Iran Increases Weapons Flow To Gaza
In recent days, Iran sent a series of missile and rocket convoys to the Islamic Jihad terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, a senior Egyptian security official told this column. The increased weapons flow to Gaza, said the official, is part of a wider Iranian strategy to prepare for the possibility of a war involving Syria, with particular concern over the prospect of a future Turkish or NATO confrontation with Damascus.
Although the Egyptian military aided in attempting to stop some of the Iranian convoys, some weapons made it through to Gaza, the official said.
The Iranian arming of Islamic Jihad is causing tension between the jihadist group and Gaza’s Hamas rulers. This column previously reported that according to well-placed sources within Hamas, the jihadist group has been asked by the Egyptian military to stay out of any future confrontation between Israel and Iran.
For the first time in recent years, Hamas, feeling confident from major Muslim Brotherhood gains in the region, is considering distancing itself somewhat from Iran, the sources said.
MK Danon: U.S. Needs Increased
Security At Theaters, Malls
In the wake of one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history – at the opening of the film “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colo. – Danny Danon, deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, is warning Americans to start taking security seriously at all of its movie theaters.
“When I come to the U.S., sometimes I ask myself, ‘How come there’s no security in some location?’ ” Danon said on Aaron Klein Investigative Radio on New York’s WABC Radio. “I think in the future, we would see a change also in the U.S., not [only] against lunatics like we saw [in Colorado], but also terrorist organizations. I’m talking about checking your bag when you’re entering a mall or you’re going to a cinema.
“You are not familiar with that in the U.S., but in Israel we live with that on a daily basis,” Danon continued. “Yes, it costs us more money, but we feel safer.”
Bachmann Overlooks Disturbing
Muslim Brotherhood Connection
Charges made in a 16-page letter by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) against longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin miss what may be one of her most troubling radical connections – her family is directly tied to the Muslim World League. The League is a Muslim charity known to have spawned terror groups, including one declared by the U.S. government to be an official al-Qaeda front.
In her now well-publicized letter, Bachmann notes that Huma’s father, Professor Syed Abedin, was the founder of the Institute for Minority Affairs, a Saudi group that “had the quiet but active support,” Bachmann wrote, of Umar Abdallah Nasif, the Secretary General of the Muslim World League.
However, KleinOnline revealed an even more direct connection to the terror-stained charity – Huma’s mother, Saleha Abedin, was the official representative of the Muslim World League in the 1990’s. Saleha Abedin has been quoted in numerous press accounts as both representing the MWL and serving as a delegate for the charity.
The MWL was founded in Mecca in 1962 and bills itself as one of the largest Islamic non-governmental organizations. It has been accused of terror ties, as have its various offshoots, including the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO, and Al Haramain, which was declared a terror financing front by the U.S. and UN.
In 1998, the MWL founded the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, developing chapters in about 50 countries, including in Oregon for a time, until it was designated a terror organization.
In the early 1990s, evidence began to grow that the foundation was funding Islamist militants in Somalia and Bosnia, and a 1996 CIA report detailed its Bosnian militant ties.
The U.S. Treasury designated Al Haramain’s offices in Kenya and Tanzania as sponsors of terrorism for their role in planning and funding the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa. The Comoros Islands office was also so designated because it “was used as a staging area and exfiltration route for the perpetrators of the 1998 bombings.”
The New York Times reported in 2003 that Al Haramain had provided funds to the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. The Indonesia office was later designated a terrorist entity by the Treasury.