Your Either With Us, Against Us, Or Both

The UAE, playing both sides in the War on Terror:

Is the UAE a source of support for Hamas? It certainly appears to be. In an important article in FrontPage Magazine last Friday (February 24), analysts Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen describe extensive strands of UAE funding for the terror organization. Indeed, as they observe:

On July 27, 2005, the Palestinian Information Center carried a public HAMAS statement thanking the UAE for it's "unstinting support." The statement said: "We highly appreciate his highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan (UAE president) in particular and the UAE people and government in general for their limitless support...that contributed more to consolidating our people's resoluteness in the face of the Israeli occupation".

The HAMAS statement continued: "the sisterly UAE had... never hesitated in providing aid for our Mujahid people pertaining to rebuilding their houses demolished by the [Israeli military] ... The UAE also spared no effort to offer financial and material aids to the Palestinian charitable societies."

Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan, the father of the current UAE president, is described as having been an ardent benefactor of Hamas as well as another U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), right up until his death in 2004 — i.e., three years after 9/11, the point at which the Bush administration maintains that the UAE became staunchly antiterrorist.

The UAE, moreover, continues to operate an ostensibly "charitable" entity, Human Appeal International, which is alleged to fund the terrorist activities of Hamas and PIJ by routing thousands upon thousands of dollars through the Palestinian Red Crescent Organization, whose branches in the Palestinian territories are controlled by Hamas. The terror organization is said then to transfer the money to purported charities which are actually fronts for Hamas's dirty work. As Ehrenfeld and Lappen elaborate, the UAE has a "compensation" plan for the Palestinian intifada. In 2001, this plan is said to have "included $3,000 for every Palestinian shaheed [i.e., "martyr" or suicide bomber], $2,000 for his family, $1,500 for those detained by Israel, $1,200 for each orphan. In addition, families of those terrorists whose homes Israel demolished each received $10,000."

Back in October 2005, moreover, the Palestinian Authority broke ground on a new town to be known as "Sheikh Khalifa City," in honor of the UAE president, who has ponied up $100 million for the project. As an Israeli news service reports: "The new town will not be used to ease the housing crisis in the PA's refugee camps, but will rather house relatives of those killed in the years of violence against Israel, other casualties such as the wounded and arrested, and families whose homes were razed during the war."

Meanwhile, America's premier expert on Islamic terrorism, Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, recently told MSNBC's Rita Cosby that "Hamas couriers as late as last year ... were sent to the West Bank or Gaza [who] came in with UAE cash. So there is still a problem of terrorist supporting operations."

If you are on Hamas' Ramadan card list, you have no business running port operations for America.