Com­ment: With the rhetor­i­cal and diplo­matic firestorm unfold­ing in the wake of the fiasco staged by Israel in the Mediter­ranean, a num­ber of things become obvi­ous, includ­ing ques­tions about how Israeli intel­li­gence failed to grasp the inevitabil­ity of such an event, if extreme cau­tion were not exercised.

And it wasn’t.

First, the IHH–the char­ity that was at the epi­cen­ter of events, dou­bles as a terror-assisting network.

“Shoot­ing the Mes­sen­ger: A Look at the Facts on the Turk­ish Aid Group IHH” by Evan Kohlmann; counterterrorismblog.org; 6/1/2010.

When I first pub­lished a research paper four years ago with the Dan­ish Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Stud­ies (DIIS) on the Turk­ish Mus­lim char­i­ta­ble group Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), I didn’t imag­ine it would get much of a response out­side the aca­d­e­mic con­fer­ence in which it was pre­sented in Copen­hagen. How­ever, as a result of this weekend’s tragic Israeli raid on an IHH-sponsored flotilla of ves­sels attempt­ing to break the ongo­ing block­ade on Gaza, the group has sud­denly jumped into the head­lines, and has become a focus of intense debate over the inten­tions of the flotilla orga­niz­ers and the con­tro­ver­sial killing of at least 9 would-be par­tic­i­pants by Israeli commandos.

Though my DIIS paper made no men­tion of IHH’s activ­i­ties in Gaza or in sup­port of suf­fer­ing Pales­tin­ian refugees, some of those angered by the Israeli flotilla raid have instead turned their emo­tional ani­mus on past crit­ics of IHH, such as myself. While I cer­tainly can’t speak with any author­ity on what took place on the Gaza flotilla boats, I’m rather mys­ti­fied why the flotilla killings–whether right or wrong–would have any bear­ing on the fac­tual ques­tion of whether the IHH has engaged in illicit financ­ing and episodic sup­port to extrem­ist groups. The evi­dence in this regard is fairly weighty, and much of it comes directly from the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment — not the United States, nor the Israelis.

On Decem­ber 5, 1997, Turk­ish police raided the IHH head­quar­ters office in Istan­bul and arrested its prin­ci­pal lead­ers. Fol­low­ing their pre­lim­i­nary inquiry, on April 27, 1998, Turk­ish inves­ti­ga­tors launched a for­mal legal case against the IHH. Accord­ing to a report pro­duced by French coun­tert­er­ror­ism mag­is­trates, the inquiry was spurred by the sale of an AK-47 assault rifle to an IHH leader by “a mem­ber of the ille­gal orga­ni­za­tion VASAT.” Turk­ish police reported seiz­ing a series of dis­turb­ing items from the IHH in Turkey, includ­ing an explo­sive device, two sticks of dyna­mite, bomb mak­ing instruc­tions, and a “jihad flag.” The French mag­is­trates report noted that:

“It appears that the detained mem­bers of IHH were going to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chech­nya... The essen­tial goal of this Asso­ci­a­tion was to ille­gally arm its mem­ber­ship for over­throw­ing demo­c­ra­tic, sec­u­lar, and con­sti­tu­tional order present in Turkey and replac­ing it with an Islamic state founded on the Shariah. Under the cover of this orga­ni­za­tion known under the name of IHH, [IHH lead­ers] acted to recruit vet­eran sol­diers in antic­i­pa­tion of the com­ing holy war. In par­tic­u­lar, some men were sent into war zones in Mus­lim coun­tries in order to acquire com­bat expe­ri­ence. On the spot, the for­ma­tion of a mil­i­tary unit was assured. In addi­tion, towards the pur­pose of obtain­ing polit­i­cal sup­port from these coun­tries, finan­cial aid was trans­ferred [from IHH], as well as caches of firearms, knives, and pre-fabricated explosives.”

An offi­cial review of the phone records from the IHH’s office in Istan­bul revealed two calls to the Bosn­ian Mujahideen Brigade unit head­quar­ters in Zenica, five phone calls to a mem­ber of the Alger­ian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) based in Lon­don, and at least one call to Anwar Shaaban’s noto­ri­ous Islamic Cul­tural Insti­tute in Milan, Italy.

The IHH’s con­nec­tions to inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism have even sur­faced in sworn wit­ness tes­ti­mony in the U.S. fed­eral court sys­tem. Dur­ing the trial of attempted Mil­le­nium bomber Ahmed Ressam, noted French coun­tert­er­ror­ism mag­is­trate Jean-Louis Bruguiere took the stand and tes­ti­fied that IHH had played “[a]n impor­tant role” in Ressam’s bomb plot tar­get­ing LAX. Under repeated ques­tion­ing, Bruguiere insisted that “[t]here’s a rather close rela­tion”: “The IHH is an NGO, but it was kind of a type of cover-up. in order to obtain forged doc­u­ments and also to obtain dif­fer­ent forms of infil­tra­tion for Mujahideen in com­bat. And also to go and gather[recruit] these Mujahideens. And finally, one of the last respon­si­bil­i­ties that they had was also to be impli­cated or involved in weapons trafficking.”

None of this infor­ma­tion is con­sid­ered sen­si­tive or secret, nor is it par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult to come by. Turk­ish gov­ern­ment offi­cials have openly acknowl­edged as much in major West­ern media out­lets. In August 1999, the gov­er­nor of Istan­bul was inter­viewed in the Wash­ing­ton Post after he per­son­ally ordered local IHH bank accounts frozen because of sus­pected crim­i­nal activ­ity. He explained at the time, “All legal insti­tu­tions may have some ille­gal con­nec­tions. This might be the case here. If they don’t like it, they can appeal in court.”

To his credit, the for­mer Istan­bul gov­er­nor here under­scores another crit­i­cal point. Con­tem­po­rary ter­ror finance net­works are most effec­tively cur­tailed using accepted legal sanc­tions and transna­tional coop­er­a­tion between regional allies. Inci­dents such as the deadly Gaza flotilla raid ulti­mately under­mine the bat­tle against illicit financ­ing, and weaken shared inter­na­tional resolve to pun­ish those who manip­u­late human­i­tar­ian relief as a cover to fund ter­ror­ism. The Israeli gov­ern­ment must be more mind­ful in the future of the wider polit­i­cal reper­cus­sions its attempts at puni­tive actions can have, whether tech­ni­cally jus­ti­fied or not. Those reper­cus­sions impact not only the state of Israel, but also carry implicit costs for the United States and its Euro­pean allies.

The milieu that orga­nized the Flotilla is deeply tied to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the Islamic fas­cist net­work that spawned al-Qaeda, Hamas and Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad. Note the pres­ence in the flotilla milieu of inter­ests tied to Youssef Qaradawi. One of the most influ­en­tial Sunni imams, he is closely linked to the Bank al-Taqwa.

In addi­tion, Al Jazeera net­work (at the front of the media cov­er­age of the event) is closely tied to the Broth­er­hood.

“BREAKING NEWS: Dutch Foun­da­tion Tied To Gaza Flotilla Orga­nizer Was Work­ing With Turk­ish Char­ity Involved”; Global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Daily Report; 6/2/2010.

A Dutch Foun­da­tion tied to the Global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and linked to a major Gaza flotilla orga­nizer has been work­ing with the the Turk­ish char­ity known as Insani Yardim Vakfi (aka IHH Human­i­tar­ian Relief Foun­da­tion, The Foun­da­tion for Human Rights and Free­dom and Human­i­tar­ian Relief), the spon­sor of the ship involved in the con­fronta­tion with Israeli naval forces. Accord­ing to Dutch records, the Sticht­ing (Foun­da­tion) KUDUS VAKFI was founded in 2003. Kudus Vakfi is trans­lated from Turk­ish as “Jerusalem Foun­da­tion” and it appears that Kudus Vakfi is the same Foun­da­tion known ear­lier as the Sticht­ing Jer­salem (Jerusalem Foun­da­tion) and which is a likely suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion to the Al-Aqsa Foun­da­tion Nether­lands, whose assets were frozen in April 2003 by the Min­istry of the Inte­rior who stated that the orga­ni­za­tion was col­lect­ing money for Hamas and/or orga­ni­za­tions related to Hamas that sup­port or develop ter­ror­ist activities. . . .

. . . The Union of Good is a coali­tion of Islamic char­i­ties that pro­vides finan­cial sup­port to both the Hamas “social” infra­struc­ture, as well as its ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties. It is headed by global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Youssef Qaradawi, [asso­ci­ated closely with Bank al-Taqwa–D.E.] and most of the trustees and mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions are asso­ci­ated with the global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The Union of Good was banned by Israel in 2002 and was recently des­ig­nated a ter­ror­ist entity by the United States, although nei­ther Youssef Qaradawi nor any of the Trustees were sim­i­larly des­ig­nated. Despite the fact that action has been taken against some of its mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions in Europe, many of its other Euro­pean mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions con­tinue to oper­ate. Fur­ther, the Union of Good itself does not appear to be under inves­ti­ga­tion in Europe. . . .

. . . Other pre­vi­ous posts have also described the heavy par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Gaza flotilla, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood back­ground of the Al Jazeera jour­nal­ist report­ing from the Turk­ish ship involved in the con­fronta­tion, and the intent of the Global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to send another flotilla to Gaza.

It was clear what the flotilla and “peace activists” had in mind–the “Lat­est Inci­dent.“

“Israel and the Block­ade” [Edi­to­r­ial]; The New York Times; 6/1/2010.

The sup­port­ers of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla had more than human­i­tar­ian inten­tions. The Gaza Free­dom March made its motives clear in a state­ment before Monday’s deadly con­fronta­tion: “A vio­lent response from Israel will breathe new life into the Pales­tine sol­i­dar­ity move­ment, draw­ing atten­tion to the blockade.” . . .

So WHY did the Israelis fall so obtusely into this trap, in which they have per­formed as their worst ene­mies have wanted?! In future posts, we will explore some lines of spec­u­la­tion in this regard.