"Humanitarian Relief" Wing of Hamas and Al-Qaeda
The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedom and Humanitarian Relief (better known by its Turkish acronym, IHH) is the group that organized the six-ship flotilla which recently tried, without success, to sail all the way to Gaza. Established in Turkey in 1992, the Foundation sends aid to distressed areas throughout the Middle East – in the form of food, medicine, vocational education, and building supplies. A prime destination for this aid is Gaza, where – according to IHH – Palestinians are being oppressed by an unjustified Israeli naval blockade. (For the record, that blockade was put in place to prevent Hamas, which controls Gaza politically and has fired thousands of rockets into southern Israeli towns in recent years, from importing additional weaponry from Iran and other allies abroad.)
For several days last week, as the flotilla approached Gaza, Israel issued warnings that the ships would not be permitted to reach their destination without first submitting to an inspection of their cargoes – to ensure that no weaponry was being transported. But when the respective crews of the vessels refused to comply, Israeli commandos took action and intercepted the flotilla in the early morning hours of May 31. The IHH-affiliated activists responded with violence, instantly attacking the commandos with knives and clubs, and throwing one of them overboard. In the melee that ensued, ten activists were killed and seven Israeli soldiers were wounded. How could this be? How can we be expected to believe that a well-meaning "humanitarian relief" group would ever behave in a manner that might provoke violent reprisals from Israeli troops? A more thorough examination of IHH's history and affiliations explains everything.
While IHH is indeed involved in the aforementioned humanitarian endeavors, its overall objectives are much broader. Belying the dove of peace whose image appears on its logo, IHH overtly supports Hamas, is sympathetic to al Qaeda, and maintained regular contact with al Qaeda cells and the Sunni insurgency during the bloodiest stretches of the Iraq War. Moreover, IHH has supported jihadist terror networks not only in Iraq, but also in Bosnia, Syria, Afghanistan, and Chechnya. According to Carnegie Endowment analyst Henri Barkey, IHH is "an Islamist organization" that "has been deeply involved with Hamas for some time." A 2006 report by the Danish Institute for International Studies characterized IHH as one of many "charitable front groups that provide support to Al-Qaida" and the global jihad.
Is the IHH beginning to sound less and less like a "humanitarian relief" group? Let's look a little deeper still.
According to a French intelligence report, in the mid-1990s IHH leader Bülent Yildirim was directly involved in recruiting "veteran soldiers" to organize jihad activities, and in dispatching IHH operatives to war zones in Islamic countries to gain combat experience. The report also stated that IHH had transferred money as well as "caches of firearms, knives and pre-fabricated explosives" to Muslim fighters in those countries. Given this track record, can Israel's concern about the contents of the IHH flotilla cargoes really be considered excessive or unwarranted?
In 1996, IHH continued to burnish its credentials as a "humanitarian relief" organization when an examination of its telephone records showed that repeated calls had been made to an al Qaeda guest house in Milan and to Algerian terrorists operating in Europe. That same year, the U.S. government formally identified IHH as having connections to extremist groups in Iran and Algeria.
In December 1997, Turkish authorities, acting on a tip from sources claiming that IHH leaders had purchased automatic weapons from other regional Islamic militant groups, initiated a domestic criminal investigation of IHH. A thorough search of the organization's Istanbul bureau uncovered a large assortment of firearms, explosives, bomb-making instructions, and a "jihad flag." In addition, Turkish authorities seized a host of IHH documents whose contents ultimately led investigators to conclude that the group's members "were going to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya."
Near the end of 2000, IHH organized protests against proposals to overthrow that humanitarian icon, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein; American and Israeli flags were burned at these rallies.
During the April 2001 trial of would-be "millennium bomber" Ahmed Ressam, it was revealed that IHH had played an "important role" in the plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on December 31, 1999. Some reasonable observers might contend that to classify such a pursuit under the heading of "humanitarian relief" would require an unduly broad definition of that term.
In 2002, investigators found correspondences from IHH in the offices of the Success Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organization whose Secretary was Abdul Rahman Alamoudi. For the record: The Brotherhood was the ideological forebear of Hamas and al Qaeda; it supports jihad; and it seeks to impose shari'a law on the entire civilized world. Mr. Alamoudi, for his part, is currently serving a prison term of nearly a quarter-century for his role as a funder of international terrorism. He is best known for having proudly declared himself to be a passionate supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah. The connections to "humanitarian relief" seem rather tenuous here.
According to a report issued by a website close to Israeli military intelligence: "[S]ince Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, IHH has supported Hamas' propaganda campaigns by organizing public support conferences in Turkey." The report also states that IHH continues to operate widely throughout Gaza and to funnel large sums of money to support the Hamas infrastructure.
In January 2008, an IHH delegation met with Ahmed Bahar, chairman of Hamas' council in the Gaza Strip. At the meeting, the delegation not only boasted about the large amount of financial support it had given Hamas during the preceding year, but also declared its intent to double that sum in the future. Once again, we are left to wonder how any of this falls under the rubric of "humanitarian relief."
In 2008 Israel banned IHH from the country because of the organization's membership in the "Union of Good" (UOG), a Hamas-founded umbrella coalition comprised of more than 50 Islamic charities (most of which are associated with the global Muslim Brotherhood) that channel money and goods to Hamas-affiliated institutions. In December 2008, the U.S. government designated UOG as a terrorist entity that was guilty of "diverting" donations that were intended for "social welfare and other charitable services," and using those funds "to strengthen Hamas' political and military position."
In January 2009, IHH head Bülent Yildirim met with Khaled Mash'al, chairman of Hamas' political bureau in Damascus, and Mash'al thanked Yildirim for the support of his organization.
In November 2009 IHH activist Izzat Shahin transferred tens of thousands of American dollars from IHH to the Islamic Charitable Society (in Hebron) and Al-Tadhamun (in Nablus), two of Hamas' most important front groups posing as "charitable societies."
This, then, is the IHH: a pack of anti-Semitic supporters of terrorism, cloaking themselves in the vestments of victimhood, and bleating to the world about how unfairly they have been treated by the very nation whose extermination they have worked long and hard to bring about. It's actually a story that has become quite familiar.
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