The law and terrorist charities (AV)

In this morning's National Review online, I have an article with Howard Anglin, Esq. on a recent judicial decision out of California authored by Judge Audrey Collins that seriously hampers the government's efforts to restrict terrorist financing. Read the article.

To be fair to Judge Collins, her opinion is nothing like the hatchet job performed by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor on the NSA’s terrorist-surveillance program earlier this year. Judge Taylor’s opinion was roundly — and rightly — condemned as poorly reasoned and unworthy of the legal craft by lawyers from across the political spectrum. Judge Collins’s decision, by contrast, is neither overtly partisan nor irrational. With one exception it is a workmanlike application of precedent to fact. Unfortunately, that one exception has catastrophic potential.

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There is, however, a compelling basis for a government ban on any assistance — even self-described humanitarian aid — to terrorists. Because terrorist organizations are not known as models of corporate transparency, there is no way of knowing whether a terrorist entity’s humanitarian arm is funneling money to its militant one. What is more, the fungible nature of money means that donations to the peaceful arm free up money to be spent by the militant arm.

Comments

[todd]

Mr. Velshi,

Your excellent article has once again brought to the limelight the unfortunate truth that our enemy knows us better than we know ourselves.

The Holyland Foundation was a calculated attempt by Hamas to create a smoke screen for an operational front inside the United States. By reviewing our laws (at the time) and forming their operational parameters beforehand, they believed that they could operate for years under the radar of US authorities.

Unfortunately for them, 9/11 occurred. That evil brought a beam of light focused on some of the most obvious that these terrorist affiliated fronts were conducting inside of our borders. Take for example the HLF spin off organization, KindHearts USA, which was operated by a former official from the HLF in the Toledo, Ohio area.

Unfortunately for us (us being the United States), these operators who were behind these organizations are still running free. Yes, their past venture has been shut down or had its assets frozen, but the knowledge of how to work our system is still out there- and being passed on to anyone who wants to participate in 'the cause'. New charities are popping up with the second or third generations of associates of the HLF, IAP, and KindHearts USA, running the operations; but because they are not waving the flag of HAMAS on their front porch are thriving with unbridled success.

Some of these groups are just as obvious as their predecessors, but due to the effectively generated 'fear of racism' laid out by another HAMAS affiliated organization, remain untouched, and seemingly untouchable. Some of these groups have worked a little harder and buried further into the onion to hide. But they are still in an onion, and not a rock.

This enemy has watched, and learned. They understand that our structured court system and that the due process some of us citizens still love can bog down the legal process for years if attacked properly. They also understand that our continued slide down the path to moral relativism makes it very difficult for the government to convince enough people (in the homeland battle for hearts and minds) that just because a group/ organization is not holding the smoking gun or manufacturing the TATP, that they are still a terrorist organization.

What America needs now is a people that are willing to go through the tears of peeling some onions now before it has to go through the tears of responding to another or even more destructive 9/11.

Keep up the good work.