducted by federal agencies in the near future. This leaves state, local and congressional authorities. Since AMP and AJP are registered in Palos Hills, both Illinois tax authorities and law enforcement and Palos Hills authorities can open investigations into their operations. Moreover, Congress, which exposed the fact that both groups appear to be a natural continuation of banned terrorism-supporting organizations, is fully empowered to conduct congressional investigations of their operations, replete with the power to subpoena witnesses. As for the operations of PLO officials in Chicago, their work is arguably in breach of the laws stipulating the permitted conduct of PLO officials in the US. Congress can investigate their behavior as well, and determine whether or not it constitutes a material breach of the PLO’s permitted actions in America, and so requires the US to cut off its relations with the terrorist group. Certainly the involvement of PA/PLO officials in an anti-Semitic hate campaign is grounds for a cut off of US aid to the PA. On the political front, it is vital that Israel fight BDS as the most widespread form of anti-Semitism in North America. Unlike the situation in Europe, where BDS is largely an economic warfare campaign, in the US its goal is political. Its leaders are not interested in harming the Israeli economy per se. They are interested in cultivating anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel to pave the way for economic warfare and actual war against Israel. Government ministers involved with the fight against BDS need to provide anti-BDS activists with information about SJP’s links to Hamas and with the PA. American Jewish organizations and activists need to call out college administrators when they say since they refuse to carry out divestment resolutions that they oppose BDS, even as they allow SJP to operate on their campuses and even fund the Hamas front group directly. Schanzer’s testimony makes clear that the BDS movement is part and parcel of the jihadist war against Israel whose goal is its annihilation. Both legally and politically, it needs to be fought accordingly. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
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