April 25, 2016 Husam El-Qoulaq Insults Livni

April 25, 2016 Islam Says No to Jewish Homeland and State of Israel

Earlier this month, Harvard law student Husam El-Qoulaq posed a question at a public conference to Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister.

“How is it that you are so smelly?” Mr. El-Qoulaq wanted to know. “It’s regarding your odor―about the odor of Tzipi Livni, very smelly.”

And Mr. El-qoulaq, who is active in a Harvard affiliate of students for justice in Palestine, or SJP, later offered an anonymous apology “to anyone who felt offended.”

Mr. Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official and terrorism-finance expert, notes in his testimony that a prominent backer of SJP and like-minded groups is an organization called American Muslims for Palestine, based in Palos Hills, Ill., and led by UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian, who also happens to be one of SJP’s founders. AMP claimed to have spent $100,000 on anti-Israel campus activities in 2014, including to SJP. An AMP conference that year at a Chicago Hyatt invited participants to “come and navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.”

FDD discovered that many of AMP’s leading members were previously active in some dubious former charities. The most prominent, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation For Relief and Development, was shut down in 2001 by the federal government for providing millions in funds to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas; five Holy Land officials eventually were convicted to prison terms and two others fled the country.

Today, AMP’s leaders include at least three Holy Land alumni. One of them is Milwaukee furniture salesman Salah Sarsour, who last year told Al Jazeer that an AMP conference he chaired “aims to keep up with and support the Palestinian people’s continuous intifada.”

According to a November 2001 FBI report, Mr. Sarsour’s brother Jamil confessed in 1998 to Israeli officials that “some of the members of the Islamic Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and his brothers Salah and Imad are involved in raising money in the name of HLFRD that is actually for Hamas.” Mr. Sarsour spent time in Israeli prison for Hamas-related activities but has not been charged with a crime in the U.S. He did not return calls for comment.

Then there is the Islamic Association for Palestine, which in 2004 was found civilly liable in federal court for supporting Hamas and was disbanded in 2010. At least four former IAP senior leaders are currently active in AMP, including its national policy director, Osama Abu Irshaid.

Source: The Wall Street Journal. April 25, 2016.