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When the former officers of the Holy Land Foundation who had served as Hamas’ fundraising arm went before the US Court of Appeals– there weren’t many organizations willing to file an Amicus brief. But the American Friends Service Committee was first among them.
The American Friends Service Committee had good reason to be worried. It had worked with Life for Relief and Development, an Islamic charity also accused of being a Hamas front. Its concern over the criminal prosecution of charities that passed money along to terrorists was even more pressing because it has a substantial presence in Hamas-run Gaza.
When Israel stopped the blockade running Gaza flotilla, the AFSC statement in response said that the “continuing refusal by the U.S. to deal with the winners of this election [Hamas] has led to a tightening of the blockade” and urged, “the U.S. government to reverse its support for this flawed, failed policy approach and take all effective steps to end Gaza’s isolation.”
Dealing with the winners of the election would mean dealing with Hamas, but that was no obstacle for the AFSC, whose General Secretary, Mary Ellen McNish, had no doubt discussed this policy when she visited Hamas’ backer in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In the United States, the AFSC is a familiar presence alongside the usual Marxist and Islamist groups on posters advertising anti-American and anti-Israel rallies. While its bulletins still make some effort to mention “non-violence” in all the right places as a tribute to the group’s pacifist roots, it is enmeshed with violent and totalitarian groups.
The AFSC’s unnatural interest in Israel goes back to the devil’s bargain that Quakers made to keep their institutions operating in the face of Islamic pressure, replacing their American and European officials with locals at the time of Israeli statehood and the war that followed. This takeover of Quaker institutions tipped them into the terrorist camp. The bigoted revolutionaries who now headed them up were Quakers in name only. Their inner identity was allied with the terrorist campaign against Israel.
Khalil Totah, the head of the local Friends school in Ramallah, toured America and the UK at that time calling for an end to Jewish immigration and the destruction of the embryonic Jewish state. Totah had been described as the most active member of the Washington Arab Office, an organization that the Anti-Nazi League claimed was under the control of the Mufti of Jerusalem– an ally of Hitler.
At the time, Totah was more radical than the AFSC leaders he encountered. But the AFSC today denounces Israel at every opportunity, demands an end to the embargo of Hamas run Gaza, and under the influence of its radical Pacific Mountain Region wing is approaching a total boycott of Israel. The AFSC’s name has already appeared on flyers calling for a boycott of Israel and the AFSC lists events staged by the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement on its site.
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