As PJM reported on October 12, federal investigators have targeted — and federal agents have raided — home-grown revolutionaries spread across America suspected of materially supporting terrorism. Summoned before a Chicago grand jury, self-styled peace activist Mick Kelly faces government inquiries into his relationship with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and Hatem Abudayyeh, executive director of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN).
Though hardly a household name, Abudayyeh’s own connections run deep into enemy territory. The Obama administration saw fit to invite Abudayyeh to the White House for an April 22 meeting of “Arab-American leaders.” But Abudayyeh’s home in Chicago was raided on the same day as Mick Kelly’s in Minneapolis. Given the extent of Abudayyeh’s professional relationships with officially designated terrorists and their associates, the raid should come as no surprise.
As Chicago’s Channel 7 News has reported, AAAN received “as much as $457,000” in government funds since 1998. Organizations led by Abudayyeh’s associates have long been targeted by federal actions against those who fund terror. Last month’s raid suggests that the government suspects Abudayyeh of funneling money to Hamas while siphoning public dollars.
According to corporate documents, Abudayyeh is also the national coordinator of the U.S. Palestine Community Network (USPCN). As its filings with the state of Illinois reveal, USPCN was co-founded by Rafeeq Jaber. A prolific co-founder, Jaber is behind the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Mosque Foundation, and the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), where he also served as president.
Jaber is no run-of-the-mill Islamic activist. The IAP, for instance, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. In 2007, the federal government charged the Holy Land Foundation — formerly known as the Occupied Land Fund — with financing Hamas and other Islamic terror groups. By 2009, Holy Land Foundation officers and founders were convicted and sentenced to years in prison in the first case, and given life sentences in the second.
In echoes of this September’s events, a federal grand jury indicted the Holy Land Foundation in July of 2004. And in December, in the case of Boim vs. Quranic Literacy, the Holy Land Foundation was found jointly liable with the IAP to the tune of $52 million — a sum tripled by the District Court to $156 million. In that case, the family of David Boim — shot dead outside Jerusalem by Hamas in 1996 — sued the Islamic groups under federal anti-terror law.
Abudayyeh’s connection with Hamas runs deeper still.
Rafeeq Jaber co-founded IAP with Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzook, a high-ranking Hamas leader listed by the United States as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Twice indicted for conspiring to violate anti-terror law and working directly with Hamas, Marzook lived in Falls Church, Virginia, until 1992, when he left for Hamas in Syria and Jordan. Twice expelled from Jordan and refused entry into the U.S., Marzook is currently believed to reside once again in Syria — heading the Hamas office in Damascus according to the Anti-Defamation League.
USPCN’s own activities demonstrate that Abudayyeh has kept his connections with terror groups fresh. At USPCN’s 2008 Palestinian Popular Conference — as documented in the Conference’s program posted online — guests included Sami Al-Arian’s daughter Laila, and Jaber himself (listed as a “community organizer,” no less). In 2006, Al-Arian pleaded guilty in a federal case brought against him for aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a specially designated terrorist organization. He remains under house arrest at his daughter’s home in Northern Virginia.
It seems clear from Mick Kelly’s subpoena — which demands information on Kelly’s relationships and travel in Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories — that investigators are interested in the full extent of American connections with Hamas, including and beyond those maintained by Abudayyeh.
Rather than a shared Islamism, what unites America’s revolutionary socialists with Palestinian organizations, more than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is Marxism-Leninism. As multiple news articles and reports posted at Kelly’s Fight Back! News website reveal, Kelly and his associates work hand in hand with the PFLP — publishing, for instance, an account of a 42nd anniversary rally in Gaza “written by the PFLP,” and interviewing the PFLP’s general secretary, Ahmad Saadat. The United States continues to classify the PFLP as a terrorist organization.
Remarkably, the 21st century threats facing America at home and abroad have deep roots in the anti-American ideologies of the 20th century. What’s more, America’s enemies today remain intimately connected with the very same villains and organizations — like the IRA and its splinter groups — that have practiced terror and militant violence for decades.
This disturbing fact is the focus of the next PJM report in this series.
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