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Local groups to host Brit who justifies terror |
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| Written by Rick Hellman, Editor | |||
| Friday, 26 June 2009 11:00 | |||
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But a coalition of local Muslim and pro-Arab groups is proud to bring British Member of Parliament George Galloway to Overland Park July 2 for a fundraiser. “It’s meant to provide needed medical and relief supplies to break the siege of Gaza; it’s really not meant to fund Hamas,” said Matt Quinn, a spokesman for Citizens for Justice in the Middle East. One of the other sponsors of Galloway’s visit is the local chapter of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. MAS was spawned by the international Islamist organization the Muslim Brotherhood. CJME and MAS organized local protests against Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza earlier this year. The July 2 event will be one of the last before Galloway’s Viva Palestina group attempts for the second time this year to deliver money and other forms of aid to the Gaza Strip, controlled since a June 2007 coup by the terrorist group Hamas, which is also a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood. At vivapalestina-us.org, the group says it intends to fly from New York to Cairo July 4 and enter Gaza on or around July 13. Galloway spoke at Viva Palestina fundraisers across the United States during March, April and May. And even though in March Galloway met with and gave cash and cars to senior Hamas leader and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, CJME’s Quinn said Galloway “is not an advocate for Hamas.” Quinn also disregards Galloway’s myriad statements supporting and justifying suicide bombing and other forms of terrorism in Iraq and Israel, under the rubric of “resistance.” “You’ve been in the business a long time, and you think you’re unshockable,” Felson said. “But to see a guy like Galloway flirting with folks in the mainstream of society is shocking; it’s distasteful … It’s not a perspective that’s constructive. … It’s reflective of a knee-jerk radicalism.” Felson said Galloway “cannot claim legitimate interest in human rights and concurrently be a supporter of Ahmadinejad, among others, like (Venezuela’s) Hugo Chavez.” Galloway has hosted two regular programs thus far on PressTV, the new, Iranian-government-funded satellite-television news network. He has repeatedly backed the crackdown leader (and Holocaust denier, etc.) Ahmadinejad in the wake of the recent, hotly disputed Iranian presidential election. CJME’s Quinn declined to make Galloway available to The Chronicle for an interview, and indicated he would seek other media outlets for Galloway’s agitprop. “For ostensible human-rights advocacy groups to hitch their wagon to this most detrimental societal force is something about which people of good will should be deeply concerned,” Felson said. “People who purport to have concerns about oppression are lining up behind somebody who is willing to be a mouthpiece for tyrants.” Galloway has denied that he is an anti-Semite. However, in a 2006 joint interview on Abu Dhabi television, he repeatedly taunted American Jewish neocon and Iraq War advocate Richard Perle with the phrase “Show us the shekels, Richard.” “I don’t need to know what’s in his heart,” said Felson. “His brand of activism is clearly anti-Israel and his rhetoric has contained anti-Jewish elements, like references to Zionist control of the media. He has embraced groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that mean to do great harm not only to Israel but to the Jewish people.” Karen Aroesty, director of the regional ADL office in St. Louis, said, “It’s a shame that all these organizations that have peace and justice in their title tend to be betrayed by rhetoric that expresses anything but peace and justice.”
Quinn brushed aside all questions about Galloway’s words and deeds, just as he did questions about Hamas terrorism and the fact that it has held the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit incommunicado for three years now, contrary to every international law, standard and practice. “The question is, when is Israel going to recognize international law, human rights and allow safe passage of food and medical supplies for the Palestinians to be conducted in a normal fashion?” Quinn asked. Galloway’s public career has been one of nearly constant controversy. In 1987, he resigned from his job as executive of the charitable group War on Want after repaying questionable expenses. At various times, the thrice-married Galloway he has either admitted or been accused in divorce proceedings of marital infidelity. He was the subject of British and American government investigations over allegations — never proven — that he received illegal payments as part of Saddam Hussein’s subversion of the U.N.’s interwar Oil-for-Food program. In 2007, he was suspended from the House of Commons for a breach of ethics. And in April, Britain’s Charity Commission froze more than £100,000 held by Viva Palestina after beginning an inquiry into the use of charitable funds by the group, also known as Lifeline for Gaza. In February, the regulatory body said Interpal, another charity backed by Galloway, did not do enough to ensure that partner organizations in the West Bank and Gaza were not promoting terrorism. – In 2003, as acting vice president of the Stop the War Coalition, he told an interviewer on Abu Dhabi TV that the Labor government had become “Tony Blair’s lie machine” and that “the best thing British troops (in Iraq) can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders.” – “Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.’’ — Galloway, to a Guardian newspaper interviewer in 2002 – “Virtually alone of all the Arab dictators, Saddam’s endless protestations of fidelity to the Palestinian cause were sincere and, as the families of the martyred and wounded know, he put Iraq’s money where his mouth was.” — Galloway in his 2005 autobiography, “I’m Not the Only One.” – “These poor Iraqis — ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons — are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable by the people who occupy it.” — Galloway, speaking of the jihadists then operating in Iraq, in a 2005 speech at al-Assad Library in Damascus – A GQ magazine interviewer in 2006 asked Galloway: “Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber — if there were no other casualties — be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?” Galloway replied: “Yes, it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it. But if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq — as Blair did.” – “Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners — Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters. Why? Because they are too weak and too corrupt to do anything about it.” — Galloway on Syrian TV July 31, 2005 – “People with American, British accents, who already had houses of their own in Britain and the United States, came here and are living in your houses, enjoying themselves in your gardens, while you live here in this misery. And they have the cheek to complain that you don’t accept it. Well, the message to the world must be: The Palestinians will never accept it. Never accept it! Never accept it! — Galloway on Al-Aqsa television, March 9, 2009
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He’s toadied up to dictators from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to Syria’s Bashar Assad to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In March, he was banned from Canada as a terror-supporting national-security risk. The Anti-Defamation League calls his fundraising tour “Supporting Hamas Under the Guise of Humanitarianism,” and last week it once again asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether the tour breaks American laws.
Ethan Felson, vice president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the national public-affairs arm of the organized Jewish community, said he finds such blithe acceptance by Americans shocking.
Galloway has expressed support for jihadi terror groups in Iraq, calling their activities legitimate resistance against occupation. He praised Saddam Hussein for making payments to the families of Palestinian Arab suicide bombers during the second Intifada. (See below for more examples of Galloway’s rhetoric, or visit www.adl.org and check under the “Israel/U.S Anti-Israel Activity” tab for its “Viva Palestina” report.) 
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