excerpts.

Wow.  The US government, and dare I say Israel, got their a**es handed to them regarding their believability of evidence for convicting charity organization Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development of terrorism (technically, providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, aka Hamas).  No decision on the consipracy charges, no decisions on whether they helped terrorist organizations, etc. 

The government argued that the money collected by Holy Land went to other charities which then went to Hamas, which they provided no evidence for, just saying that the money benefitted Hamas.  Since 1995, it's been illegal for US organizations to provide money to Hamas.  Israeli agents provided via pseudonyms evidence that these other organizations gave their money to Hamas, but not Holy Land.  What a strange tactic.

I can't imagine why our government would drop the ball on this case at all.  For them, the implications are disasterous - they/we look like we're secret-evidence toting, brown-person targetting, remorseless Muslimhating, double-standard charity platers.  It's sad and rediculous. Break out the mouse suits, let the schadenfreude from the left begin.

Brown people jumping on themselves? Check
Babies holding sad signs? Check

To be fair and balanced:
Disaffected, unhappy "fact" reporting? Check
Pictures of Hamas? Check


For what it's worth, Holy Land Foundation Charities is the big fish the government's been trying to spear, knocking off suckerfish over the years:

• Oct 2006 - Georgia Imam Shorbagi pled guilty to funding Hamas (via Holy Land Foundations) (nyt)
  
• Feb 2007 - Salah & Ashqar acquitted of helping Hamas, where Holy Land was claimed as a defendant (nyt)

Fun quote #1: “The government has tried to turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into something criminal,” said William Moffitt, who is Dr. Ashqar’s lawyer. “Maybe the government will get it in their heads that the conflict won’t be settled in the criminal courts of the United States.”

Fun quote #2: The lone guilty finding against Salah related to a written response in which he denied being a Hamas member that was made in a civil suit won by the family of David Boim, a 17-year-old American killed in Israel in 1996. Piers [defense attorney] said he expected the $156 million judgment in that case to be overturned on appeal.  [The parents accused Salah and Ashqar of conspiring to kill their son via donations to Hamas] The trial saw an unprecedented appearance by agents of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service, who testified in disguise to a cleared courtroom. They reportedly said Salah was not tortured.

Hillarity #3: [Riotous shill, Judith] Miller testified that she saw no evidence of mistreatment when she witnessed an interrogation of Salah and -- in an unprecedented twist for a U.S. courtroom -- two Israeli interrogators testified under aliases that Salah was treated well. (wapo)

What's really interesting is the level of desire to point to Hamas as the issue.  Places that are known for good research, like the 9/11 Finding Answers foundation, put the Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood and their ties to Hamas down (properly) as a source of violence, but to whom and in what context?  In our governments specific fight against "funding sources of terrorist organizations," they've fallen down here, blowing legit chances at unraveling knots by refusing to show how threads are connected, regardless of the clear connections in that region.  But here?  Our own ties with Israel make our funding pursuit look more and more like a pro-Israel "witchhunt" rather than an exposure of how violent NGOs continue to get funded.

Incident Identifier: 2F067E21-C4EF-42FA-B970-D3CB90754080
CrashReporter Key:   [redacted]
OS Version:          OS X 1.1.1 (3A110a)
Date:                2007-10-10 21:59:34 -0600

1449984 bytes free
34918400 bytes wired
About to jettison: MobileSafari

Processes
 PID  RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE Command
   1   148K   220K   236K launchd
  13   344K   176K   536K CommCenter
  15  6.44M  13.5M  8.31M SpringBoard
  16   664K   208K   836K configd
  17   192K   176K   352K crashreporterd
  18  1.54M   272K  2.07M iapd
  19   296K   292K   524K mDNSResponder
  20   404K   356K   676K lockdownd
  21   188K   224K   272K syslogd
  22  84.0K   180K   112K update
  23   292K   264K   484K ptpd
  26   188K   208K   252K notifyd
 419   840K   784K  1.31M mediaserverd
 430  11.4M  13.0M  19.3M MobileSafari
 434   312K   320K   896K crashdump

**End**