DALLAS - For jurors in the Hamas-support case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) who likely know nothing about the terrorist group, or about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the first full day of testimony Tuesday was dominated by a lesson in Hamas 101.
Matthew Levitt, a former deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, and now the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, walked jurors through everything from Middle East geography to the Hamas charter to the way non-violent social branches feed the group's overall terrorist agenda.
The testimony lays a foundation for why the United States outlawed transactions with, and support for, Hamas in the mid 1990s. The five defendants, who lost an earlier court battle to prevent Levitt from testifying, are accused of breaking those laws by routing money to Hamas' social arms through a series of charities, known as zakat committees, in the West Bank and Gaza.
Levitt, author of the 2006 book Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, discussed Hamas leaders such as Mousa Abu Marzook, the organization's evolution and its attacks like a December 2001 suicide bombing on a bus in Haifa that killed 16 people in a community that includes Arabs and Jews. Read more ...
Matthew Levitt, a former deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, and now the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, walked jurors through everything from Middle East geography to the Hamas charter to the way non-violent social branches feed the group's overall terrorist agenda.
The testimony lays a foundation for why the United States outlawed transactions with, and support for, Hamas in the mid 1990s. The five defendants, who lost an earlier court battle to prevent Levitt from testifying, are accused of breaking those laws by routing money to Hamas' social arms through a series of charities, known as zakat committees, in the West Bank and Gaza.
Levitt, author of the 2006 book Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, discussed Hamas leaders such as Mousa Abu Marzook, the organization's evolution and its attacks like a December 2001 suicide bombing on a bus in Haifa that killed 16 people in a community that includes Arabs and Jews. Read more ...
Source: IPT News
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