By Juan Cole
THE GUILTY plea of fabulously wealthy and highly corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff raised the question of whether he would roll over on congressmen involved in illegal fund-raising and other crimes with him. Some 20 Republicans on Capitol Hill are said to be in danger.
Abramoff’s dense network of illicit finances and phony charities might end some political careers in the United States. But the investigation into his activities by the FBI also shed light on the ways in which right-wing American Jews have often been involved in funding what are essentially terrorist activities by armed land thieves in Palestinian territory.
Indeed, it was this terror funding of Israeli far-right militiamen that tripped Abramoff up, since the FBI discovered that he had misled Indian tribes into giving money to the Jabotinskyites, and then began wondering if he had defrauded the tribes in other ways. (You betcha!) The Indian leaders were furious when they discovered they had been used to oppress another dispossessed indigenous people, the Palestinians, calling it “Outer Limits bizarre” and saying that they would never have willingly given money to such a cause.
Newsweek’s Mike Issikoff reported last May that Abramoff diverted $140,000 from a charity ostensibly to benefit inner-city youths to militant Israeli colonists who had usurped land in the Palestinian West Bank. Issikoff wrote:
“Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as ‘security’ equipment. The FBI, sources tell Newsweek, is now examining these payments as part of a larger investigation to determine if Abramoff defrauded his Indian tribe clients…”
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