Pat Dollard

Tweet

Pro-Palestinian, left-wing and anti-war
CNS News:

Tensions in the Middle East over the recent Gaza flotilla incident could surface in New York City on Thursday evening, when a pro-Palestinian group hosts flotilla activists at a public meeting Jewish activists have tried to thwart.

An organization called Al-Awda (The Palestine Right to Return Coalition) is holding a meeting in a Brooklyn church featuring a leading official in IHH, the controversial Turkish organization behind the attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Pro-Palestinian, left-wing and anti-war organizations are co-sponsoring the event.

Also scheduled to speak are two people who were onboard the Mavi Marmara, the ship on which deadly clashes between Israeli commandos and pro-Palestinian activists left nine activists dead. The two are U.S.-based filmmaker Iara Lee and left-wing British activist Kevin Ovenden.

Al-Awda further accused its detractors of seeking “to pin the label of ‘terrorist’ on any who oppose the vicious and immoral blockade of Gaza.”

It urged people to turn out in large numbers on Thursday: “Let’s answer this vile attempt at intimidation with a powerful mass meeting.”

Earlier this week, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York held a press conference with a group of New York lawmakers, urging the State Department to closely investigate anyone linked to the IHH flotilla applying for a visa to visit the United States.

“We have a responsibility to make certain that all those who come to New York are in no way associated with terrorism, its ideology or its tactics,” JCRC president Janice Shorenstein told the event.

JCRC says more than 24,000 people have signed its petition on the matter, addressed to the State Department.

IHH, an acronym for a Turkish organization called Insani Yardim Vakfi, is part of an Islamic “charitable” network, the Union of Good, which was designated by the U.S. government in 2008 for funding Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza.

Since the May 31 clash on the Mavi Marmara, IHH has come under closer scrutiny, and leaders of both parties in the U.S. Senate are calling on the administration to investigate the organization.

“We recommend that your administration consider whether the IHH should be put on the list of foreign terrorist organizations, after an examination by the intelligence community, the State Department, and the Treasury Department,” Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wrote in a letter to President Obama, citing concerns about connections to Hamas.

Founded in the early 1990s with the declared aim of providing humanitarian aid to Muslims affected by the war in Bosnia, IHH denies claims that it has jihadist links. The Israeli government in 2008 announced it was banning 36 Union of Good member organizations, including IHH, because of their support for Hamas.

IHH officials announced this week that they would send another flotilla of ships to Gaza next month.

Israel says its naval blockade aims to prevent the smuggling of weapons or other items with military or terrorist applications from reaching Hamas. Humanitarian aid crosses into Gaza by road, in conjunction with aid agencies.

Scheduled to appear at Thursday night’s event in New York City is Ahmet Faruk Unsal, a member of the IHH executive board as well as chairman of a Turkish group called the Organization of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed People.

He has taken part in previous aid convoys to Gaza, including an overland one last January when, according to the IHH Website, he and IHH president Bulent Yıldırım met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Unsal is also a former member of parliament from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP). He was described by a leftist news outlet in 2004 as “a driving force behind the Turkish Parliament historic refusal [in 2003] to allow George Bush to launch a second front on Iraq from Turkish soil.”

Hamas Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh, right, meets with IHH president Bulent Yildirim in Gaza in January 2010. (Photo: IHH)

Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH) leader Bulent Yildirim addresses supporters in front of the Mavi Marmara last month before the flotilla departed on its voyage to break the blockade of Gaza. (Photo: IHH)

‘Terrorist label’

At the JCRC press conference, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said, “Too many on the flotilla were not trying to deliver humanitarian aid. They were trying to run Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which was legal under international law, and were looking to spark a violent confrontation.”

“We now know that some of the passengers on the Mavi Marmara came armed with the intent, not of providing humanitarian assistance, but of attacking Israeli soldiers,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)

“It is the responsibility of our government to ensure that terrorists, and those who support terrorist activities, not be allowed to enter the United States.”

Asked for its reaction to the JCRC campaign, Al-Awda late Wednesday provided a statement calling it “a clear attempt to not only deny the [flotilla] passengers’ right to speak but to deny the people of the United States the right to hear their words.”

It said that the featured guests for Thursday’s event — Unsal, Lee and Ovenden — “come with nothing but words.”

“But words of truth strike fear into the hearts of certain hate-filled New York politicians who have voted time and again to turn U.S. taxpayers’ dollars into missiles and bombs for Israel’s war machine,” it said.