David Singer: Hamas and PFLP Embroil USA and EU in Plans to Destroy Israel

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs has issued a 79-page report exposing a network of members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) embedded in Pro-Palestinian non-Government organisations (NGOs) based outside Israel that openly operate in the USA and European Union (EU).

The Report  –  “Terrorists in suits” – is a must-read – detailing:

“How terrorists came to hold key positions in NGOs promoting the Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) campaign against the State of Israel; and how, through these NGOs, they exploit Western governmental funding, philanthropic foundations, financial platforms and civil society to advance their goal of dismantling the State of Israel.”

The PFLP was designated a terrorist organization by Israel in 1986, the USA (1997) and the European Union (2002) – as was Hamas by Israel (1989), the USA (1997) and the European Union (2014).

Both Hamas and PFLP Charters openly seek the elimination of the State of Israel and use NGO’s to influence public opinion against Israel in furtherance of this heinous objective.

The Report names and shames the following NGO’s, identifies their areas of operation, their ties to Hamas and the PFLP and outs Hamas and PFLP members – many of them convicted terrorists – who are or have been actively involved in these organisations’ campaigns aimed at denigrating and delegitimising Israel:

• The Palestinian BDS National Committee
• Samidoun
• Addameer
• Al-Haq
• Defence For Children International – Palestine
• The European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine
• Palestinian Center For Human Rights
• The Palestinian Return Centre
• The Palestine Solidarity Campaign
• Friends of Al-Aqsa
• American Muslims For Palestine
• Hamas Operatives active in NGO’s in the UK: Muhammad Sawalha and Zaher Birawi

A look at just one organisation – Al-Haq – headquartered in Ramallah and operating in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), the Netherlands, France, and Northern Europe – indicates the modus operandi that similarly exist in the others.

Al-Haq (established in 1979):

• Has Governmental Sponsors: European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Ireland
• Received Grants from Governmental Sources, 2014-2018: Over $3 million
• Published with a group of French NGOs a report in March 2017 entitled “The Dangerous Liaisons of French Banks with the Israeli Colonization”.
• Leads the legal effort to delegitimize Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague

Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq since 2006, served as a senior PFLP official in the past and at least until recently maintained close ties with PFLP operatives in Judea and Samaria. Jabarin was tried and convicted for his military activity in the PFLP and has served multiple prison sentences.
Jabarin was described in a 2007 Israeli Supreme Court case by the presiding judge as:

 “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Some of his time is spent in conducting a human rights organization, and some as an operative in an organization which has no qualms regarding murder and attempted murder, which have no relation whatsoever to rights. Quite the opposite, they reject the most basic right of all, without which there are no other rights, that is, the right to life.”

Three other PFLP members arrested by Israel are also identified as working or having worked for Al-Haq: Ziyad Hmeidan, Zahi Jaradat and Majed Abbadi.

European and American funding of these organisations should be banned, their offices in the USA and EU closed – and those identified as Hamas and PFLP members deported.

Terrorists in suits denigrating and delegitimising Israel in slick racist and ongoing deceptive public relations campaigns of lies and half-truths – can be just as dangerous as terrorists armed to the teeth.

The EU and America must stop being played for suckers by these Jew-hating organisations.

(Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog)

Father, Dear Father! The cleric and the convict ...

Yes, Virginia, there is an antipodean version of the Reverend Stephen Sizer.  His name's Dave Smith and he's widely known as "Father Dave".

 Unlike the vicar of Virginia Water, whose hobby (apart from denigrating Israel) is, I understand, of the aesthetic kind  –  if 'm not mistaken he's a keen and rather impressive photographer; indeed, I'm led to believe that his body of work includes a fetching shot of a donkey dubbed "Daphne" as well as one of a Portsmouth pub called "The Ship Anson" –  the clerical incumbent of Holy Trinity Church in Sydney's Dulwich Hill is a boxing and martial arts enthusiast.

What these two Anglican men of the cloth have in common besides their creed and calling is a fanatical attachment to the Palestinian cause that is correspondingly anti-Israel and which seems , in its furtherance, inclined to urge common cause between Christians and Muslims with little or no regard for the outlook of that great majority of Jews who are Zionists. These two clergymen are also bloggers, each with their own eponymous dot com (Sizer) and dot org (Father Dave) addresses.

Neither seems to care one iota for the United States' polity, although to the best of my knowledge Father Dave has never appeared on Iran's propaganda channel Press TV to air his views.

Whereas the Reverend Sizer delivers his not dissimilar anti-American, anti-Israel remarks in soft soothing tones, the less polished, more pugilistic Father Dave is apt to turn up the Strine full throttle; as evidenced below in a sermon given by him last month that is a full-on political rant.

Hard on the ear and even harder on the intelligence, it does nevertheless evoke appreciative noises from the audience congregation.  It drives home the message to the assembled faithful that the perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocity and the Bali bombings did what they did because the United States and Australia, respectively, support Israel and are thus complicit in the "Palestinian Occupation" (around 3:00 and 4:08 respectively).  Presumably the audience congregation is accordingly indoctrinated, though one suspects most if not all of its members were indoctrinated already.

Father Dave has his adoring public: admired for his worthy work with underprivileged urban youth, he's been a nominee for the Australian of the Year award; he's occasionally on the ABC; and he goes down a treat with the BDS crowd of Marrickville and beyond. (And why wouldn't he, with demagoguery such as this?)

Dedicated Sizer-watcher Reader P has drawn my attention to a photograph that he explains is of Father Dave on 29 November, the so-called "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People".  Attributed by Reader P to Mr Peter Boyle, a New South Wales leftwing activist, the photo shows Father Dave, keffiyeh draped over surplice (or do I mean "cassock"?) avowing support for a lady named Rasmea Odeh.

photo credit: Peter Boyle

That is the Rasmea (or Rasmieh) Odeh known in Israel as a convicted terrorist bomber (sentenced to life imprisonment for her crimes but released in 1979, during a prisoner exchange with the PFLP) who early last month was found guilty of naturalisation fraud by a federal court the United States, where she had become became Associate Director of the Arab American Action Network. 

(Details of the case here)

As described by the niece of one of her victims, both of whom were students at the Hebrew University:

"On Friday, February 21st 1969, my father’s brother, Edward Joffe, and his best friend, Leon Kanner, went to the supermarket Supersol at the intersection of Agron and Hamelech George in Jerusalem, to make some purchases for a botany department excursion in which they were to participate.

As they approached the meat counter, an explosive device, a biscuit can filled with 5 Kgm of dynamite, which had been placed by Rasmieh Odeh and Ayesha Oudeh, was detonated and Eddie and Leon were both instantly killed."

Odeh's relative and accomplice Ayesha Oudeh recalled Odeh's seminal  role in that outrage:

"Rasmea Odeh was more involved than I was [in the grocery store bombing] ... I only got involved during the preparation of explosives. We wanted to place two bombs to blow up consecutively. I suggested to have the second bomb go off five or six minutes after the first bomb so that those who get killed in it would be members of the army and secret service, but it did not explode. They diffused it 20 seconds before it exploded."

To quote that victim's niece again:

'I spent last week attending the Immigration Fraud Trial in Detroit of Rasmieh Odeh. I sat in that courtroom with my father (alone in our row) surrounded by supporters of Odeh. We endured days of hateful looks and the rehashing of a traumatic event that changed my family forever.

While I find a great sense of relief in knowing that a unanimous jury found her guilty in less than two hours, I still remain troubled by her numerous supporters.

As I stated in my piece on Huffington Post,

 “That she has resurfaced after years of hiding her true person and now with hundreds of blind followers and supporters unaware (or worse, who don’t care) of what she did is sheer agony.

That she only served 10 years of her life sentence before being part of a prisoner swap was always painful for us, but that she moved to the US and became Associate Director of the Arab American Action Network, a group which does many things including trying to combat stereotypes of Arabs and is being called an “icon” and “pillar of her community” while hiding her past is awful.”

I want to ask you [Odeh's supporters] this:

 Can you not pick a hero who has not killed two people by placing a bomb in a supermarket (with the intent to kill many more)? One who did not then place another bomb at the British consulate on the same day (said bomb was found and defused). And one who didn’t go back (alone) to the British Consulate again 4 days later placing another bomb which caused structural damage?

Have you seen the documentary, “Women in Struggle”, in which Odeh and her accomplice sit on a couch together years after the bombing and talk in detail about their gruesome acts? That it was their idea to have a second bomb go off 5 minutes after the first to kill the first responders?

That her accomplice, Ayesha, names her as the ringleader and says she drew her into “military work”?  [Emphasis added]

 Questions that can be reasonably directed at Father Dave.