In the below link, the Zionist Organization of America has released a letter urging the House and Senate to demand that feckless Attorney General Eric Holder do his duty and investigate the Council on American Islamic Relations.
http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=2041
I heartily concur. Get off your duff, Mr. Holder.
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4 comments:
There may be good reason to investigate CAIR, but the broad rhetoric employed by ZOA does not withstand constitutional muster. Further, one third to one half of this rhetoric could be applied to the manner in which ZOA sometimes appears to act as an agent of a foreign government.
Jonathan Pollard did not act on behalf of ZOA, nor did ZOA recruit him, but his espionage does highlight that the national interests of the United States and Israel are NOT identical, and both governments know it. (Pollard was, however, unfairly blamed for the deaths of American agents in the USSR, who were actually fingered by Aldrich Ames and another American-born spy. His sentence should be reconsidered).
If the crimes mentioned are being committed, investigation of those crimes should proceed through the usual processes of the Justice Department. To single out CAIR in this manner is a matter of political competition masquerading as law and order.
Siarlys,
The ZOA letter requests that Eric Holder investigate CAIR. You say that "those crimes should proceed through the usual processes of the Justice Department". The last time I looked, Eric Holder is the Director of the Justice Department. Your arguement is flawed.
The Muslim Brotherhood organization, CAIR, supports Hamas. This is fact. Please find what Hamas stands forin the enclosed link. This is the point ZOA is making.
LINK: http://www.adl.org/main_israel/hamas_own_words.htm
Squid
You're missing the point Squid. Partisans of almost any cause are generally happy to "urge" the Justice Department to "investigate" their rivals or opponents. Using the machinery of the Justice Department in that manner is almost always misplaced.
Its the difference between the conservative, Thomas Dewey, who declined to go after the communist party as such, and Harold Stassen, who wanted to outlaw it. Dewey stood up for American constitutional government, confident that communists couldn't take the government by election, and confident that communists who committed specific crimes could be prosecuted for them. Stassen, trying to be a tough guy, was actually a bit of a coward.
One group demanding that another group be investigated can occur in either of two situations:
1) the proposed target group is, as a group, committing documentable crimes;
2) the proposed target group is not, as a group, committing documentable crimes.
In the former situation, individual members may or may not be aware of and participating in such crimes.
In the latter instance, individual members of the group may, or may not, be committing crimes themselves.
That is why the Justice Department should ignore "urges" from ZOA or much of anyone else. Instead, it should seek out crimes wherever they are being committed, and prosecute them.
Now if ZOA can prove that CAIR exists for the explicit purpose of committing acts of terrorism, it could be treated like the Ku Klux Klan or the Mafia. But if we mix that up with "I don't like what they stand for, and by the way there may be some criminal conduct mixed up in their," we would soon have a government where each incoming administration devotes most of its energy to prosecuting members of the previous administration. Its a bad model of government.
Status as an unindicted co-conspirator shows that the Justice Department is well aware of specific criminal activity, and had insufficient evidence to indict. No doubt there is continuing investigation -- not because ZOA doesn't like CAIR, but because there was some evidence to justify an investigation.
There does not appear to be any evidence that CAIR violated 18 USC 2385. Hamas is in a low-level state of war against Israel, a foreign state. There are also laws against activity on U.S. soil either to aid a foreign nation with which the U.S. is at war (not quite the case here), or to aid war by a third party against a state with which the U.S. is at peace. You might have something there, but be precise or the indictment will get thrown out of court.
PREACHING replacement of our Constitution with some version of Shariah is not a violation of 18 USC 2385 either. As a judge said in a rather minor case some years ago "Every election someone tries to overthrow the government. The question is what methods they were using." They can advocate all they want. If the attempt to nullify the constitution by force of arms and IMPOSE Shariah, that's another matter. There is no evidence of that.
Similarly, NAMBLA has the right to ADVOCATE amending laws against child molestation -- but so long as those laws are on the books, violations will result in long prison sentences.
CAIR supports HAMAS? In itself, not a crime. Providing funds which subsidize rocket attacks on Israel, that would be a crime. The Justice Department knows that, without propaganda letters from ZOA.
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