The International Solidarity Movement: Threat to America, Israel and

The International Solidarity
Movement: Threat to America,
Israel and the World
By Lee Kaplan
Al-Jazeera-approved “peace activists” laugh it up while holding weapons in the
presence of members of a terrorist group in the West Bank. (Copyrighted photo from
“The ISM-Terrorism Connection” at www.StoptheISM.com).
America’s Survival, Inc.
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443-964-8208
www.usasurvival.org
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Executive Summary
By Lee Kaplan*
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is technically a Palestinian-led movement
but involves heavy use of American radicals and leftists and exploits the U.S.
educational system, particularly American colleges, to delegitimize the democratic State
of Israel, a U.S. ally. At the same time, it provides support for groups such as Hamas
that use armed violence and terrorism against Israel. The Meir Amit Intelligence and
Terrorism Information Center in Israel says that Palestinian and American and foreign
ISM activists are not terrorists themselves, but have broken Israeli laws while having
“abetted the grave wave of terrorism that deluged Israel and the territories [during the
years 2001-2005], and disrupted the IDFs [Israel Defense Forces] counterterrorism
activities.”
But the ISM is not just a problem for Israel. These activities, conducted in part on U.S.
soil, raise serious questions about whether U.S. laws are bring broken, since such
groups as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) are
officially designated by the U.S. State Department as foreign terrorist organizations. In
this regard, it is significant that groups associated with the ISM in Chicago and other
cities conducting “solidarity work” on their own were raided by the FBI last September.
The Chicago branch of the ISM issued a statement of support saying:
The Chicago chapter of the International Solidarity Movement strongly
condemns the continuing witch hunt being carried out by Patrick
Fitzgerald, the US District Attorney (who serves at the pleasure of Barack
Obama), and the FBI against Palestine solidarity activists across the
United States. We know several of the individuals whose homes were the
targets of the FBI raids or that were subpoenaed to appear before a
federal grand jury.
The implication is that President Obama should fire Fitzgerald, who has been
mentioned as a possible candidate for the position of FBI director.
The raids reportedly involved over 70 FBI agents entering homes and serving
subpoenas to “prominent anti-war and international solidarity activists” in Minneapolis,
Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The FBI is looking for
evidence that these groups and “activists” have violated a law prohibiting support for
foreign terrorist organizations. It is also possible that ISM members have been operating
as agents of foreign powers. As this report shows, some of them have even received
medals from Hamas leadership for their contributions.
Perhaps the most brazen example of activity of this kind was the material aid provided
for the benefit of enemy forces in Fallujah, Iraq, during the height of the Iraq War by ISM
affiliate Code Pink/Global Exchange, headed by Medea Benjamin. The ISM labeled this
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“humanitarian” aid. The assistance was provided with the help of Senator Barbara
Boxer (D-Calif.) and Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), and
and Raul Grijalva (D-Ari.).
Benjamin revealed that she recently got a chance to talk to Attorney General Eric
Holder and that he told her he would “look into” the FBI’s investigations of domestic
Marxist groups being examined for providing support to foreign terrorist organizations in
Latin America and the Middle East. Benjamin called the Marxist groups “the peace
community” and wants the investigations called off.
Holder knows a lot about the “peace community,” having played a key role in President
Bill Clinton’s pardons of Weather Underground and Puerto Rican terrorists.
It should be noted that “ISM” is a generic term for “solidarity” groups under multiple
names acting together as a unified project with no discernable leadership to create the
impression they are a simple grassroots movement. As the FBI raids suggest, so-called
“solidarity work” has become popular among left-wing and Marxist groups that not only
support Palestinian terrorist organizations like Hamas, an affiliate of the Muslim
Brotherhood, but communist terrorists in such places as Colombia. However, some
members of the ISM have organized a single entity operating out of Washington D.C.
under the name “The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.” It claims over 300
U.S. affiliated groups, some of which may still call themselves ISM.
The authorities may have been slow to crack down on these organizations because
“solidarity activists” give the appearance of promoting Western values of peace and
nonviolence. They claim, for example, to be representing suffering Palestinians. In fact,
a serious analysis shows that the true aim of the key organizers is to promote revolution
and victory for terrorist organizations operating in the name of the Palestinian cause and
international Marxism. Both are evident in the activities of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a communist group and the second largest faction of the
PLO, which has been a beneficiary of ISM support. These days, however, the ISM
mostly concentrates its efforts on supporting Hamas, a terrorist group that has become
a favorite of Al-Jazeera television and one of whose top officials, Osama Hamdan, was
a featured speaker at the 2011 Al-Jazeera Forum.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which describes Al-Jazeera as “the greatest Arab media
organization” and has published an interview with Wadah Khanfar, Al-Jazeera’s General
Manager, wants Egypt to unilaterally open the border with Gaza, a move that would
facilitate arms shipments to Hamas and increase military pressure on Israel. A
Congressional Research Service report noted, “Egypt sealed the border out of concern
for the possibly destabilizing effects of Hamas’s relations with the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood, which the government of President Mubarak considers a threat.”
Thanks to Al-Jazeera’s Middle East revolutions, which threaten pro-Western and
secular regimes in the region, Mubarak is now gone. Hamas, which is funded by Iran,
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figures to benefit not only from a new Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Egyptian
government, but from the continuing activities of the ISM.
Hiding behind talk of educational activities and non-violence, ISM affiliates use taxdeductible contributions and educational tax dollars to promote their programs in the
U.S. The ISM has built a network across our nation’s colleges. There have been calls
for these groups to be investigated by federal authorities because of evidence that they
support the goals of terrorist organizations. Campus “clubs” such as the Students for
Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Union, both ISM affiliates, are found at
every major campus where they support the goals of terror groups like Hamas. Some of
these groups have held tributes to terrorist leaders such as Hassan al-Banna, the
founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, or Leila Khaled, a known PFLP terrorist and one of
the originators of aircraft hijackings.
Well-funded and organized national student “conferences” have been held every year
with presentations worthy of those done by many Fortune 500 corporations to promote
the goals of groups like Hamas. However, recorders or cameras are banned at these
events in keeping with the ISM’s desire to keep some if its activities from public scrutiny.
College administrators in some cases have been willing to accommodate this even in
publicly funded colleges.
Despite the diffuse nature of the ISM, the founding of the movement can be traced to
two “activists” who started out as employees for what became a U.S. State Department
“peace” initiative in the region, “Seeds of Peace.” This interesting fact is part of the
evidence suggesting a possible relationship with the U.S. State Department that should
be investigated by the House Homeland Security Committee of Rep. Peter King. In
short, is the ISM part of a covert effort by elements of the U.S. Government to promote
American public opinion to accept a Palestinian state in the Middle East to conform to
Saudi desires and the Saudi Peace Initiative (a.k.a. “the Road Map”)? This initiative
calls for Israel to withdraw to 1948 boundary lines and allow any Arab who claims his
relatives back in 1948 who lived inside Israel a “right of return” to the very same spot.
The CIA may also be involved. Two years ago, Emile Nakhleh, the former head of the
CIA’s political Islam strategic analysis program, had said the United States should be
“reaching out” to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as well as to Hamas and Hezbollah,
to find “common ground.” WikiLeaks released a U.S. Government document that
indicates U.S. knowledge of a plot to destabilize Egypt by laying the groundwork for a
new government that would include members of the Muslim Brotherhood and
Revolutionary Socialists. This sounds suspiciously like the Obama Administration’s
policy.
A covert U.S. role in promoting the ISM could help explain why the U.S. State
Department and various administrations of both political parties have been “looking the
other way” at alleged law-breaking by ISM affiliated groups – that is, until the
September, 2010, raids by the FBI. It is probably not the case that these raids were
approved by Attorney General Eric Holder and Obama himself and that they were
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carried out by the FBI itself. The position of FBI director is technically independent of
political control. The House Homeland Security Committee should investigate the
progress of these investigations.
As serious as the problem is, the activities of ISM reached a dangerous new level when
the ship known as the Mavi Mamara was seized by Israel. This was the seventh of the
so-called “Gaza Flotillas” organized by ISM activists with international support that are
funded at least in part through tax-free donations in the U.S.
Key ISM personnel include Huwaida Arraf, a U.S. and Israeli citizen who has been
accused of providing material aid to terrorist groups in the Church of the Nativity
hostage situation in 2002. Arraf worked in Congress as a staffer for Virginia Rep. Jim
Moran (D-Va.) and concentrated on releasing Islamist foreign combatants being held in
Guantanamo Bay.
Speaking of Congress, Rep. Kucinich has appeared with high-level ISM activists and
hired a well-known ISM leader, Noura Erekat, as a staffer. Tables at one ISM
conference featured “Kucinich for President” campaign literature.
Although the ISM movement is called “Palestinian-led,” much of it is guided by
American citizens. Of particular interest is the fact that William Ayers and Bernardine
Dohrn, former communist terrorists and associates of President Obama, are involved in
the “flotilla” and “Free Gaza” movements that have provoked international incidents and
controversies. Medea Benjamin, an old friend of Ayers and Dohrn, even acts like an
intermediary between Hamas and President Obama.
The ISM’s involvement in “human shield” activity on behalf of Palestinians in the West
Bank has made some of its activists into military targets, sometimes with disastrous
results that are inevitably blamed on Israel. We could see this kind of activity used on
the southern border of the United States, ostensibly to protect “undocumented workers”
arriving in the U.S. but useful to Latin American terrorist organizations and even drug
cartels. The effort is designed to prevent authorities from defending borders and
maintaining territorial integrity.
In addition to supporting Hamas, ISM activists assist the cause of Iran, not only in its
campaign against a U.S. ally, Israel, but also to aid Iran’s geopolitical goals against the
United States. The recent Iranian Navy ships deployed to the Mediterranean will serve
as supply and weapons support for the next Gaza flotilla that plans on bringing as many
as 100 boats to sail into Gaza and reopen shipping lanes to the Iranian proxy Hamas.
This next flotilla is being developed, planned, funded and is now drawing passengers
from within the United States. The only result of this will be more conflict, deaths, and
injuries – and perhaps a new Middle East war.
* Lee Kaplan is an investigative journalist who has been published internationally. He
has been a contributor to Front Page Magazine, a regular columnist for the Israel
National News and Canada Free Press, and is a senior intelligence analyst and
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communications director for the Northeast Intelligence Network. His columns also
appear at the International Analyst Network, Campus Watch, and many other websites.
He heads the organizations Defending America for Knowledge and Action (DAFKA) and
Stop the ISM. He has been interviewed on over two hundred nationally and
internationally syndicated radio shows in the United States and Israel and been a guest
on the Fox News Channel. He is a regular guest on the Jim Kirkwood Show on Utah's
K-Talk Radio am 630 where he discusses Homeland Security issues, the War on Terror
and Geopolitics. A graduate of UCLA, he is a member of the Bruin Alumni Association
and the UCLA Alumni Association. A U.S. correspondent for the Israel Resource News
Agency in Jerusalem, he currently writes editorials for Isracampus.org.il and is an
Associate of Israel-Academia-Monitor.com as well as a Fellow at the American Center
for Democracy. He is currently working on a book about America's colleges in the War
on Terror and the International Solidarity Movement.
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The International Solidarity Movement: Threat to America, Israel and the World
By Lee Kaplan
There is a war going on between the democratic countries of the West and an
international network of state-sponsored terrorist groups. The United States and Israel
are the two main western democracies fighting this battle. Israel today is the equivalent
of what Britain was to America against fortress Europe during World War II. In many
ways the “War on Terror” is very much the same as the fight against Nazi and Japanese
totalitarianism during World War II. But there is one major difference: media and the
rapidness of modern communications via the Internet, and government leaders who are
ignorant of history and too lazy to act.
All this brings us to one of the least understood, but most dangerous methods of
infiltration in America and among her democratic allies in the West: the International
Solidarity Movement or ISM.[1] [2] It is not a surprise that the Al-Jazeera global
television network, known as “Jihad TV,” has showered the ISM with praise in its “news”
stories, calling members “peace activists” and so forth. Al-Jazeera is a mouthpiece of
the Muslim Brotherhood and is dedicated to bringing radical Islamic regimes to power
throughout the entire Middle East. It sees the ISM as critical to this effort.
Many commentators know little or nothing about the ISM, and will admit so. But the ISM
may be a greater threat than the terrorists themselves. While armed terrorists seek
mayhem and outright killing to exact political goals, the ISM infiltrates all levels of free
western society in order to assist the armed terrorists via subterfuge and logistical aid,
while trying to appear as a benign part of democratic society and discourse. From its
creation in August, 2001, the ISM originally concentrated its campaign in the U.S.
college system in order to increase its membership. It can be found on most campuses.
The ISM claims to be a “Palestinian-led” movement but there is extensive American
involvement in its leadership. It claims to be “non-violent” but recognizes the Palestinian
“right to resist” by what it calls “legitimate armed struggle.” Other “international
solidarity” activists work on behalf of the terrorist groups in Colombia.
Perhaps fearful of official investigations, statements from the ISM that were viewed as
supportive of armed struggle or terrorism have been purged from the ISM’s U.S.
website. [3] But they can still be found archived on the Internet[4] and still voiced on ISM
chapter websites in Canada[5] and Europe[6].
Since it is a crime to provide support to foreign terrorist organizations, a history of this
shadowy group and its successes over the last nine years is worthy of an examination
by Congress. The FBI is certainly aware of this problem, having raided various
“solidarity” groups in cities such as Chicago. Anti-communist New Zealand blogger
Trevor Loudon, who has specialized in exposing Barack Obama’s communist
connections, reveals that several of the terror suspects whose homes were raided in
Chicago worked for a political movement that once included Obama and even
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sponsored the start of his political career. Loudon focused on the connections of
Chicago activists Stephanie Weiner and Joseph Iosbaker, whose residence was
searched.
As revolutions sweep the Middle East, there is increasing commentary about the
activities of the Muslim Brotherhood here and abroad. The ISM, however, has largely
escaped scrutiny. But the fact that the terror channel Al-Jazeera has given the ISM
favorable publicity should tell us something about its real objectives.
In addition to promoting Hamas and its top officials, Al-Jazeera has promoted Iranianfunded Hezbollah. That relationship during the war with Israel in 2006 has earned AlJazeera a lawsuit demanding $1.2 billion for those who were killed and injured. The suit
filed by lawyers associated with the Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center in the United
States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan alleges that AlJazeera “intentionally provided real-time coverage of the locations of missile strikes
inside Israel in violation of Israeli security regulations, thereby enabling Hezbollah to aim
its missiles more accurately.” The victims were American, Israeli and Canadian.
History of the ISM
The ISM came to prominence in March of 2002 immediately after the Passover
Massacre bombing attack by Hamas that killed 31 Israelis, mostly Holocaust survivors,
at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel [7]. The Palestinian leadership, then under Yasser
Arafat, was conducting a “Second intifada,” or uprising, against the Israelis. Ariel Sharon
was the Israeli Prime Minister. Bus bombings and terrorist attacks on civilian targets in
Israel by Arab terrorist groups, all under the terrorist umbrella control of Yasser Arafat,
made 2002 one of the bloodiest years of terror since 9/11. Then-Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein, Arafat’s closest ally at the time, was in full power and funding the suicide
bombing attacks to the tune of as much as $30,000 per attack [8].
Sharon had already used the right of “hot pursuit” in the Oslo Accords thirteen times to
send the Israeli army into the Palestinian Authority to clean out terror groups
responsible for killing Israeli civilians. After this particular attack, the IDF surrounded
Yasser Arafat and 17 of his most wanted armed Palestinian terrorist leaders in Arafat’s
headquarters, the Mukata, in Ramallah [9]. The Mukata had been British military
headquarters during Israel’s colonial years as Palestine and was a fortress. Sharon had
decided to marginalize Arafat and take him out of the negotiations equation, or eliminate
him entirely, but this was reportedly prevented by then-President Bush, who felt at the
time that killing Arafat might ignite the Arab street and undermine support that he was
seeking for the upcoming war with Iraq.[10]
Prior to this, when the fighting stopped and Israeli troops were poised in a siege position
around the Mukata, a lone ambulance came rolling up to the battle zone which held the
individuals who would later garner international attention as the leaders of the ISM.
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Inside that ambulance were Adam Shapiro, [11] [12] an American of Jewish heritage
from New York who has renounced his Jewish identity, and Huwaida Arraf, [13][14] a
U.S.-born woman whose father was from a Palestinian village in Israel before he
emigrated to the U.S. to become an executive at General Motors in Detroit. Arraf is from
a Catholic Arab family, and had majored in Middle Eastern Studies in college where she
studied both Arabic and Hebrew.
Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf
Both had been counselors at a camp in Jerusalem for Arab and Jewish children called
“Seeds of Peace,” funded by the U.S. State Department, which was supposed to be a
place of reconciliation for children of both ethnicities to get along despite the conflict.
[15] One pro-Israel activist, however, has described “Seeds of Peace” as a place where
Arab children are supposed to recount their oppression and mistreatment by Israel and
the Israeli Jewish children are supposed to beat their breasts in shame. The camp was
originally started as a “peace” venture by a former international correspondent, but
eventually became a U.S. State Department-funded entity. Questions about U.S.
Government involvement in the program remain. [16] At about this same time, the State
Department’s consul general in Jerusalem was negotiating U.S. foreign aid with Arafat
($400 million was provided) and then resigned to reportedly become Arafat’s chief
lobbyist in Congress. [17][18]
The State Department’s involvement with the ISM clearly deserves scrutiny from
Congress. Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice once described the ISM, whose
leadership admits to openly working with Hamas, as being equivalent to civil rights
workers in the Jim Crow South of the United States.
What’s more, one report has stated that President Obama personally was involved in
discouraging Israel from using certain crowd control measures in dealing with the Gaza
flotillas, organized in part by the ISM. [19].
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Another member of that ambulance team’s group was George S. Rishmawi, a
Palestinian Arab accused of having links to Marxist organizations such as the PFLP
[20].
George S. Rishmawi
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist–Leninist
organization founded in 1967, has benefited from the work of “international solidarity”
activists and the ISM. As bloodshed and revolution have been sweeping the Middle
East, the PFLP issued a statement declaring, “These popular upsurges are shaking the
ground in the Arab world and posing a new and powerful challenge to U.S. imperialism,
Zionism, and the Arab regimes which have enabled them by trampling upon their own
people for decades.”
As America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI) President Cliff Kincaid noted in his report, U.S.-based
Marxists Subvert Friendly Regimes and Support Foreign Terrorist Organizations, “The
statement by the PFLP about turmoil in the Middle East was a reminder that a terrorist
group associated with the Soviet Union is still in existence, active, and prepared to take
advantage of world unrest and troubles.”
Despite the “collapse” of communism, international Marxism is still a major threat and
dozens of communist and Marxist groups operate around the world, in more than 100
countries, including the U.S.
The PFLP is the second largest faction of the PLO and was founded by the late George
Habash. It is openly Marxist, and carries forth the Stalinist Soviet line. The PFLP is on
the U.S. State Department list of designated terrorist organizations. The PFLP invented
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aircraft hijackings and was active in supporting the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany
during the 1960’s.
Since the PFLP was formerly a proxy for the KGB abroad during the Soviet years, this
might explain Russian Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin’s friendliness
toward the ISM’s Free Gaza Movement. Putin is a former KGB officer.
The PFLP is also considered one of the main reasons for the FBI raids of the Freedom
Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) house/headquarters that took place in September
of 2010. We have learned that one of the same houses used by the FRSO is affiliated
with ISM and is suspected to be the place where suspected material aid was also given
to PFLP and other Marxist revolutionary terrorist groups like FARC (the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia), a communist terrorist group that works with drug cartels, as
well as to Iranian proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Leaflets on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were passed out
at a “Stop the FBI” demonstration in Washington, D.C. The leaflets claimed the terrorist
label applied to the PFLP and other terrorist organizations was being used to
“criminalize” so-called “popular resistance and national liberation movements.”
The international connections are relevant here. The PFLP receives funding from Iran,
which enjoys close relations with Russia. [21]. The PFLP uses a lot of Latin American
communist imagery such as photos of Che Guevara and the promotion of the Cubaninspired communist revolutionary movements in Latin America like the Colombian
FARC [22] [23][24], but it also uses allusions to Mao and Lenin.
In 2002, when that ambulance first approached the Mukata’s compound, it was
surrounded by Israeli soldiers and stopped from entering. Shaprio and company
explained to the Israeli officer in charge that the ambulance was full of medical supplies
for “humanitarian purposes” and they wished to bring these supplies into the Mukata to
help the wounded inside. The IDF, of course, said no. However, some phone calls were
made and four hours later the ambulance was allowed to enter and join Arafat and
entourage where all the parties enjoyed breakfast together.
These ISM and other local radicals, many of them communists or anarchists inspired
from the local college communities in the U.S. and even in Israel, began to coalesce as
an international organization to recruit and for training even more human shields for the
ISM. But the ISM nevertheless remained as a “Palestinian-led” organization that
claimed it was “nonviolent,” but recognized the “right” of the Palestinians to use violence
to achieve their goals.
During another incursion by the IDF after more terror attacks in Israel in May of 2002,
when a large force of 200 terrorists held up in the Church of the Nativity with the clergy
inside as hostages, the IDF surrounded the compound. Huwaida Arraf and her fellow
activists ran past the IDF into the church, supposedly to deliver humanitarian aid. In
effect, they acted as human shields for the terrorists inside.
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Despite her background and work in the ISM, she worked inside Congress as a legal
intern for Congressman Jim Moran (D-Va.) and was assigned to help get imprisoned
terrorists released from Guantanamo Bay. [25] Arraf, who literally wrote the ISM training
manual, tells ISM activists to say they are “human rights workers” and “peace activists.”
[26] However, numerous statements in support of armed violence being acceptable and
a “right” of the Palestinians have been attributed to ISM activists.
An early Oslo-period PLO website reported that, as an outgrowth of the Mukata
breakfast, Arafat gave Shapiro and company, $1million to start the ISM. This
information was purged from the PLO website almost immediately so is difficult to verify
today. However, given the fact that the ISM’s operations almost immediately began to
spread on college campuses across the U.S., the $1 million figure is not unreasonable.
In order to keep the Palestinians in control of ISM activities, the ultimate leader of the
ISM would be a physics professor from Bir Zeit University named Ghassan Andoni,[27]
who is reported to have close links to the PFLP. A report on the ISM by the Meir Amit
Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel says that Andoni was active as a
student in something called the “Arab Liberation Front,” described as a pro-Iraqi terrorist
organization.
Ghassan Andoni
A look at ISM conferences reveals participation from many different Palestinian groups,
including the PFLP. A 2009 ISM conference featured a panel of representatives of
“Palestinian political leaders on the future of Popular Nonviolent Resistance” that
included Abed Elrahim Mallouh, Deputy Secretary-General of the PFLP.
PFLP’s relations with the ISM explain in large part the ISM’s affiliation with
communist/anarchist ideology. ISM training manuals obtained by this author are replete
with communist historical infiltration tactics and they have been used to good result, not
only in the United States in its university system and other social organizations, but in
Israel as well.
13
The Alternative Information Center (AIC), with offices in Jerusalem and Beit Sahour
(considered a PFLP bastion in the Palestinian Authority), relies on Marxist philosophy
and tactics and was even closed down briefly by the Israelis for PFLP affiliations, but
later allowed to reopen.[28]. Today, the AIC operates in Israeli society with a large
number of Israeli Communist Party academics and apparatchiks running things within,
but with American anarchist-communist leadership. Israel’s minority Communist Party
operates closely with Arab communists in the country calling for the end of the Jewish
state and in opposition to the United States, a position at odds with most Israelis.
As in the U.S., Israeli universities and colleges are used as both training grounds and
recruitment for foreign ideologies opposing Western capitalism and accusing the West
of “colonialism” and “exploitation of the masses.” Both countries rotate and share their
academics to advance this ideology on a regular basis to the detriment of their own
democratic governments through unrelenting conferences and direct actions. [29]
It can be argued that the ISM is much like a modern-day Comintern [30] [31], the
international communist entity that sought to spread revolutionary activities in
democratic countries. While it has an overriding purpose – to promote the Palestinian
cause -- it is not a centralized organization or single group with a board of directors and
card carrying members. It is, in fact, an entity like an octopus with many arms and many
names, and frequently members of one group belong to other groups that make up the
octopus, the idea being that if one leg is detected or cut off, the others can continue
functioning.
It should be noted here again that the ISM operates by admission of its own leadership
in cooperation with all the Palestinian terrorist groups. [32 ] [33]. ISM flotilla organizer
Paul LaRudee has been recorded on radio and at meetings explaining that the ISM
membership are not pacifists and recognize the right to use arms and violence: “We
believe in the application of international law. Although we are totally dedicated to
nonviolence, we recognize not everyone in the Palestinian community is dedicated to
nonviolence and under international law we recognize that violence is necessary and it
is permissible for oppressed and occupied people to use armed resistance and we
recognize their right to do so,” he has said. [34] [35] [36]
With the growth of the “Free Gaza” flotilla movements to aid Hamas since 2007, the ISM
is now working most closely with Hamas leadership, but has never stopped working with
Fatah, PFLP, Islamic Jihad and others. The ISM has even posted communiqués from
the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade on their U.S. website.
The “Human Shield” Gambit
George S. Rishmawi, Huwaida Arraf and the Palestinian leadership came up with a
plan in 2002 to bring international radicals to the West Bank in order to aid in a new
“human shield” program devised for the ISM. [37] [38] It was felt that Israel would be
reluctant to harm foreigners for fear of international incidents and Israeli soldiers would
hesitate to shoot Americans and Europeans protesting at checkpoints, lying in front of
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tanks, or removing roadblocks, acts that might get a Palestinian killed: “When
Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore," Rishmawi was
quoted as saying. "But if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then
the international media will sit up and take notice." The presence of foreigners in
Palestinian villages made it difficult for the Israeli army to shoot back when terrorist
attacks emerged from them. Israel had a policy of demolishing the homes of terrorists or
domiciles used as bomb making factories. International human shields could be placed
in them to delay or prevent demolitions.
The immediate goal of the ISM would be to hamper the ability of the IDF to operate,
while the ultimate goal -- although not stated explicitly -- would be to “liberate Palestine”
by facilitating the activities of terrorist groups. That is, eliminate the State of Israel
entirely.
Propaganda would also be a revolutionary function of the ISM by claiming it is "opposed
to the existence of the apartheid colonial settler state of Israel." It would also endorse
the unconditional "right of return” of Palestinian Arabs to return to the very same spots
their ancestors lived on in 1948 and to eliminate the Jewish State demographically.
[39][40]
Adhering to revolutionary dogma as expressed by the late Malcolm X of the need to
make revolution “by any means necessary,” [41] this saying became the motto of the
ISM to hasten the destruction of Israel through any actions that assist terrorist groups or
inhibit IDF operations.
The Marxist bent of the ISM can also be found in is alliance with groups like
International ANSWER and the International Socialist Organization. [42] These groups
also enjoy support from Cuba, North Korea and Iran. Since Arafat considered Saddam
Hussein his closest ally back in 2001, the ISM also embraced the American anti-war
movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11. Of particular interest was
the involvement of former Students for a Democratic Society and Weather Underground
members William Ayers [43] and Bernardine Dohrn, [44] who became professors. They
helped the ISM increase its influence and recruiting within the United States.
Then and now: Ayers and Dohrn as fugitives and academics.
15
As noted by America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI), Ayers and Dohrn, wrote a revolutionary
manifesto, Prairie Fire, [45] dedicated in part to Palestinian terrorist Sirhan Sirhan, the
assassin of Robert F. Kennedy. Sirhan was also a self-declared communist. ASI has
held several conferences producing evidence that Ayers and Dohrn have been
implicated in the bombing murder of San Francisco Police Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell, a
case still open and under active investigation. However, some fear that Attorney
General Eric Holder might impede the probe, since Ayers and Dohrn are associates of
President Obama.
Another professor, Francis Boyle, who has served as a legal adviser to the PLO,
originated the boycott and divestment program against Israel that has been promoted
by the ISM on college campuses across America. [46]
Francis Boyle
Ayers and Dohrn joined in the Viva Palestina Tour [47] and ISM Flotilla Tours [48] to
Gaza in support of Hamas.
This may seem new for Ayers and Dohrn, but it is a fact their sympathies for the Arabs
and hatred for the state of Israel go way back. In the ASI report, “Communism in
Chicago and the Obama Connection,” it is noted that:
Members of the SDS and the Weather Underground had sympathies for
Arab terrorist groups, which were viewed as part of the anti-imperialist
war. According to Larry Grathwohl, the FBI informant inside the
organization, the Weathermen started a newspaper called The First Next
Time, which ran an article “on the Arab guerrillas’ fight against the Zionist
Jews for Palestine.” The article described Israel as a “colonial-type
creature, imposed by forces outside the area” and the Jewish masses
“being led by Zionism toward another disaster.”
In his America’s Survival, Inc. report, “What Was the Weather Underground?” Herbert
Romerstein wrote, “A particular target of the Weather Underground was the American
Jewish community.” He notes evidence that “Some Weather Underground activists
16
were born into Jewish families, but they were as anti-Semitic as their gentile-born
colleagues.”
In a speech about his own Jewish background, Weather Underground leader Mark
Rudd said, “The only way Israel has survived so far has been to ally with the sole
remaining imperial power in the world. But all empires fall, as Jewish history so clearly
tells us.” He went on, “Israel is America’s future: militarized, racist, religio-nationalist,
corporate, riven with so many internal splits and hatreds that only the existence of a
perpetual enemy keeps the nation from exploding. If we don’t organize to stop the
current direction in this country, thirty years from now we will be Israel.”
The city of Chicago, home base for Ayers and Dohrn, as well as Obama, served as the
initial hub for the Arab-American Action Network (AAAN) [49], founded by an academic
by the name of Rashid Khalidi who had been a friend of Obama and official of the PLO
press agency WAFA. Khalidi has called suicide bombings a response to “Israeli
aggression” and dedicated his 1986 book, Under Siege, to “those who gave their lives
... in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon.” Critics assailed
the book as excusing Palestinian terrorism.” [50]
On the board of directors of the AAAN was a U.S.-born Arab pro-PLO organizer named
Ali Abunimah, [51] who traveled internationally between Ramallah, Europe and Chicago
organizing anti-Israel events and publicity in association with ISM affiliated groups.
Ali Abunimah
17
Rashid Khalidi
Then-State Senator Obama was photographed at an AAAN dinner held on May 24,
1998, in Burbank, Illinois. The Woods Fund, where Obama served as a director from
1994 through 2001, approved a $40,000 grant to the AAAN for “community organizing.”
[52] Abunimah also helped set up the Electronic Intifada, a propaganda website
promoting the Palestinian revolution run by the former webmaster for Bir Zeit University,
a Scotsman named Nigel Parry. [53] Bir Zeit is a known bastion for student government
terrorist political parties that represent Fatah, Hamas and the PFLP. It is also the base
for ISM co-founder Ghassan Andoni.
Ali Abunimah has written about the use of violence in driving out the Jews. [54] To
quote Abunimah: "…calls for nonviolence are just another bankrupt exercise in shifting
the blame from the occupier to the occupied, while still posing as advocates for peace."
Hence, to Abunimah the term "peace activists" is just a ruse. Another political
movement, Al Awda (that links to co-founder, Jess Ghannam, another ISM leader in
San Francisco), is an ISM affiliate that considers all of Israel where Jews live as
"occupied."
AAAN executive director Hatem Abudayyeh, a colleague of Ali Abunimah, had his home
raided on September 24, 2010, as part of an FBI investigation into illegal support
provided by U.S.-based groups to foreign terrorist organizations in the Middle East and
Latin America. Incredibly, the raid followed a friendly visit to the White House by
Abudayyeh earlier that year. WLS-TV, a local TV station in Chicago, covered the story,
18
highlighting the White House visitor logs showing Abudayyeh’s participation as an
invited guest in what was described as a “large Arab briefing.” Reporter Chuck Goudie
said that while Obama did not attend the briefing, the AAAN was founded by an “Obama
friend and fundraiser named Rashid Khalidi, who became a lightning rod during the
presidential campaign for his views on Israel.”
The AAAN now wants Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder to stop the FBI
investigations and prevent a Grand Jury from bringing criminal charges against the
“anti-war” and “peace” activists associated with the ISM.
Abudayyeh has stated, “The U.S. and Israel will continue to describe Hamas, Hezbollah
and the other Palestinian and Lebanese resistance organizations as ‘terrorists,’ but the
real terrorists are the governments and military forces of the U.S. and Israel. The vast
majority of the world sees and understands this, and is in full support of Lebanese,
Palestinian and worldwide resistance to Israel and the U.S.'s naked aggression, war,
imperialism and occupation. As we have seen in Iraq, where the resistance is standing
up to U.S. power, the U.S. military is not indomitable.”[55]
Hatem Abudayyeh
Targeting the Campus
Back in 2002, as part of the propaganda mandate against Israel abroad for actions by
the ISM, the group began using the American college system as part of its publicity arm
against the Jewish state and as a prime source locale for recruiting ISM activists to go
to the West Bank and Gaza and serve as human shields for Palestinian terror groups.
Pro-Palestinian groups at campuses like UC Berkeley and San Francisco State, for
example, have a constant media presence and share student demonstrators between
campuses for purposes just like this. The ISM leadership began its work in U.S.
colleges by joining forces with pre-existing Marxist and communist groups that had for
19
years sought the destruction of Israel, usually as part of Stalinist classical anti-Zionism
and Soviet anti-Semitism.
Outside groups involved in this effort include the Resource Center for Non-Violence
(RCNV) [56] based in Santa Cruz, California and located near the University of
California in that city. The RCNV is led by former Mayor Scott Kennedy, who became an
active participant at ISM functions. It existed before the founding of the ISM, but later
became a local headquarters for ISM functions.
.
Scott Kennedy with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah.
.
Kennedy tours Gaza with armed Hamas terrorists.
20
The same thing was happening with the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee
(ADC), which also served to help organize ISM propaganda and training sessions for
human shields to go to the West Bank and Gaza, and the fiercely anti-Israel
organization Al Awda, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition. Al Awda, as mentioned,
was co-founded by San Francisco ADC leader Jess Ghannam, a Professor of
Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco Medical School and a
Palestinian-American radical from his undergrad days in Michigan and later in grad
school at UC Berkeley.
Jess Ghannam
21
Mazen Qumsiyeh
Mazen Qumsiyeh was another Al Awda co-founder and is now back in Beit Sahour,
which has a large PFLP presence. [57] [58] [59] ADC leaders over the years have
consistently stated Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorist groups and show up at ISM
functions where they toe the party line against Israel and the U.S. ADC’s founder,
former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, traveled to Damascus and said on Hezbollah's
Al-Manar TV that Hamas and Hezballah were “resistance fighters.” [60]
Today, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation in Washington, D.C. operates
as the renamed central focus for the ISM. Huwaida Arraf appears on its steering
committee. In Europe, they call themselves the European Campaign to End the Israeli
Occupation. The U.S. website lists 320 separate ISM organizations across the
country.[61]
One such affiliate is in Northern California. An American named Paul LaRudee [62]
began a chapter called Norcal ISM and began working with Jess Ghannam to recruit
ISM trainees to go to the West Bank. LaRudee allegedly was a former linguistics
professor who had spent years working in Saudi Arabia for the U.S. State Department,
but was now working as a “free-lance international piano tuner.” LaRudee made several
trips to the West Bank where he was involved in confrontations with Israeli soldiers on
the borders, even being wounded in the leg once. LaRudee wrote an article about his
epiphany of sleeping in the bed of a suicide bomber as he acted as a human shield to
prevent the IDF’s demolition of a house that had been a bomb factory involved in the
killing of Israelis.[63] More recently, LaRudee and Huwaida Arraf have been
instrumental in organizing the Gaza flotillas.
22
Personal letter of invitation to Paul LaRudee from Hamas terror leader Bassam
Naim, later killed by IDF in Operation Cast Lead in 2009.
23
LaRudee with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah.
ISM activists being awarded gold medals from Hamas. LaRudee
and Greta Berlin are seated on each side of Hamas leader Haniyah.
24
Hamas gold medals.
Paul LaRudee 2009
LaRudee was caught and deported from Israel in 2006 after trying to enter the country
under a false identity to meet with members of Hamas. He followed the deportation by
going to Lebanon to act as a human shield for Hezbollah in that summer’s war. At the
same time, Adam Shapiro and his wife, Huwaida Arraf, did the same thing, leading a
caravan of activist human shields as guests of Hezbollah.
In this context, it is important to note that the Freedom Road Socialist Organization,
raided by the FBI last September, is being investigated for providing support to
Hezbollah, another designated terrorist group. The FBI search warrant sought evidence
linking FRSO activist Michael Kelly to having provided “material support to designated
foreign terrorist organizations,” including Hezbollah.
25
In addition to the support provided to the FARC in Colombia, ISM activists have also
met with the Zapatistas, a Mexican Marxist terrorist group. This meeting was attended
by an ISM activist anarchist leader named Matan Cohen from an ISM affiliate in Israel,
Anarchists Against the Wall (AAW), while Cohen was an exchange student at
Hampshire College in the U.S. leading divestment actions against Israel.
ISM Revolutionary Activities
Joseph Carr, an ISM activist from Christian Peacemaker Teams, part of the American
Friends Service Committee, was quoted as saying that Rachel Corrie’s death was
“worth the price of the revolution.” [64] [65].
Another group, The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), already existed in
Berkeley, California in 2001, and was being run by a radical named Barbara Lubin prior
to the founding of the ISM, but has since become a part of it.[66] MECA claimed to be
an NGO created to help children by traveling around at seminars at U.S. colleges
attacking Israel, but later on became a clearing house to distribute funds to other ISM
groups.
Medea Benjamin (Code Pink/Viva Palestina/Gaza Freedom March) receiving
documents from the Hamas Foreign Minister for President Obama.
26
Code Pink, a group mentioned earlier, is led by Medea Benjamin, who has stated she
resided four years in Cuba under Castro. Her group Global Exchange sponsors trips to
Cuba and Venezuela. She joined land tours like Viva Palestina to aid Hamas. [67]
Benjamin named her group Gaza Freedom March to retain control but was part of the
same Viva Palestina Tour.
The American Friends Service Committee, aka Christian Peacemaker Teams, and the
International Women’s Peace Service, are other ISM affiliated groups which established
permanent locations in the Palestinian Authority early on as well as in the United States.
When in need of legal assistance, ISM activists are backed by the National Lawyers
Guild (NLG), part of a communist network created by Josef Stalin to protect communist
agents in the U.S. The NLG was identified as a Communist Party front by the House
Committee on Un-American Activities, a panel that no longer exists because it and its
successors were dismantled by congressional liberals. Writing for The American
Thinker, in an article titled “The National Lawyers Guild Works for Israel’s Destruction,”
Martha O’Connor notes:
In fact, the NLG has cooperated closely with the ISM, one of whose "Free
Gaza" board members "has been an active member of the National
Lawyers Guild (NLG) for 25 years"; and the NLG has advised activists
from the student Group Viva Palestina, which the University of CaliforniaIrvine has asked the FBI to investigate because of its alleged material
support of Hamas, about how to avoid questions from the Israeli
authorities during their visits to Gaza.
Still another arm of the ISM, the Sabeel Ecumenical Society, was created to separate
Christian support away from Israel as opposed to just relying on Muslim support.[68] A
Jewish Voice for Peace was re-established in 2001 to include Marxists and anarchists
of Jewish descent. While claiming to be “pro-Israel, pro-Jewish, pro-Peace”, the group
follows the ISM game plan in support of Hamas whose charter rejects the Jewish state
of Israel. [69] Sabeel and JVP now maintain a permanent presence in the Holy Land
also. The newly formed J Street, funded partly by George Soros, emerged from out of
Jewish Voice for Peace and is partly funded by Saudi Arabia and Iran according to J
Street’s Tax Form 990.
LaRudee, Arraf and Shapiro first began organizing the flotillas to sail to Gaza in 2007.
Originally dubbed the Free Gaza Movement, LaRudee mostly led the charge from his
home in El Cerrito, California. After the first few flotillas successfully got into Gaza, there
was a split over money between LaRudee’s group and those aligned with Arraf. Free
Gaza stayed under control of Arraf and associates, and LaRudee’s group began to call
themselves the Free Palestine Movement, [70] [71] but still operated from the ISM office
in LaRudee’s home in California. Another activist leader, Greta Berlin from Los
27
Angeles, began a more active leadership role in the ISM, particularly with the flotillas,
moving her base of operations later to Europe to organize for Free Gaza.
The PLO also had set up an academic organization called the Palestinian Academic
Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) that was not a distinct part of the
ISM, but would play a role in the ISM promulgation on American campuses.[72] PASSIA
began a program of recruiting young Palestinian Arabs of college age with a good
grasp of English and sending them to colleges across the United States after putting
them through a propaganda training course in public speaking on behalf of
“Palestine.”[73] These students were not allowed to pick their schools or majors; their
job was to get on the student newspapers at the campuses and write against Israel and
to “make the case for Palestine,” or to set up chapters of Palestinian activism such as
the Students for Justice in Palestine or General Union of Palestine Students, or similar
named groups whose job would be to demonstrate weekly against Israel on campus.
Incredibly, PASSIA receives money from the U.S. State Department’s USAID for this
program. [74]
At the same time, the Saudis were busy planting seed money on all major U.S.
campuses to create Middle East Studies centers that would receive matching taxpayer
funds from the U.S. government under Title VI since the 9/11 attacks. [75] [76]
Title VI of the U.S. Education Fund was set up during the Cold War by Congress to pay
our universities to teach students Russian and about Russian culture. After the 9/11
attacks, Title VI was bolstered with funding for Arabic courses and ways to study
Arabic culture to be better prepared in the coming war. Sadly, the money was used
more for Middle East Studies centers where America was portrayed as the “Great
Satan” to the Arab world. These centers were not part of the ISM organization per se,
as they are generally Islamist in their outlook and but they do serve mostly as ISM
allies.
Campuses all across America began setting up chapters of student activity groups to
push the ISM agenda mostly under the name, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
An existing network of the Muslim Students Association, set up originally by the World
Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) [77] also provided a ready campus presence. (It
should be noted pro-Palestinian clubs on campuses existed prior to the creation of the
ISM, but it was their affiliation with the ISM that caused them to coalesce into a more
formidable group. For example, the General Union of Palestinian Students at San
Francisco State would charter buses with the SJP at Berkeley and bus students intercampus for demonstrations.)
Roving shows such as the Wheels of Justice (WOJ) tour (another ISM group) also use
buses to travel around to speak at high schools during school hours. Claiming to be
peace activists again, the WOJ tours propagandize against U.S. forces in Iraq and
Afghanistan and against the IDF.
Since Middle East Studies centers could rely on Title VI educational money for their
programs, campus clubs linked to these centers could also rely on student activity
28
money and support from Arab faculty advisers like Hatem Bazian and Beshara Doumani
at UC Berkeley. ISM/PSM National conferences frequently held seminars on how to
fund anti-Israel activism by getting money from administrations at their colleges. This
was and still is an ideal way for a foreign movement to fund its infiltration in the West,
letting the “enemy” fund the war against itself. ISM national conferences always feature
a seminar on this.
Another one of the ISM methods of infiltration has been to get into the churches with the
claim that the Palestinians are the new Jews and a Jewish state should be replaced by
reinterpreting the Bible.[78] ISM volunteers managed to penetrate the synods of the
Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ (Reverend Wright’s Church), some
branches of the Methodists and, in the African-American community, the Nation of
Islam, as well as the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers). Libraries
were a target through a radical clique at the American Library Association which filled
libraries with new revisionist history of the Middle East.[79] Next came labor unions, like
the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) [80], where support for Palestinian
(aka Hamas) goals is becoming more popular. SEIU representative Joe Iosbacher was
a target of the raids of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization last September by the
FBI. [81]
Although there was a strong presence of Palestinian “students” in the Michigan State
University and Chicago areas, the central locations for building a strong national student
movement centered around the University of Wisconsin and UC Berkeley.
However, Michigan has one of the largest Palestinian and Arab immigrant populations
in the U.S., and is recognized by the FBI as a hub for Hezbollah support as well as for
Hamas. Wisconsin had been a hub of anti-US activity during the Vietnam War and had
a strong history of radical leftist organizing. On that campus was set up the Alternative
Palestinian Agenda led by Mohammed Abed and Fayyad Sbaihat, who was at the time
considered the campus leader of the anti-Israel movement. Sbaihat, according to one
Israeli source, had a family history of involvement in the PFLP. [82] [83] A relocation by
Rashid Khalidi to Columbia for a new chair from Chicago brought that New York
campus to prominence in this circle [84].
UC Berkeley became the first campus for the movement to hold an ISM national
organizing conference. The first National Palestine Solidarity conference was held at the
Berkeley campus. It was here that exhortations of the Soviet expression that “Zionism is
Racism” were expressed and calls to wipe Israel off the map were discussed.
Part of the Soviet platform in its alliance with the Arabs, dating back to Stalin’s era, held
that Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, was “racist” and antithetical to human rights.
Islamic exclusion of Christians and Jews made no difference to the Soviets who saw the
Arabs as their agents against U.S. control in the Middle East. The expression also held
its place among the communist-inspired PFLP, from which some of the ISM activists
came. Fundamentalist Islamic antipathy toward Jews has found a ready alliance with
Soviet-era inspired anti-Semitism against the “rich Jews” who are deemed exploiters via
29
capitalism. Arab oil money thus feeds the communist machine in a unified goal in which
“the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and they are united against the Jewish state.
The first national conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement and the second one
that followed at the University of Michigan a year later, both called for the destruction of
Israel and promoted the concept that “Zionism is racism.” It was at these conferences
that other radical leftist groups were invited to help promote the Palestinian cause and
swell ranks. At Michigan, calls were shouted of “Itbah Al Yahud!” in Arabic (Slaughter
the Jews!).
By the time of the Third National Palestine Solidarity Conference held at Ohio State, a
new sophistication was shown. There was a plethora of anti-Israel groups were present,
some who were set up with vending tables. These included Alison Weir’s “If Americans
Knew” and even a Dennis Kucinich for President table. Weir, a divorced mother of
three with time on her hands, had traveled to Afghanistan and was now based in San
Rafael, California with the address for her foundation being in Los Angeles. The source
of her funding was unclear, but she would hand out brochures that claimed the Jews
promoted the Holocaust on their own people in order to create Israel and she had four
color post cards with illustrations of Arab terrorists brandishing knifes or other weapons
and calling for the annihilation of Israelis. Also present at this Ohio event were
representatives from the American Indian Movement and assorted other radical leftist or
communist causes opposed to the U.S. government.
The Ohio State event in 2003 was too sophisticated to be a simple meeting of students
interested in a political cause. Metal detectors were set up to prevent recording devices
and cameras from being brought in to the “planning sessions” that ran four seminars per
hour. One session was planned to teach how to tie the Palestinian cause into the
environmental movement, but was canceled. One was dedicated to how to deconstruct
negative public reactions to suicide bombings going on in Israel. Another was on how to
get an ISM activist into your college administration.
Mohammed Abed spoke at one seminar on how to deconstruct the notion of a Jewish
state and another speaker discussed how to infiltrate Jewish organizations like Hillel on
U.S. campuses to change the perception of Israel as being less than a pariah state.
Ways to wean American Jewish support away from Israel were deemed vital. Jewish
participants were paraded around to imply that American Jewish support for Israel was
not sacrosanct. One rabbi’s daughter, Ora Wise, spoke at the opening next to Fayyad
Sbaihat declaring “Zionism is Racism” and calling for the end of a Jewish state. Fatima
Ayub, another student leader, spoke in praise of the “freedom fighters” fighting in
Afghanistan and Iraq. [85] An ISM activist for years, Ayub had majored in International
Relations at Johns Hopkins University [86] and now is on the Board of Human Rights
Watch.
At this Ohio State event in 2003, various student leaders spoke of their “successes” on
their campuses of getting their schools to divest from Israel. One student, Abe
Greenhaus, boasted about how he had smashed a pie in the face of Israeli Minister of
30
Diaspora Natan Sharansky during a visit to Rutgers University. Greenhaus now works
for “Palestine freedom.” [87] Another representative from New Jersey Solidarity is
Charlotte Kates, who reportedly called Israeli children killed by suicide bombers, “fair
game.”
The highlight of the second day was a visit by ISM co-founder Adam Shapiro himself.
Shapiro explained during an impromptu lecture that the ISM was not a single entity but
a consortium of different groups-- “grassroots” groups he called them—that made up the
umbrella organization that held no central leadership. Stop US Taxpayer Support for
Israel (SUSTAIN) was in Los Angeles, Jews Against the Occupation was in New York,
and Norcal ISM was in San Francisco. Together groups like these were what is called
the Palestine Solidarity Movement in the United States. When PSM members were in
the West Bank and Gaza operating as human shields they called themselves the
International Solidarity Movement because they included activists from the UK. He
emphasized that the PSM and ISM were one and the same. He boasted about how the
ISM managed to get U.S. volunteers over to the Palestinian Authority for free by using
the Jewish Birthright Program -- in essence, tricking a Jewish pro-Israel philanthropic
organization into providing free trips for ISM activists. The event had about 450
attendees at its peak.
The Rachel Corrie Case
About this time, George S. Rishmawi got his wish of having an international volunteer of
the ISM becoming a victim by being a human shield when a young woman from
Evergreen College in Washington State, Rachel Corrie, was killed when she plunked
herself down in front of an IDF bulldozer clearing weapons smuggling tunnels near the
Rafah border with Egypt in Gaza. The ISM used Corrie’s death for every bit of
propaganda it could. [88] One ISM activist, Joseph Carr, declared her death “...well
worth the price of the revolution” for its publicity value. [89]
Not long after that, a British ISM activist, Tom Hurndall was shot by an IDF sniper, an
Arab-Israeli named Wahid Taysir, who failed to properly follow the rules of engagement
while continually being provoked by the ISM activists who screamed, “Shoot me! Shoot
me!” Taysir was sentenced to eight years in jail by the IDF, but the ISM had another
foreign martyr to call attention to the Palestinian cause. A third ISM human shield, Brian
Avery, was wounded at night while knowingly violating a curfew in Jenin when he was
hit by ricocheting bullets that were never determined to be from the IDF. This, too,
became another publicity bonanza for the ISM.
The following year, in 2004, the Fourth National Palsolidarity Conference was held at
Duke University in North Carolina. Again, about 400 were in attendance with rotating
seminars, four per hour as at previous conferences. At one conference, Abe Greenhaus
gave a lecture on the anarchist movement and explained that the rioting the ISM
engaged in at the Security Fence in the West Bank was training to bring the same
tactics eventually to the Mexican border with the United States. Greenhaus, as a
31
representative of “Jews Against the Occupation,” later led a seminar in which he named
every pro-Israel and Jewish organization in America, including individual leaders and
Jewish businesses and gave instructions to infiltrate them and work to undermine
Jewish-American support for Israel. He also instructed on boycotting these businesses
and their Jewish management. Huwaida Arraf led a recruiting seminar for ISM activists
to go the West Bank and openly admitted the ISM works with Hamas, Palestinian
Isamic Jihad and the PFLP. The International Socialist Organization also played an
active part in planning “strategy” for the future. Brian Avery spoke about the Jews
controlling American foreign policy at the main conference on the last day. A resolution
that had been put forth to condemn suicide bombings as a tactic was voted down to the
cheering and standing ovation of the attendees on the last day. [90] [91]
The final National Palsolidarity Conference at a college took place in 2006 on the
campus of Georgetown University.[92] Georgetown had received $20 million from Saudi
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal just before the event.[93] The Georgetown administration
turned out even non-security administrators and staff to work security for the event
behind closed doors. No cameras or recorders were allowed and once again metal
detectors were in use at all entrances. Rotating sessions as at earlier conferences
highlighted sophisticated seminars on how to destroy the Jewish state of Israel and to
erode U.S. support. Huwaida Arraf was present and led things along with Noura Erekat
from UC Berkeley. This time, however, enrollment had dwindled and it was speculated
the core activists from most campuses had graduated and moved on leaving only the
professionals and non-students. Attendance was estimated at about 250 people at its
peak. During the Conference, one Jewish protestor was severely beaten by
Georgetown security guards after they were directed to seize him for asking questions
about terrorism. The victim, Bill Maniaci, sued Georgetown, settling for an undisclosed
amount.
Since the last conference produced dwindling numbers, the ISM under Huwaida Arraf
then reinvented itself with offices in Washington, D.C. under the new name “The U.S.
Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,” which had all former ISM leadership on its
board of directors, its affiliates and as individual members. The new entity appointed a
radical token Jewish leader named Josh Ruebner to head the organization who was
recently replaced by Anna Baltzer. Arraf still played an active role but became more
oriented toward lobbying congress and arranging national and international publicity
events and tactics. Membership fees were charged for “affiliated groups” that were
made up of the usual core of the ISM such as Students for Justice in Palestine at
assorted campuses, Interfaith Peace Builders, Al Awda and any other anti-war procommunist or anti-Israel groups across the country.
The Gaza Flotillas
In still another effort to reinvent itself and find new avenues of publicity, the ISM’s Paul
LaRudee, Huwaida Arraf, and Greta Berlin embarked on a new program to create the
so-called “Gaza Flotillas” designed to reopen the shipping lanes by sea to Gaza that
were closed by the Israeli navy after the capture of the Karine A weapons transport ship
32
for Hamas that was sent by Iran, but paid for by Saudi money. The same tactic had
been tried before in 1988 by Scott Kennedy of the Resource Center for Nonviolence,
but that boat was destroyed by a bombing while it was berthed in Cyprus without any
explanation of who did it. The Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, was suspected
That first Free Gaza flotilla boat set sail from Cyprus in 2008 and the Israelis planned to
board the boat and stop it. However, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak allowed it to
enter Gaza, feeling that stopping it would give the ISM a publicity moment. The
successful landing of the first boat led to the sailing of a second by 2009.
It was at this time that Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn re-emerged openly on the radical
scene as it relates to Israel. Ayers had never stopped being an unrepentant proterrorist, even posing for a magazine cover published on 9/11 desecrating a U.S. flag.
But he had now become an academic, a Professor of Education, who had signed a
petition by academics put out by the renamed ISM, the U.S. Campaign to End the
Israeli Occupation, that erroneously accused Israel of being like 1980’s apartheid Africa
and of “violating international law.” Naturally, Dohrn was also involved.
Ayers had been always an activist against Israel. In his manifesto for a communist
takeover in the U.S., written in 1974 with Dohrn and others, Ayers wrote long-winded
passages against Zionism and in support of the Palestinian revolution in grand Soviet
Stalinist propaganda style. He even dedicated the book in part to the Palestinian
assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, who murdered presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
Ayers and his wife hadn’t chimed in publicly as much about Israel up to that point as
much as in support of Castro and Latin American communist movements. With the
political fortunes of Barack Obama entering the White House, and after Ayers’ having
been being thrown under the bus during the election campaign when it was revealed he
and Reverend Jeremiah were close confidantes of Obama, Ayers and wife jumped onto
the ISM’s anti-Israel bandwagon in earnest as the Gaza flotillas became a new attempt
at gaining media attention by the ISM leadership.
It should be noted the ISM worked with the Turkish non-governmental organization
(NGO) IHH with the later flotillas. The ISM had put out feelers for foreign governments
to cooperate with them in their activities in ISM communiqués over the Internet. IHH has
known links to terrorist groups and an IHH operative was involved in the failed
millennium bomb plot to blow up the Los Angeles Airport in the year 2000. [94] [95] ISM
leadership, however, saw no problem with this. Neither, apparently, did the U.S. State
Department or the White House.
Medea Benjamin’s Code Pink, another ISM affiliate, had gained notoriety over the years
by sending $600,000 in “humanitarian aid” to that benefited Iraqi forces fighting U.S.
Marines in Fallujah during the Iraq War, and by picketing marine recruiters. Code Pink’s
co-founder and a fundraiser for Obama, Jody Evans, organized a “land flotilla” to Gaza
along the same lines as the ISM sea flotillas to bring support and aid to the Hamas
government in Gaza.
33
Ayers and Dohrn made certain they were mentioned on the guest list of both
revolutionary land trips organized by Code Pink, bringing their names credibility as
leaders again and celebrities to attract a new generation of revolutionaries. As
mentioned, Ayers and Dohrn joined the sea flotillas also that followed and both became
fixtures among the ISM supporters of the Hamas regime in Gaza, equally responsive in
voicing support for the other Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, and the government of Iran.
Ayers is suspected of writing one of Obama’s books, Dreams from My Father, and has
explained that he and his wife had no regrets for their bombings. However, one of the
bombs killed a San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell, and a law
enforcement task force continues to investigate the case, including testimony from a
former FBI informant, Larry Grathwohl, that Dohrn had planted the bomb with the
knowledge and approval of Ayers.
Ayers had always belonged to -- and still does – an international communist network.
Now with the ISM’s flotillas in full swing, Ayers could once again be the revolutionary of
the moment. Bernardine Dohrn went with a Code Pink organized ground tour in 2009 to
show support for Hamas in Gaza, as well. Stopped by the Egyptians from entering
Gaza, Dohrn blamed America and Israel for her inability to enter. [96] [97]
The ISM in Congress
Huwaida Arraf, as leader of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, after the
Georgetown conference, began working within Congress. At one point, various leaders
of disparate ISM groups were allowed to testify with Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), in
an attempt to get a resolution to condemn the Jewish state for its incursion into Gaza in
2009. This was done by Israel to stop rocket attacks. [98]
The speakers alongside Kucinich’s presentation were all ISM activists, including
Mitchell Plitnick and Noura Erekat, formerly from the Students for Justice in Palestine at
UC Berkeley, who is a niece of PLO negotiator and Arafat’s former second-incommand, Saeb Erekat. A report on the testimony published by the pro-Arab
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs completely whitewashed the 8 years and
8,000 rockets fired into Israeli communities from Gaza that precipitated the Israeli
invasion.
Arraf managed to secure herself a position as a legal intern for Rep. James Moran (DVa.). While doing this, she allegedly was attending law school at George Washington
University where she earned a law degree that made her a law professor at Al Quds
University in the Palestinian Authority. Al Quds University has developed a strong
relationship with Bard College in New York where it has the only official ISM chapter on
an American University campus that identifies itself as part of the ISM and even trained
ISM activists to go to Gaza and the West Bank with campus funding.[99] Her job was to
help release al Qaeda terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.
34
Meanwhile, Arraf, since leaving Congress, has stayed busy organizing more flotillas to
enter Gaza and assist the Hamas government there. Despite her group’s splitting from
Paul LaRudee’s group a year ago over the issue of how money was being handled, it
did not deter the two groups from sailing together at the same time.
LaRudee’s Free Gaza Movement is now allegedly separate, but the two flotilla groups
do coordinate things together. It was Arraf’s group that sought to find a nation to back
them up and that resulted in getting the Turkish government under Erdogan to aid in the
usage of the Mavi Mamara ship to join the seventh flotilla. The sixth flotilla had a ship
that was allegedly commanded by a Turkish Navy Captain who ignored IDF calls to
heave to and sailed straight into Gaza. The flotillas have finally become a media
bonanza for the ISM after the seventh try.
The ISM on our Southern Border
In keeping with the notion of “solidarity” between revolutionary movements against the
United States, ISM affiliated groups are looking toward the Mexican border and Latin
America. In so doing, there appears to be a Hezbollah link as well as one with Hamas.
Since Hezbollah and Hamas are both proxies of Iran, the danger to national security
should be obvious.
The ISM and their allies have been aligning themselves steadily with any “revolutionary”
group that is anti-US and anti-Israel. There is a definite connection between these
subversive groups here in the United States and over in Israel. For example, a visit to
the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem reveals the management of the office is
led by American anarchist-communists, and in some cases members of Israel’s
communist party elite from Israeli universities who travel back and forth between the two
countries and Britain.
Connie Hackbarth, an American ISM activist, is currently Executive Director of the
Alternative Information Center. An American with a long track record with the ISM in the
U.S., her appointment suggests American anarchist and/or Marxist leadership is guiding
ISM activities around the world. Many of these activities lead back to the PFLP base of
operations in the Palestinian Authority, even if it is currently concentrating to aid Hamas
in Gaza.
But, if the Israeli fence can be protested, what about the plan to create a fence on the
southern border of the U.S.? That figures to be another target of the ISM.
Imagine chartered buses of college students and others from anarchist-communist
groups in the U.S. going to the Mexican border to destroy any fence constructed to keep
out illegal immigrants and to riot against U.S. soldiers and border police much as Israel
experiences on a weekly basis in the West Bank. Using the Spanish “Viva” in Viva
Palestina, the name for the ISM affiliates land convoy, is no doubt intentional to try and
link Mexico and Latin American countries into a communist anti-U.S. and anti-Israel
35
alliance axis. Viva Palestina has been led by George Galloway who admitted that
“humanitarian aid” actually constitutes material support for Hamas. [100]
There are reports about the digging of tunnels by Hezbollah into the U.S. from Mexico
that are similar to those used by Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel. Reports of
beheadings in Mexico and alliances between Hezbollah agents and Mexican drug
cartels have also made the news. [101] Congress should investigate these reports.
The Iranian Connection
During a fund raising event in Newark, California, last year, Paul LaRudee revealed the
plans of the ISM coming this May as having as many as 40 ships sail toward Gaza all at
the same time, from as many as ten countries. Many of these small craft will be
moored just outside the Gaza water limits with the intent to enter Israel’s security zone
when the opportunity presents itself. The idea is to have so many boats in so many
different places the IDF Navy will be unable to monitor each one all of the time. At the
same time, LaRudee’s faction is also planning on buying aircraft to fly into Gaza and
create another confrontation with the IDF. At the Newark, California, event, LaRudee
and company raised $50,000 toward the purchase of the airplanes. In addition, the plan
is to get over 100 “Palestinians” with U.S. citizenship to land at Ben Gurion airport with
keys saying they have come back to Israel to retake their “homes.”[102] Huwaida Arraf’s
crew is also working with a European Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
The recent reports of Iranian warships passing through the Suez Canal have ominous
implications. One was a long term supply ship, ostensibly to support an Iranian frigate,
but the supply ship could also be there to supply the ISM flotillas off the Gaza coast long
term so they can remain outside Gaza’s waters as a continual threat. At the same time,
the frigate can serve as a military escort if and when some of the flotilla boats decide to
make a run for Gaza. This poses a genuine security threat to both Israel and the United
States as it could lead to war if the Israelis determine a need to sink the warships to
stop the importation of weapons and war supplies by sea to Hamas in Gaza.
One thing is certain: the ISM is undermining the peace process, and could ultimately
drag the U.S. into another war. It is working to enable Hamas in any way it can by
opening up the sea lanes to Gaza for Iran.
What the U.S. and Israel Must Do
This is occurring because of a laxity on the part of the U.S. and Israeli governments to
enforce laws they already have on the books. The Free Gaza Movement and Free
Palestine Movement were not set up by the IRS as tax deductible 501-3 nonprofits so
they could raise money for boats and airplanes to go to Gaza. Most of the ISM chapters
were set up as non-profits whose purpose was to be educational and not to engage in
international political activities serving the interests of terrorists.
36
The U.S. government could enforce the U.S. Neutrality Act that would prohibit the flotilla
groups from raising money and interfering with the IDF on behalf of Hamas and Iran.
Most important is that in 1997 Congress passed a law making the boycott of Israel
illegal. This law is supposed to be enforced by the U.S. Department of Commerce. All of
the ISM affiliated groups promote the economic boycott of Israel or divestment from it,
and even an academic boycott of Israel in the world’s colleges is ongoing. Despite this,
the U.S. government does not enforce the law.
Incredibly, Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at a conference organized in
Washington, D.C. by ISM San Francisco leader Jess Ghannam of the Arab-American
Anti- Discrimination Committee. Holder delivered the keynote remarks at the Annual
Civil Rights Luncheon during ADC’s 30th Anniversary National Convention in 2010.
[103]
Given that the highest law enforcement officers in the land are lending their names and
support to an ISM-affiliated group, one wonders how the conflict between Israel, Hamas
and its allied terror partners will ever be solved. The so-called “peace process” that was
to take 5 years when the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 has dragged on now for 19
years with no end in sight and the prospect of a war between Israel and Iran is on the
horizon.
We believe the Congress should investigate the ISM and well as its relationship with the
U.S. State Department. The ISM on its website and manuals has encouraged ISM
activists to obtain U.S. passports in order to deceive the Israeli law enforcement
authorities. This is also taught in their training sessions in the US and abroad. [104]
When ISM activists are deported from Israel for security concerns their passports are
stamped to deny them reentry to Israel for 10 years. Despite this, the ISM encourages
its members to file for passports under other names or identities to reenter to again
break Israeli law. The Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) is responsible for enforcing
the passport laws.
Paul LaRudee was caught and deported from Israel in 2006 for trying to meet with
Hamas because this writer alerted the Israeli authorities that he was traveling under
another passport with the name Paul Wilder. LaRudee, in a San Francisco newspaper
article, admitted he had obtained the new passport with the new name specifically to
reenter Israel. He was never prosecuted for this despite his admission in a public forum.
This writer interviewed an ISM activist involved in the Flotillas from the San Francisco
Bay Area named Naim Frangieh, who has stated the ISM and flotilla groups have “an
excellent relationship with the U.S. State Department.” DSS is part of the U.S. State
Department. The passports of ISM activists who have been proven to work in
cooperation with terrorist groups can and should be revoked. It is time Congress
investigates what relationship exists between the U.S. State Department and members
of the ISM. Given the ISM penchant for using multiple names and identities, some
uniform system of investigation should be done by Congress to find out what
37
penetration the ISM has made into the State Department that ultimately may go to
assist the terrorist groups that ISM admittedly works with.
If Huwaida Arraf can get a job working in Congress after her stunt as a human shield for
terrorists at the Church of the Nativity, then perhaps members of Congress are not
performing adequate security background checks of their staffers. But there is another
question: is she acting on behalf of the U.S. State Department in some of her activities?
If she is, then Congress and the American people should know about it.
Executive Order 12947 is titled “Prohibiting Transactions With Terrorists Who Threaten
To Disrupt the Middle East Peace Process.” Why is it not enforced?
The Shurat HaDin—Israel Law Center, in an article, “Implementing the US Neutrality Act
to Prevent Support for Hamas,” contends that organizations in the United States that
are seeking to fund flotillas to breach the Israeli blockade of Gaza are “acting in direct
violation of the US Neutrality Act, when considering the circumstances surrounding the
blockade and the support being provided by the flotillas.” It says, “Such organizations
should be criminally prosecuted under the law.”
Equally important are the investigations underway into U.S.-based Marxist groups
suspected of assisting groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Attorney General Holder
cannot be permitted to interfere with or stop these probes. And the last thing the United
States needs is a propaganda television network like Al Jazeera to misrepresent and
sugar coat what the ISM is doing. The recent raids on “activists” who allegedly provided
material aid to members of foreign terrorist groups is an example of our law
enforcement agencies responsibly caring for the U.S. population in general.
A new FBI director must continue and expand these investigations to include the ISM,
which by subterfuge poses the greatest long-term threat of all.
The House Homeland Security Committee, which has begun hearings and
investigations into radical Islam on American soil, should examine the role of Al-Jazeera
here and abroad.
38
End Notes:
Link to Title Photo in header from StoptheISM.com:
http://www.stoptheism.com/content/index.php?pid=1&cid=43
[1] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=2601
[2] www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/31.pdf and
[3] www.palsolidarity.org and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leila_Khaled
[4] http://palsolidarity.org/about-ism/
[5] http://web.archive.org/web/20020805193207/www.palsolidarity.org/about_us.htm
[6] http://www.ism-vancouver.org/whyism.html
[7] http://www.ism-france.org/charte.php?id=1
[8]
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2002/3/Passover%20suicide%20bo
mbing%20at%20Park%20Hotel%20in%20Netanya
[9] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/04/03/world/main505316.shtml
[10] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1457952/Israel-toturn-its-sights-on-the-terrorists-surrounding-Yasser-Arafat.html
[11] http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=6&x_article=316
[12] http://jat-action.org/ISM_essay_ref12.htm
[14] http://reocities.com/nstix/shapiro2.html and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huwaida_Arraf
[14] http://www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/speakers/168.html
The above link is to ISM affiliate website for Code Pink but provides a reasonable
biography except the deception that Ms. Arraf is a “peace activist.” She has made
previous comments in support of violence.
[15] http://www.seedsofpeace.org/about/mission
[16] http://www.hirhome.com/israel/seeds.htm
[17] http://www.investigativeproject.org/430/former-ambassador-defends-hlf
[18] http://israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=1355&q=1
[19] http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/138006
[21] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/georgerishmawiprofile.html
[22] http://www.answers.com/topic/popular-front-for-the-liberation-of-palestine
[23] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9000912038601222320#
[24] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oBOoOTpub8&feature=related
[25] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71GoLKq0Qcs&feature=related
[26] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/huwaida-arraf/8/a04/550
[27] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=12370
Author was provided with an ISM training manual for Northern California that
advised trainees not say they were human shields but human rights workers or peace
activists in order to deceive people. This was repeated in the London training manual
and the one in use today. Huwaida Arraf has taken credit for writing the manual.
[28] http://www.analyst-network.com/article.php?art_id=3249
[29] http://www.isracampus.org.il
[30] http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUScomintern.htm
[31] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comintern
39
[32] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101014.html
[33] http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40973
[34] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=9171
[35] http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127400
[36] http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2008/08/isms-paul-larudee-on-secret-tapewe-are/index.shtml
[37] http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/2449/pid/897
[38] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=9171
[39] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_return
[40] http://www.zionism-israel.com/issues/return_detail.html
[41] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Malcolm_X_any_means_necessary.jpg
[42] http://infoshop.org/page/WWP-FAQ
[43] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualprofile.asp?indid=2169
[44] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2190
[45] http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/Prairie-fire.pdf
[46] http://www.divestmentwatch.com/NewsStories/BIS2003-10/BIS-Letter-10-03.PDF
[47] http://www.vivapalestina.org/
[48] http://www.freegaza.org/
[49] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/aaan5.html
[50] http://sandbox.blog-city.com/khalidi_of_the_plo.htm
[51] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1426
[52] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderProfile.asp?fndid=5340
[53] http://www.omdurman.org/columns/nigelparry.html
[54]
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_ID=10&article_ID=8158&categ_id=5#axz
z1FHDkcYKG
http://www.stoptheism.com/content/index.php?pid=149&cid=222
[55] http://www.nlpc.org/stories/2011/02/15/chicago-seiu-local-leaders-probed-terrorlinks
[56] http://beckyjohnsononewomantalking.blogspot.com/2009/10/resource-center-for-noisrael.html
[57] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=933
[58] http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2006/nov/30/peres-stresses-globalization/
[59] http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/03/mazin-qumsiyeh-israeli-army-wants-me/
[60] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=28887
[61] http://www.endtheoccupation.org/groups.php
[62] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=7587 and
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6158
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14653
[63] http://www.gush-shalom.org/diary/diary37.html
[64] http://struggle.ws/mexico/reports/encount2_sol_meet_jun97.html
40
Additional information about this meeting regarding the ISM was obtained by the author
while working undercover.
[65] http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/01/mexicanrebels-stand-solidarity-gaza
[66] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6158
[67] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=626
[68] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Overview%20of%20Sabeel.html
[69] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=1416 [70] http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4458
[71] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=13551
[72] http://www.passia.org
[73] http://www.passia.org/seminars/98/S01.htm
[74] http://israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=1636&q=1
[75] http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4458
[76] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=13551
[77] http://www.islamicfinder.org/getitWorld.php?id=48513
[78] http://www.sabeel.org/
[79] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11041
[80] http://freedomist.com/2010/09/09/teachers%E2%80%99-unions-afscme-seiucreate-%E2%80%9Clabor-for-palestine%E2%80%9D-freedom-news/
[81] http://freedomist.com/2010/09/09/teachers%E2%80%99-unions-afscme-seiucreate-%E2%80%9Clabor-for-palestine%E2%80%9D-freedom-news/ and
http://www.nlpc.org/stories/2011/02/15/chicago-seiu-local-leaders-probed-terror-links
[82] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15272
[83] http://www.dafka.org/news/index.php?pid=4&id=463
[84] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1347
[85] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15272
[86] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1612
[87] http://www.palestinefreedom.org/
[88] http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/editordetail.php?id=345
[89] http://www.omdurman.org/columns/carr.html
[90] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=10792
[91] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11021
[92] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=5159
[93] http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2329
[94] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0601/Targeted-by-Israeli-raidWho-is-the-IHH/(page)/2
[95] http://www.investigativeproject.org/1998/ihhs-deep-longstanding-terror-ties
[96] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualprofile.asp?indid=2169
[97] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2190
[98] http://wrmea.com/component/content/article/3031-waging-peace-congressionalbriefing-on-operation-cast-lead.html
[99] http://homelandsecurityus.com/archives/3796
[100] http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/322.pdf
41
[101] http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/evidence-hizbollah-muslimscrossing-illegally-into-arizona-video/
[102] An undercover recording was made of the meeting that is available to law
enforcement.
[103] http://homelandsecurityus.com/archives/3796
[104] http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=12370
42
43
In this explosive report, The International
Solidarity Movement: Threat to America,
Israel and the World, Lee Kaplan reveals:
 The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) misrepresents itself as a
grassroots movement of pacifists and humanitarians.
 Heavily influenced by the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, a Marxist group, the ISM claims to be nonviolent, but its
activities further the terrorism of groups like Hamas.
 The ISM is not just one group, but an interlocking umbrella of many
groups, most of them Marxist-oriented.
 ISM activists include Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, former leaders
of the communist terrorist Weather Underground.
 The ISM uses the American college system to promote its agenda, as
well as churches, libraries, and labor unions.
 The ISM improperly and illegally relies on tax-deductible contributions
collected in the U.S.
 The ISM has infiltrated Congress and has enjoyed a privileged status
relationship with the U.S. State Department.
 U.S. law enforcement authorities have generally failed to recognize
the danger from the ISM.
ISM activities planned for 2011 could further undermine the peace process
with Israel and even bring on another Middle East war. It is time for
America and Israel to take action against the terrorist-supporting
subversive network.
44