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[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
There are an estimated 14 American hostages being held in Gaza. (This number may rise or fall as Hamas continues to release videos of the hostages and Israel continues identifying bodies, some of which have been charred beyond recognition, by using DNA samples from family members.) As of this time, there are 20 Americans missing and bodies are being tested.
Biden spoke with some family members on a Zoom call. “It’s my personal commitment to do everything possible, everything possible to return every missing American to their families,” he said, “we’re working around the clock to secure the release of Americans held by Hamas.”
But the Biden administration has currently ruled out sending rescue forces, instead it is using Hamas allies, Qatar and Turkey, to conduct negotiations with the Islamic terrorist organization.
While Israel has refused to trade hostages for terrorists, Biden may be more willing to do so.
Senior Hamas leader Ali Baraka told Russia’s RT propaganda network, “There are also prisoners in the U.S. We want them. Of course. There are Hamas members sentenced for life in the U.S. We want them too. Of course. We demand that the U.S. free our sons from prisons. The U.S. conducts prisoner swaps. Only recently, it did one with Iran. Why wouldn’t it conduct a prisoner swap with us?”
Barakeh went into more specifics about which Hamas members he meant in another interview.
“There are Palestinians held in America. We will ask for their release. There are Palestinians who are detained by the United States on charges of supporting the resistance in Palestine. They were detained in America because they were accused of running charity organizations that support the people besieged in the Gaza.”
This almost certainly refers to the Holy Land Foundation case in which key figures in the largest Islamic charity in America were convicted of helping to send millions to Hamas.
Hamas would have a special interest in at least one of the terror convicts. Mufid Abdulqader, the half brother of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, who is currently serving out his 20 years in prison sentence in a low security federal prison in Seagoville, Texas. Funding terrorists and a history of chanting terrorist threats apparently netted Abdulqader an easy ride at a low security prison.
Islamists in the United States had lobbied for his release during the pandemic by claiming that the 60-year-old is an “elderly” man facing imminent death at a “virus-ravaged prison”. Abdulqaderf was denied early release, he got COVID, survived it, and he’s set to be out in 2025.
Qatar, acting once again as an intermediary for Islamic terrorists, will be likely to argue that Mufid Abdulqader is only a few years away from being released anyway.
Perhaps the Hamas family member will resume his musical career in which he toured America to sing to Muslim communities cheerful ditties such as, “with Koran and Jihad, we will gain our homes back… the agony of death is precious, killing Jews … Death to Jews, is precious.”.
But it’s another of the Holy Land Foundation terror funders who is far more explosive.
Ghassan Elashi was a founding board member for CAIR in Texas. CAIR’s D.C. office was funded by money from the Holy Land Foundation and the trial led to CAIR being named “an unindicted co-conspirator” in terror funding. It’s a label that the group is still trying to shake off.
But the FBI stated that “evidence was introduced that demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders (including its current President Emeritus and Executive Director) and the Palestine Committee. Evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestine Committee and Hamas, which was designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.”
CAIR founder and executive director Nihad Awad responded to the Hamas attacks by posting, “a unique Palestinian day. Never say ‘impossible.'” And Awad reacted to Biden’s speech condemning those atrocities by posting, “there is no moral equivalence between the occupied and the occupier. You must condemn the occupier not the occupied.”
Awad had previously stated, “I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.”
Ghassan Elashi was sentenced to 65 years in prison. At the age of 69, he’s serving out a sentence that would only see him released in 2068.
Senior Hamas leader Ali Baraka mentioned that the Hamas terrorists he wants freed are serving life sentences. While Elashi isn’t technically serving a life sentence, he is currently scheduled to spend the rest of his life at McCreary federal prison in Kentucky (it’s unclear if he’s in the maximum or minimum security part of it) before beginning an even more hellishly extended sentence in a much more secure facility that offers neither parole nor virgins.
Only two of the Holy Land Foundation terror fundraisers received sentences this long making it almost certain that Hamas wants to trade the former CAIR board member for a U.S. hostage.
A Hamas proposal to trade a CAIR leader for a hostage would reopen the question of CAIR’s terror ties again and would be particularly awkward for the Biden administration which welcomed CAIR so enthusiastically that it was assigned to help with security for its antisemitism strategy. Furthermore the statements by the senior Hamas leader that the men it’s trying to extricate are Hamas members would overturn over a decade of lies put out by CAIR and its Islamist allies that the HLF terror fundraisers were innocent victims of ‘Islamophobia’.
Such a request would also establish that a Hamas member had served on a CAIR board.
CAIR had already advocated for Mufid Abdulqader, claiming that the half-brother of a Hamas leader who had called for the murder of Jews was an innocent victim of ‘Islamophobia’. The terrorist fundraiser was seen on video in a skit in which he “plays a Hamas member who kills an Israeli after saying, ‘I am Hamas, O dear ones.’” Good thing he’s in a low security prison.
Other Holy Land Foundation defendants whose release Hamas may demand include Shuri Abu Baker, scheduled to be released from a high security prison in Eastern Texas in 2064, whom CAIR had also defended. Abdulrahman Odeh and Mohammad El-Mezain, who had received shorter sentences, were already released in 2021. This did not stop CAIR from signing on to a petition next year to have them set loose even though they were already out of prison.
If Hamas were to request the release of Abdulqader, Abu Baker and Elashi, it would put the Islamist terror group enlist in the same effort as not only CAIR, but other pro-terrorist organizations that signed the petition like Human Rights Watch, the National Lawyers Guild, Jewish Voice for Peace, ICNA and the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network which has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel. Individual signatories include Ramzi Kassem, a Gitmo terror lawyer who once threw stones at Israel, and was named by the Biden administration as a Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration at the White House Domestic Policy Council.
By holding Americans hostage, Hamas has more leverage to free its members than the Muslim Brotherhood front groups that operate by pretending to be civil rights organizations.
Will Biden make such a trade? After making similar deals with Russia and Iran, it seems possible. But with Iran, Biden could argue that he wasn’t directly negotiating with terrorists, there is no such argument when it comes to Hamas. We will be negotiating with terrorists.
Trading for hostages creates a market in them. Biden’s deal with Iran encouraged Hamas to take Americans hostage and try to trade for them. And the more hostages we trade for, the more hostages Islamic terrorists will launch attacks to try to take.
“Hamas Wants to Trade CAIR Leader in Federal Prison for U.S. Hostages”. Hey, Hamas, don’t forget to ask for billions of dollars like Iran got. Biden will be happy to use the hostage release as a cover to continue funding you.
The corrupt little want-to-be dictator, Chlina/cartel Joe, will gladly hand over the terrorists in our jails, especially if there is “juice” for the Biden criminal organization. Might even throw in a few Republicans for Hamas to hold as hostages, along with billions of $ which he is so good at giving away. Problem is, he has to give more billions to Ukraine, so the cupboard is bare other than having the Fed print more dollars with nothing behind them. No problem for he and the Demoncraps, as there is little difference to being 33 trillion $ in debt to being 34 or 35 trillions of $ in debt from a purely mathematical standpoint, especially since it can, and will, never be repaid.
Any requests for a prisoner exchange should be met with contempt by the biden administration but it is unlikely.
The *Biden administration embraces lop-sided exchanges.
¹ an America-hating basketball bitch for Viktor Bout
² person for person exchange, but jaw-droppingly sweetening the pot by tossing in $1.2 billion per hostage.
This current ship-of-fools will seek/take the easy way out. Only question is if the evil scum can millk the deal for 10 figures.
(Afterall, when the village idiot was VP, his jug-eared boss exchanged FIVE high-level jihadist lieutenants for one chickenshit deserter.)
If that was my American loved ones held hostage by Hamas, I wouldn’t care
if they traded Hitler as long as I could get them back.
But leaders can’t think like that. They must do what’s best for our country
and the American people. Unfortunately, our leader is the fiend Biden
who showed how much he cares for us by leaving Americans stranded in
the Afghanistan withdrawal – while flying the Afghans to safety.
“If that was my American loved ones held hostage by Hamas, I wouldn’t care
if they traded Hitler as long as I could get them back.
But leaders can’t think like that.”
One standard for you, another for your leaders. Except that your leaders come from the same culture as you do. If you think in this short-range, self-sabotaging, way then so do they. The voters demand that their leaders’ policies reflect their short-range thinking.
American businessmen are doing business with the CCP, selling the rope to the CCP in the morning with which the CCP will hang them with in the afternoon. Short-range, UNPRINCIPLED, self-destructive, behavior.
“A principle is “a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend.” Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one’s long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and to achieve it.
The present state of our culture may be gauged by the extent to which principles have vanished from public discussion, reducing our cultural atmosphere to the sordid, petty senselessness of a bickering family that haggles over trivial concretes, while betraying all its major values, selling out its future for some spurious advantage of the moment.
To make it more grotesque, that haggling is accompanied by an aura of hysterical self-righteousness, in the form of belligerent assertions that one must compromise with anybody on anything (except on the tenet that one must compromise) and by panicky appeals to “practicality.”
But there is nothing as impractical as a so-called “practical” man. His view of practicality can best be illustrated as follows: if you want to drive from New York to Los Angeles, it is “impractical” and “idealistic” to consult a map and to select the best way to get there; you will get there much faster if you just start out driving at random, turning (or cutting) any corner, taking any road in any direction, following nothing but the mood and the weather of the moment.
The fact is, of course, that by this method you will never get there at all. But while most people do recognize this fact in regard to the course of a journey, they are not so perceptive in regard to the course of their life and of their country.” – Ayn Rand
Here we go again with the endless Rand blather. Like Rand, you definitely hate the country that gives you the freedom to write your garbage.
I’m not surprised you would trade Hitler to get your “loved ones” back. As always you have zero sense of proportion.
Yeah, trade murderers as long as you get what you want. You are that selfish and stupid, not even rationally selfish and stupid. It is no wonder you are a failure.
Do you have any reading comprehension at all? Or is your hatred of me, Ayn Rand, and Objectivism so overwhelming that you intentionally have to misrepresent what is written?
I’m not the one who wrote that she would trade Hitler for her loved ones, Annie 45 wrote that.
Why would I read Annie 45’s quote? I’m not in the habit of reading anyone’s quotes. So your manufactured insult falls on deaf ears. But nice try.
The point is you posted it.
Basic human comprehension dictates that while a victim’s family cannot be expected to view their situation objectively leadership simply for reasons of necessity may be demanded to do so.
A basic lack of human understanding is what alienates you THX. It puts you into a 2-dimensional map framework.which will never get you anywhere even if you arrive at your destination that isn’t static and sterile.
“Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal.”
Looks like the likes and dislikes favor me, once again. Read it and weep.
Intrepid needs a life outside of Frontpage®.
He’s attacked me with irrational insult.
He doesn’t accept being wrong. And exploded when he was. Modesty appears not to be among his virtues.
The enigma of THX-1138 continues ever onward.
Frankly, I’m puzzled. You often cite quotes from Ayn Rand which by themselves are fine and dandy. Rand’s positions lined up with Conservatism more often than not, even though as a political entity Rand did not care much for American Conservatives, any more than she cared for any beliefs or philosophies other than her own.
The quote from Rand you used above is fine with me. I nod my head in agreement.
Ayn wasn’t saying anything in that quote which our American Founders didn’t already say, much more eloquently, many decades before.
The Senate itself was created to counterbalance the momentary, heated passions of the House.
Sadly, it ceased to serve this function after the Senate was changed to become just a smaller, mirror-image of the House, with its members elected by the popular vote rather than appointed by state legislators.
Point being: I do hope you read a LOT more than just Ayn Rand’s musings.
How many of the thousands of letters written by John Adams have you read, THX? Thousands of them still exist and are readily available online. One site even offers digitalized copies of the ORIGINAL letters, written in Adams’ own hand, easily readable by anyone who can understand Cursive.
You could try reading the New Testament, also. It is much more intelligently written than the bulk of weird ideological writings so common today, and of infinitely more value.
In closing, another reminder: Your beloved Ayn Rand is still very much alive, as is every human being whom has ever existed. She inhabits a different Plane now, is all.
Ayn inhabits REALITY now.. It is her eternal home. She can never leave it, and as to whether she would even WANT to leave it, who knows.
She might want to ESCAPE it, buuuut….
There should be no swapping of Hamas supporters serving time in US prisons for hostages
How many born Americans fund, send material support, reveal secret info gained in closed meetings and briefings in Congress?
John Brennan, a Muslim as CIA head whose job was surely to investigate, attack, kill Muslims? Obama too with Valerie Jarrett, an Iranian, sitting next to him? The only person they attacked using the CIA, and all the other Departments, was their conspiracy coup attempt against a sitting President which continues to this day!
Let’s take Ahmad Assed, President of the Islamic Center NM here in Albuquerque; He organized a protest in support HAMAS in 2012. Did he send material support to a “TERRORIST GROUP” TOO? Is he radicalizing member of the Center?
Assed was fellow UNM student with JOSEPH MASSAD in the ’80s when they were recruited by the head of the NM Marxist Educators for Socialist Action and the NM Peace Council. (World Peace Council run by the KGB!) They attended meetings on Central America, but they did host their own meeting: “Arafat: Peacemaker or Terrorist.”
JOSEPH MASSAD, a tenured-Columbia professor now under attack by the student body with almost 40,000 signatures to FIRE HIM! (Remember Columbia invited AHMADINEJAD to speak there, no huge protests, and audience was respectful until he said, “There are no gays in Iran.” He only wanted to WIPE ISRAEL OFF THE MAP and was allowed while speakers like DAVID HOROWITZ or Ann Coulter ARE BANNED, like all over the country!)
DID ASSED AND MASSAD send material support, $$$? The FBI and DOJ/Garland are too busy investigating Parents, “the real Domestic Terrorists who are a threat to our Democracy!”
Restart the Crusades.
Reestablish the borders of Historic Christendom.
Obliterate Islam.
Israel is presently holding 6000 terrorists in its prisons.It’s time for the Israelis to consider them as hostages rather than prisoners, and to place them in the kind of jeopardy that that reclassification implies.
It won’t work because Hamas cares about them about as much as it cares about its civilian population.
If there is a chance of sending these people into Gaza, then it’s okay with me.