House flip-flop on Hamas sanction bill shows Islamist lobby power on the left
House Democrats have moved to squash an effort to impose additional sanctions on the terrorist organization Hamas, yet another reflection of not only an anti-Israel sentiment but a pro-Hamas orientation among a vocal Democrat faction.
As described by Fox News:
House Democrats rejected a Republican push on Tuesday to consider legislation that would apply sanctions on Hamas militants amid an escalating military conflict with Israel.
Democrats blocked a bid to bring the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act up for consideration in a 217-209 vote along party lines. The bill, introduced by Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., would impose sanctions on foreign entities known to have provided financial assistance to Hamas, among other measures.
The bill would require the President to produce a report naming foreign entities which materially support Hamas and instructing the president to impose sanctions upon those entities.
Hamas was originally designated as a terrorist organization on October 8th, 1997, when the US State Department officially unveiled its list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO). Hamas was one of the primary reasons for the creation of the FTO list. Prior to the formalized FTO, then President Bill Clinton first sanctioned Hamas in 1995 under Executive Order 12947.
Hamas waged a terror campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks targeting Israeli civilians in public squares, cafes, restaurants, buses and other places where people tend to congregate. Scores of Israelis died in these attacks, which were part of an effort to disrupt the then ongoing Oslo Accords.
In response to the threat of being sanctioned, in October of 1993 U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood members and Hamas operatives met in the Philadelphia to discuss the creation of a network in order to lobby on behalf of Hamas, and to present Hamas, rather than the nascent Palestinian Authority as the true representative of the Palestinian people. There they proposed the creation of a political, cultural and media effort to normalize Hamas in America.
Over the past 30 years, an extensive network was developed to carry out this effort, characterized in particular by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
American policymakers—largely, but not exclusively on the Left—have been heavily influenced by this Islamist network.
Mast’s bill would have increased financial pressure on Hamas, a group designated as a violent, bloody terrorist organization -by a Democratic president- for more two decades. Yet the Democratic caucus stood in lockstep in the House of Representatives to oppose a bill many of them had previously supported.
The Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act is not a new bill. It previously came to a vote in the House in 2019, when it passed unanimously. Every House Democrat joined with every Republican to stand against jihadist terrorism and with Israel in 2019. But now in 2021, every Democrat has flopped, blocking a bill their party previously supported, during a time when Israel is under siege from Hamas rockets.
It is clear pro-Hamas lobbying efforts, the groundwork of which were laid many decades ago, have borne terrible fruit among the left.
Ilhan Omar by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
