A Landmark Verdict Finds Bank Responsible for Supporting Terrorist Attacks

By Adam Chandler 12 hours ago

 A Landmark Verdict Finds Bank Responsible for Supporting Terrorist Attacks

In what has the potential to be one of the most important verdicts in the era of modern terrorism, a federal jury has found the Arab Bank of Jordan liable for “knowingly supporting terrorism efforts” relating to 24 attacks by the terrorist group Hamas that took place during the Second Intifada.

The suit was filed under the American Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows for Americans or their families to sue if they are harmed in acts of terrorism abroad. In the case of the roughly 300 plaintiffs, they sought damages from the Arab Bank, in part, for hosting accounts for members of Hamas.

How did the Shin Bet fail to spot the Hebron kidnap cell in time?

Analysis

Israel’s intelligence services have a remarkable record of success in the West Bank. Not this time. Hard lessons will have to be learned about the failure to thwart the killings of the three Israeli teens

By Avi Issacharoff July 4, 2014, 11:55 am

An Israeli soldier patrols near the area where the bodies of three Israeli teenagers were found, in the village of Halhul, near the West Bank city of Hebron, Tuesday, July 1, 2014. (photo credit: AP/Majdi Mohammed)

Ibrahim Hamed, the former head of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank, the man responsible for the murders of dozens of Israelis, was thought of as a “ghost” for many years. Almost a legend. The Shin Bet and the Israel Defense Forces were not able to catch up to him, as he slipped through their grasp time and again. Only after eight years of pursuit was he captured in 2006 in a safe house in Ramallah’s al-Balou neighborhood.

People involved in the search for “The Sheikh” — who is today 49 and serving 54 life sentences — say one of the basic things that allowed him to evade capture for so long was his refusal to use a mobile phone. Israel’s security establishment managed to track his calls only twice over all those years, and even those instances were calls made from public phones.

Shin Bet report: terror increase originating from West Bank

Israeli soldiers on patrol in the West Bank city of Hebron, Sept. 23, 2013. (photo by Getty Images/Mamoun Wazwaz)

Israel’s Shin Bet is summing up 2013. The General Security Service, which is charged with preventing terrorist attacks in the country, released on Jan. 27 a detailed report covering 2013. The main data of this annual report points to a significant rise in terrorist attacks as compared to 2012. The number of attacks doubled in that time, from 578 in 2012 to 1,271 in 2013.

Summary⎙ Print The 2013 Shin Bet report indicates a rise in terror activities originating in the West Bank, attributed partly to the resignation of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the weakening of Fatah security mechanisms.

Author Shlomi Eldar Posted February 2, 2014

Translator(s)Danny Wool

According to the Shin Bet’s data, there was a drop in the number of casualties from terrorist attacks, with six in 2013, as compared to 10 in 2012. However, two reservations should be considered when making that comparison. The first is that in 2013, five Israelis were killed in attacks launched from the West Bank, as compared to zero in 2012. Furthermore, among the Israeli casualties listed by the Shin Bet for 2012 are the six soldiers who were killed in Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip.

First Al Qaeda operational cell in Jerusalem area

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 3, 2012, 9:19 AM (GMT+02:00)

Al Qaeda claims to land in Jerusalem

Monday night, Jan. 2, Al Qaeda claimed to have established its first Jerusalem operational cell calling it the “Sunni Youth Movement Cell in Greater Jerusalem.” Bulletin No. 1 with details of the organization and its targets was promised in the next few days. According to debkafile’s counter-terror sources, Israeli intelligence has advised the government and security services to treat the announced appearance of al Qaeda, and its aim to reach out from Jerusalem to the West Bank, very seriously.
They believe it may have been triggered by Palestinian plans to launch a “popular resistance” campaign from the West Bank. As disclosed earlier by debkafile, the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah are getting set for mass demonstrators to crash their way across barriers into Israel, whereas Hamas and Jihad Islami aim to use the resulting commotion for terrorist attacks.
Those intelligence sources also tie the rise of the first Al Qaeda cell in greater Jerusalem with the mushrooming of Palestinian Islamist Salafite organizations in the Palestinian centers of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. These organizations are either linked directly to Al Qaeda or deeply influenced by its jihadist ideology and ready to act on it.

Such organizations as Fatah al-Islam, Ansar al Sunna and Jund al Sham, for instance, are catching on like wildfire in the Palestinian enclave of Al Hilwa near the south Lebanese port of Sidon. Al Qaeda and its extremist offspring are already in control of parts of the camp. Armed Fatah groups have been battling those organizations in unsuccessful efforts to cut down their spreading influence.

Hamas may have been whitewashed: a clarification

Image via Wikipedia

David Nordell 28 Jan 2010

After publishing the article ’Hamas may have been whitewashed, but it is no cleaner than before’ here three days ago, a friend who is also professionally involved in counter-terror finance messaged me to say that the information on which I had based the article was inaccurate: the US Treasury continues to blacklist the main leaders of Hamas and to ban any transaction with them.

Indeed, the US Treasury blacklist of Palestinian Legislative Council members, which was last updated in April 2006, names the full Hamas leadership, from ’HANIYA, Ismail (a.k.a. HANIYA, Ismail Abdul Salah; a.k.a. HANIYYA, Ismaeel)’ down, on 11 pages, not just Musa bu Marzouk, as I mistakenly wrote.

London-Based Muslim Scholar Azzam Tamimi: Islam Liberates Europeans from Their Lives of Stupidity – : “[Freisinger] Belongs to a Group That Wants to Prevent The Islamization of Europe”

The following are excerpts from a TV debate with Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought, and with Swiss MP Oskar Freysinger, on the Swiss ban on building minarets. The debate aired on Al-Jazeera TV on December 8, 2009.

From 1980 to 1985, Dr. Al-Tamimi worked as a media monitor and news analyst at the U.S. government’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, and from 1990 to 1991, he directed the Parliamentary Office of the Islamic Movement in Jordan.

Al-Tamimi headed the Liberty for the Muslim World Institute in London, from 1992-1999 and was also a researcher for The Center for the Study of Democracy at Westminster University. Since 1999, Dr. Al-Tamimi has headed The Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London. He is the author of several books, including Hamas: A History From Within.

Al-Tamimi describes himself as a “sympathizer and supporter” of Hamas. “I know some of the senior figures in Hamas,” he said. “Some were my friends, my classmates…” According to The Guardian, he has advised Hamas on media strategy.[1] Palestinian political scientist Muhammad Muslih defines Al-Tamimi, in a study on Hamas’s foreign policy, as “a Hamas member.”

According to a Times Online blog, he has said in a BBC interview that he was prepared to go to Israel and carry out a suicide bombing, and has praised suicide bombers as martyrs.[2]

Al-Tamimi is frequently invited to lecture by Muslim communities in South Africa, the U.S., and Britain, where he resides.[3] He also writes opinion pieces in The Guardian.

To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2297.htm

“The Swiss People Are Drowning in Ignorance”

Azzam Tamimi: “This referendum exposed the huge chasm between the Swiss people and the Swiss political, ideological, and religious elites. The Swiss people are drowning in ignorance. This ignorance was exploited by the neo-Nazis…”

Interviewer: “Neo-Nazis like whom? Like our guest?”

Azzam Tamimi: “Yes, just like Oskar.”

Interviewer: “Our guest is a neo-Nazi, you mean?”

Azzam Tamimi: “Oskar is the new Hitler of Europe. I was talking today with a friend in Switzerland, and he told me that Oskar’s origins are in Austria, just like Hitler’s. He presents a threat to the future of Switzerland and Europe. The Swiss people should be wary of the likes of him. The Nazis of the past led Europe into a destructive war – World War II – causing its complete destruction, and these people too will bring about complete destruction.”

A Palestinian enigma

Last Updated: July 24. 2009 12:27AM UAE / July 23. 2009 8:27PM GMT

Khalid Mishal, pictured this year in Cairo, is rightly portrayed as a pivotal figure in the history of Hamas but McGeough’s book sheds little light on the man himself. Amr Nabil / AP Photo

Twelve years after Israel’s botched attempt to assassinate Khalid Mishal, he leads Hamas with more authority than ever,Gershom Gorenberg writes. But can Mishal steer his movement into the arena of political compromise?

Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assasination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas
Paul McGeough
Quartet Books
Dh128

“When Israel occupied Jerusalem, I was 14,” Sheikh Jamil Hamami once told me. Hamami grew up in East Jerusalem. That week in June 1967, he had heard the promises on the radio that the Arab states would defeat Israel “in a few days, a few hours”. Instead came the Israeli advance. Hamami described the day that the Old City fell in a series of staccato images: “The black picture in my mind is seeing an Israeli soldier enter Al Aqsa… Near the Wailing Wall, I saw a soldier step on the Quran… A soldier told us it was forbidden to pray in Al Aqsa.”