united states of america 2007

 

A total of 1,460 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the US in 2007, compared to 1,554 in 2006, including 48 attacks on Jewish individuals and 93 on property. Although not marked by the volume of antisemitism evidenced in 2006 demonstrations protesting the Second Lebanon War, several anti-Israel events in 2007 far exceeded the bounds of legitimate criticism. The racist skinhead movement in the US has undergone a strong resurgence; on the other hand, there were a number of arrests and convictions of racist skinheads in 2007.

 

the jewish community

The Jewish community in the United States − the largest concentration of Jews in the world outside Israel − numbers 5.2 million, or 2.2 percent of the total population of 282.1 million. The bulk of American Jewry live in major metropolitan areas and their environs, including New York (1.45 million), Los Angeles (519,000), Southeast Florida (498,000), Chicago (261,000), Boston (227,000), San Francisco Bay (210,000), Philadelphia (206,000) and Cleveland (82,000). The intermarriage rate is high, accounting for more than 50 percent of all unions involving a Jewish partner.

Leading national Jewish organizations include the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Anti-Defamation League (ADL), B'nai Brith, Hadassah, Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Jewish War Veterans (JWV) and many other religious, fraternal and Zionist groups. The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations acts as the domestic and foreign policy umbrella group for 52 member organizations. The United Jewish Communities (UJC) represents Jewish community federations and independent Jewish communities throughout North America.

There is an active Jewish press and almost every community with a large Jewish population supports its own English-language weekly.

 

racist organizations and groups

In 2007, the immigration issue served to mobilize US white supremacist groups. Neo-Nazis, Klan groups, racist academics and others held and participated in rallies and other events across the country focusing on the “ruin” of white America. While most directed their ire against Hispanics (mostly Mexicans), some blamed Jews for promoting immigration and diversity.

 

Neo-Nazi Groups

The National Socialist Movement (NSM), the largest neo-Nazi group in the US, staged antisemitic and anti-immigrant events, attended the events of other white supremacist groups, and attempted to garner publicity by presenting itself as a white civic organization involved in highway cleanups and disaster relief. In December, the group relocated its headquarters from Minneapolis to Detroit. Two months earlier, internal dissension in the NSM led John Taylor Bowles, a former presidential candidate of the movement and national election director, and South Carolina chapter leader, to break away and form his own group, the National Socialist Order of America (NSOA).

Bill White leads the American National Socialist Workers Party, a Virginia-based group he started in 2006 after he left the NSM. Through his website and magazine, White published virulently antisemitic and racist material and often posted the addresses of his enemies, including personal information about Elie Wiesel and members of the his family, following an antisemitic attack on the Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor in February (see below).

The National Alliance (NA), headquartered in West Virginia, operates Resistance Records, a white power music company, and disseminates its ideology via Internet radio and sporadic publications. The organization has been severely weakened as a national operation, divided by competing factions and the conviction of Shaun Walker, one of its leaders, who was sentenced to an 87-month prison term in April 2007 for the racially-motivated beating of a Mexican-American in Utah in 2002. In May 2007, the NA hosted a Holocaust denial conference on its West Virginia compound. Speakers included extremists from around the country and abroad, such as Willis Carto (see below), long-time American neo-Nazi Edward Fields, South African white supremacist Arthur Kemp, and British antisemite and Holocaust denier Lady Michele Renouf.

In March, the neo-Nazi National Vanguard (NV), a NA offshoot, disbanded due primarily to the arrest of its leader, Kevin Alfred Strom, on charges of possessing child pornography and witness tampering. The NV announcement directed members toward European Americans United, a new neo-Nazi organization that has held relatively few events and whose members keep a low profile. The Nationalist Coalition, another NA offshoot, was quite active, hosting speakers, protests, a fundraiser, flier/literature distributions, and gatherings for white supremacists in Arizona, Colorado, and Florida.

 

White Supremacist Individuals and Groups

New Jersey-based radio host Hal Turner continued his campaign to demonize Jews and other minorities on the airwaves and in posts on his website. Turner’s comments − and those of his listeners − frequently promoted violence against Jews, blacks, and Hispanics. Regarding Jews, Turner stated: “Does a lot of it start to make sense when put in the context of wiping out currencies in the name of globalization? It's the jew bankers, folks. Another jew banking scam designed to enrich the few at the utter devastation of the rest! This is betrayal folks! Betrayal by our highest elected officials!” On black Americans, he said, “None of the programs we created or the money we spent has reduced black crime. Since all the new programs have failed, it seems to me that we need to go back to what worked in the past. Rope. I advocate a return to Lynchings.”

On numerous occasions in 2007, he suggested that political leaders, including the president, US Senators and Congressmen, as well as federal judges, be assassinated. In August, he organized a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan, against "black crime/terrorism" in the city. He was also a speaker at NordicFest, a white power concert sponsored by the Imperial Klans of America in Kentucky in May. A few days earlier, he gave a speech in Knoxville, Tennessee, at a rally protesting a young white couple's murder, reportedly by a group of black men, during which he suggested a return to lynching. In fall, Turner began selling nooses on his website in response to the publicity and protests surrounding the Jena 6 case, in which six black youths were charged with attempted murder for allegedly beating a white classmate at a high school in Jena, Louisiana.

The Ku Klux Klan experienced a number of mergers in 2007, although its membership remained steady. In addition to employing antisemitic and white supremacist rhetoric in its activities, the Klan has adopted a vehemently anti-immigrant message, directed primarily toward Hispanics.

Willis Carto, a long-time antisemitic propagandist, publishes the antisemitic newspaper American Free Press (AFP) and the Holocaust denying Barnes Review. Carto was a speaker at the National Alliance’s Holocaust denial conference in May, and he maintains contact with a wide variety of antisemites and white supremacists. Mark Glenn, a writer for AFP, hosted a conference in October in Irvine, California, entitled “No More Wars for Israel.” The two-day event consisted of a series of protests and lectures demonizing Jews and Israel and accusing both of controlling America and orchestrating the Iraq war. Speakers included antisemites and white supremacists from the United States and abroad, among them, Kaukab Siddique, head of the antisemitic US-based Islamic Jamaat Muslimeen; Charles E. Carlson, co-founder of We Hold These Truths, an Arizona-based extremist group that focuses on propagating antisemitic conspiracy theories, Michael Collins Piper, a long-time writer for the antisemitic AFP; and Carto.

White supremacist James Edwards hosted “The Political Cesspool,” a nightly, Tennessee-based Internet and AM radio show. Along with his staff, Edwards interviewed a vast spectrum of Holocaust deniers, antisemites, and white supremacists, including Willis Carto, the neo-Nazi singing duo Prussian Blue, antisemite Ted Pike, Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, and Frank Roman, a founding member of the neo-Nazi European Americans United group. . Edwards openly espoused many of his guests’ views and during speeches to extremist audiences, including members of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens and the racist League of the South, he gained the support of a wide array of extremists.

David Duke, active in the white supremacy movement for 40 years and perhaps America's best-known racist, spent much of 2007 abroad. He focused in particular on spreading his antisemitic propaganda in Eastern Europe, where he found a receptive audience. In November, he traveled throughout Spain to promote a Spanish-language version of his antisemitic book, Jewish Supremacism (see Spain). Within the US, Duke maintains a website on which he posts his own writings and the work of other extremists, and he regularly contributes commentary to Stormfront, an Internet forum popular among antisemites and white supremacists.

 

Christian Identity

Christian Identity (CI) is a racist, antisemitic religion whose adherents believe that all whites are the biological descendents of ancient Israel. Modern Jews, according to CI, are imposters who have usurped the true “Israelite” heritage of whites. From this general ideology CI has spawned a great number of divergent beliefs, including the idea that Jews are descended from the biological offspring of Satan. CI adherents can be found in extremist groups ranging from white supremacist organizations to small anti-government groups and militias.

Principal groups and individuals include Dave Barley’s America’s Promise Ministries in Sandpoint, Idaho; Pete Peters’ Scriptures for America in Laporte, Colorado; and Thomas Robb’s Imperial Klans of America. (CI has had a great deal of success within KKK organizations, which are predisposed to its message of a racially-based religion and white supremacy.) These and other groups spread the CI message primarily through the Internet where they broadcast audio and video sermons, host forums, and disseminate tracts. Many groups also hold semi-annual meetings around the holidays of the Jewish calendar (such as Sukkot and Pesach), host conferences that bring together speakers on CI themes, and publish newsletters.

Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi group formed in the mid-1970s and subscribing to Identity ideology, continued its decline in 2007 since the death of its founder and leader Richard Butler in 2004. In spring, Jonathan Williams, a former Aryan Nations member, founded the United Church of YHWH (based in Talladega, Alabama) and hosted several meetings, though attendance at the events was very small.

 

Criminal Activities of Racist Groups

In 2007, prison officials and police on the streets struggled to rein in the criminal activities of members of racist gangs both inside and outside prisons across the United States. Members of such groups committed murders, kidnappings and assaults, and engaged, among other crimes, in illegal drug trading, identity theft, and counterfeiting, with violence often directed at fellow gang members.

Many criminal activities involved hybrid groups − combining elements of racist skinhead, street and prison gangs. Public Enemy Number 1 (PEN1), for example, has grown considerably, particularly in California, where it originated, and has also spread to nearby states. In October, PEN1 member Jacob Rump, 31, was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Rump and fellow PEN1 member Michael Lamb, 32, were convicted of murdering a founding member of the gang after he appeared on a local television news program to speak about it. In addition, Rump and Lamb were convicted of attempted murder of a police officer, street terrorism, and firearms possession charges, all stemming from the killing.

The Aryan Brotherhood, a racist prison gang, continued its violent criminal activity throughout the federal prison system and in the streets. In September, a federal judge in California sentenced two high-ranking members of the gang to life in prison without parole on federal racketeering charges stemming from six murders and three attempted assassinations under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act. Robert "Blinky" Griffin, 59, and John "Youngster" Stinson, 52, were involved in six killings between 1982 and 1997- including the murder of three fellow Aryan Brotherhood members and a man whose son had testified against the gang.

The racist skinhead movement in the United States has undergone a strong resurgence. The numbers of groups and unaffiliated/independent racist skinheads have increased, and the amount of associated criminal activity has risen correspondingly. The most common targets of their activity, which has included several murders and attempted murders, are African-Americans, Hispanics, multi-racial couples or families, Asians, gays and lesbians, homeless people and Jews (for trials, see below).

 

Nation of Islam and New Black Panther Party

Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, who has long expressed antisemitic and racist rhetoric, began 2007 by urging his supporters to read several notoriously antisemitic and anti-Israel books during his February Saviours’ Day address in Detroit. Among the books he recommended were the NOI’s The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews, which argues that slavery in the New World was initiated by Jewish ship owners and merchants, and The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, which claims that the banking system in the US is controlled by a few elite families (most of them Jewish). This book, written by anti-Jewish conspiracy theory propagandist Eustace Mullins, is a key text used by antisemites on the far right. In addition, The Synagogue of Satan, written by NOI member Ashahed Muhammad, was sold during the Saviours’ Day event. The book’s theme is that unknown to most, the world is being manipulated and corrupted by satanic powers led by Jewish elites.

Despite indicating in 2006 that he would relinquish his leadership role with the NOI after nearly 30 years due to illness, Farrakhan continued to be active, appearing at several events around the country. During a November speech at the NOI’s Mosque Maryam in Chicago, Farrakhan said, “Do you know some of these satanic Jews have taken over BET [Black Entertainment Television, a US TV network]?... Everything that we built, they have. The mind of Satan now is running the record industry, movie industry and television.”

In addition, Farrakhan was interviewed several times on national and international television about his legacy. During an appearance on the Arabic-language television news network Al Jazeera in March, he made statements testifying to the unchanging nature of his views regarding Jews. When asked about past accusations of antisemitism, Farrakhan said, “The real antisemites are those who came out of Europe and settled in Palestine, and now they call themselves the true Jews, when in fact, they converted to Judaism.”

In 2007, the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), the largest antisemitic and racist black militant group in the United States, continued to capitalize on media attention surrounding racially charged issues by organizing protests under the guise of championing the causes of black empowerment and civil rights. These efforts were led by Malik Zulu Shabazz, NBPP national chairman, who has a long history of antisemitic and racist statements. Shabazz mobilized several hundred people in Charleston, West Virginia, for a “National March against Hate Crimes and Racism” in November. Shabazz organized this rally and others under the banner “Black Lawyers for Justice,” his legal advocacy group, probably in an attempt to portray himself as a more mainstream leader.

In May, Shabazz was denied entry into Canada by customs officials at Pearson International Airport en route to two scheduled speaking engagements in Toronto. Ontario Community Safety Minister Monte Kwinter expressed concern over Shabazz’s record of antisemitic and anti-police rhetoric. When asked about the incident, Shabazz responded with accusations of Jewish control: “I’m starting to see the power of the Jewish lobby in Canada, full force. I thought Canada was free.”

 

antisemitic activity

A total of 460 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the US in 2007 (according to the ADL Audit). This represents a 6 percent decline from the 1,554 incidents reported in 2006. Out of this figure, 93 were categorized as property vandalism (61 synagogues, 6 cemeteries, 28 schools and community centers), and 48 as attacks on people, seven of which caused injury or were carried out with weapons.

 

Violence, Vandalism and Harassment

Among the most serious incidents, on February 17, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, 78, was attacked in an elevator in San Francisco. Holocaust denier, Eric Hunt, 22, posted an acknowledgement on Zio Pedia, an antisemitic website, saying that he had followed Wiesel with the aim of kidnapping him and getting him “to tell the truth” on video tape. In August he apologized during a court hearing.

Two violent incidents were recorded during the Chanukah period on the NY subway. On December 7, four Jews were beaten by a group of 10 people who shouted antisemitic insults at them. Hassan Askari, a Muslim Bangladeshi college student, was also beaten up while trying to help the Jewish group. He was later honored by the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding for his bravery. The attackers (19-20-year-olds) were detained, but released shortly afterward; one had been charged previously with a hate crime.

Vandalism appeared to be on the rise (a trend noted over the past three years). For example, On June 15, two swastikas and the slogan “Fuck Jews” were spray painted on the front of the Temple B’nai Israel in Victoria, Texas, and “Heil Hitler” written on the sidewalk. On September 1, two windows were broken, and two swastikas and antisemitic graffiti were spray-painted on the Reconstuctionist synagogue in Plandome, New York. Two youths aged 17 and 20 were arrested and charged on various counts.

While incidents of harassment appeared to be on the decline, some serious instances were reported. For example, on October 31, Prof. Elizabeth Midlarsky, a clinical psychologist who has published studies on the Holocaust, found a swastika painted on her office door at Columbia University Teachers College. On October 17 and 24 she found antisemitic fliers in her university mail box. The police department hate crime unit was investigating. During a press conference she held on November 5, Midlarsky said: "Jews are comfortable here [in the US] but will never be safe as antisemitism is not taken seriously." There have been numerous incidents of swastikas smeared on the walls of the Columbia campus during the past few years.

 

Anti-Israel Manifestations

Anti-Israel events in the US in 2007 were not marked by the volume of antisemitism and support for terror evidenced in rallies and demonstrations held in 2006 in response to the war between Israel and Hizballah. Nevertheless, several anti-Israel events held in 2007 far exceeded the bounds of legitimate criticism of Israel. For example, the North American offshoot of Sabeel, a Jerusalem-based anti-Israel organization, held a conference in Boston in October which sought to discredit Israel by accusing it of apartheid practices against Palestinians. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu charged that Israel employs practices that “even apartheid South Africa had not… for example collective punishment.” Other speakers advocated boycott and sanctions efforts against Israel as a means to ending Israel’s “racism.”

Other anti-Israel rallies and demonstrations across the country likened Zionism to Nazism and Israel to the Nazi regime. In addition, cooperation between elements within the Muslim and Arab community and far left groups at anti-Israel events on and off campus resulted in extreme anti-Israel rhetoric. For example, some of the 3,000 attendees at a June rally on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol carried signs, such as “Free Congress from Israeli Occupation,” “Zionism Is Racism,” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.” The two-day event in Washington, DC, titled “The World Says No to Israeli Occupation” and endorsed by a variety of Muslim and Arab community organizations, was organized by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar coalition.

In May, the Muslim Student Union at the University of Ca lifornia at Irvine organized a series of anti-Israel events. The lectures, as well as literature distributed by the students and a large display set up on campus grounds, delivered a mix of hate messages, antisemitism, conspiracy theories and support for terrorist groups. Two of the more extreme events were called “Holocaust Memorial Week” and “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected.” They featured Imam Abdul Alim Musa and Imam Amir Abdul Malik Ali, leaders of the radical, antisemitic Sabiqun (Vanguard of Islam) movement, and Mohammed al-Asi, a radical DC-based Islamist known for his pro-Iranian and pro-Hizballah positions.

Opening the event, al-Asi argued that the US was fighting the war in Iraq on behalf of Israel, stating: “You can’t differentiate between Washington and Tel Aviv any longer.” During the “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” session, Lenni Brenner, a self-described “Trotskyist” and a staunch anti-Zionist, gave a speech entitled “Zio-Nazis,” in which he claimed that all Zionists are racist and that the Zionist movement in the 1930s and 1940s made common cause with the Nazis; Abdul Malik Ali claimed that Zionist Jews were working behind the scenes against the civil rights of African Americans while pretending to support the rights of oppressed minorities in the US to get their support.

Critics of Israel also continued to propagate antisemitic conspiracy theories that attribute disproportionate power to the Jewish state and its supporters in the US. For example, Mazin Qumsiyeh, who has long expressed such views in his speaking engagements and writings, authored several articles in 2007 alleging, among other things, that “a small lobby of political Zionists hold our foreign policy hostage.” Speaking at the US Campaign to End the Occupation’s “World Says No to Israeli Occupation” rally in Washington, DC, June 10, Qumsiyeh said: “The strong Zionist lobby that took this country to war on Iraq… is now pushing for conflict with Iran.”

Discussion of the thesis of John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt – that the “Israel lobby” dictates US foreign policy in the Middle East, including Iraq, an approach that runs counter to America’s own best interests − was revived in the US and elsewhere when the authors published a book-length version of their argument in August (The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy – see General Analysis).

 

Banalization of the Holocaust

The continuous equation of contemporary events, people and ideas with Nazism and the Holocaust was a marked feature of the US discourse in 2007. In July, for example, US Congressman Keith Ellison claimed that the Bush administration was exploiting the 9/11 terror attacks to suspend civil liberties in much the same way the Nazis used the Reichstag fire in 1933. Ellison later retracted his remarks. Another instance involved former Arkansas Governor and then-presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who described legalized abortion in the United States as a “holocaust.” (For more on this subject, see General Analysis.)

 

responses to racist and antisemitic activity

Legislation

As of December 2006, forty-five states and the District of Columbia had penalty-enhanced hate crime laws. The Federal Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA) continues to require the United States Department of Justice to gather data on crimes that manifest prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or ethnicity from law enforcement agencies across the country, and to publish an annual summary of its findings.

A federal hate crimes bill failed to pass Congress in 2007. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act, which would have allowed the Justice Department to assist in local hate crime prosecutions, was approved by the House of Representatives in May. In September, in the face of a threatened veto by President George W. Bush, 60 senators voted to add the measure to the Department of Defense Authorization bill. However, the bill was shelved because of conservative opposition to the hate crime provisions and unrelated opposition among Democrats to the larger Pentagon policy bill. The hate crime provisions also were stripped from defense measures in 2000 and 2004.

A number of state and local legislatures were contemplating adding specific language to their anti-bias and hate crimes laws that would specifically criminalize the use of a noose and/or swastika (the latter is already covered by many statutes) in an intimidating fashion. The Nazi symbol, one of the most powerful and enduring emblems of religious and ethnic hatred, has frequently been reported painted on buildings, synagogues, cemeteries and private homes. In one of the most noteworthy instances in 2007, a massive swastika the size of a football field was carved into a New Jersey cornfield. At the same time, there was a rash of similar incidents against African-Americans, where nooses were left as symbols of race hatred.

 

Law Enforcement

Racist skinheads were convicted of a number of violent crimes in 2007, including numerous murders. Kenneth Hoover, a member of the Keystone State Skinheads in Pennsylvania and one-time member of the Tampa, Florida, Blood & Honour racist skinhead group, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and racketeering for beating two homeless men to death in Tampa in 1998. The murders were not only part of a race war, with the goal of killing anyone considered inferior, but were also part of an initiation rite into the gang.

There were some significant arrests related to skinhead attacks on the homeless in 2007. In August 2007, police in Massachusetts arrested Eric Snow, 25, and James Winquist, 23, for the April 2005 murders and mutilation of two homeless men. In Indiana, three members of the Vinlanders Social Club – Timothy Dumas, 22, Eric Fairburn, 32, and Joshua Kern, 24 – were arrested for allegedly attacking a homeless African-American man. 

In December 2007, a jury in a Los Angeles, California convicted three members of the Berdoo Skinheads of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon as hate crimes. Anthony Allen, 23, Ryan White, 28, and Joseph McCool, 20, stabbed an African-American man at a shopping center while on their way to a neo-Nazi rally in December 2006.

Jacob Laskey, 26, was sentenced in April to 11 years and three months in prison for throwing swastika-engraved rocks through windows at a synagogue in Eugene, Oregon, in 2002, and for subsequently attempting to intimidate witnesses to avoid prosecution. Laskey pleaded guilty to soliciting the murder of a witness, soliciting a bomb threat at a federal courthouse to disrupt a grand jury, obstructing justice and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

In terrorism-related cases, three US citizens, Kevin James, 31, and Levar Haley Washington, 28, arrested in July 2005, pleaded guilty, on December 18, to planning attacks on US military bases, synagogues and Israeli government facilities in the Los Angeles area. Both men admitted in their plea bargains that the purpose of their plot was "to retaliate against the governments of the United States and Israel by attacking targets in Southern California associated with the US military and the Jewish religion." On December 17, a third defendant, Gregory Vernon Patterson, 23, also pleaded guilty in a Santa Ana to conspiracy to levy war against the US through terrorism and conspiracy to possess and discharge firearms.

Derrick Shareef, 23, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Chicago, on December 10, to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction a year earlier. Shareef had intended to set off several grenades at the CherryVale Shopping Mall during the 2006 holiday shopping season, according to the indictment. In addition, Shareef also allegedly discussed targeting local government facilities. In December 2006, Shareef was arrested after giving a set of stereo speakers to an undercover agent in Rockford in exchange for four hand grenades and a hand gun. Shareef, a Muslim convert, was secretly recorded by an undercover agent as saying, “I swear by Allah, man, I’m down for it, too, I’m down for the cause, I’m down to live for the cause and die for the cause, man.” He also talked about stabbing Jews and admitted to checking out synagogues where he could attack Jews, according to the affidavit.

A Michigan charity described as a “Hizballah front” by the Treasury Department was raided by the FBI, on July 24, for allegedly providing support to Hizballah. FBI agents seized financial records and other paperwork from the Goodwill Charitable Organization (GCO), which the Treasury Department has alleged is a branch of the Iranian-based Martyrs Foundation, a group that funds Hizballah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and aids Palestinian suicide bombers and their families. The Treasury Department has also frozen the US bank accounts and assets of the Martyrs Foundation and forbidden Americans from doing business with the group. Another Dearborn, MI-based charity, al-Mabarrat Association, was raided as part of the investigation of Hizballah’s financial supporters. Al-Mabarrat will apparently be allowed to remain open while the GCO was shut down

Muhammad Salah, the only US citizen on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Terrorist list, was sentenced, on July 23, to 21 months in prison for lying about his ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Salah, 54, was convicted of obstructing justice after he lied in the course of a civil lawsuit brought by the family of an American teenager killed in a West Bank terrorist attack. The family had sued Salah and a number of Islamic charities, including the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity shut down by the federal government in 2001, claiming they had channeled money to Hamas.

Mohamed Shorbagi, former imam of a mosque in Georgia, was sentenced on February 27 to over seven and a half years in prison for providing monetary and logistical support to Hamas. Shorbagi, who pleaded guilty to material support of terrorism in 2006, provided aid to Hamas through donations he made to the Holy Land Foundation. Shorbagi, a onetime Georgia representative for the Holy Land Foundation, attended meetings that were addressed by “high level” Hamas officials, according to authorities.