Will the Turkish Flotilla Group Be Named as Terrorists?

Jonathan Schanzer
Foreign Policy
20 August '10

It's not every day that House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) and Ed Royce (R-CA), the ranking member of terrorism subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, agree on anything. But, when it comes to the terrorist connections of one particular Turkish charity, there's no daylight between them. These legislators recently sent a letter to Stuart Levey, the under secretary for terror finance at the Treasury Department, stating that evidence "strongly supports" designating the Turkish charity IHH (Insan Haklari Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi) under Executive Order 13224 for its support of terrorist groups, and urging Levey to take action.

IHH, by way of background, sponsored the ill-fated flotilla designed to break Israel's blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in late May. And though the Israeli military has come under intense fire for a confrontation that led to nine deaths on the high seas, legislators are increasingly convinced, based on a growing body of evidence, that IHH could meet the Treasury's legal criteria for terrorist designation.

Other influential members of Congress are getting in the act, too. Representative Ron Klein, a Democrat from Florida, has also asked the government to scrutinize IHH. He sent a letter to the State Department last month asking its counterterrorism department to consider a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) listing. Last week, Richard Verma from State's Office of Legislative Affairs responded with a letter indicating that the Turkish charity may not qualify as an FTO, but that "U.S. government agencies are taking a close look at IHH" for Treasury designation because "serious questions of support to terrorist organizations have been raised."

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RE: Western Inaction on Lebanon

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
09 August '10

Kudos to Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) — who, as Jonathan noted, used her post as head of the House appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid today to put a hold on $100 million in American assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces, which was approved for 2010 but not yet disbursed — and to House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman (D-CA), who had applied a hold on the aid even before last Tuesday’s deadly border incident, out of concern about reported Hezbollah influence on the LAF. It’s encouraging that Congress recognizes the dangers, which I had outlined here earlier, of not responding to Lebanon’s naked aggression against Israel last week.

Nevertheless, it’s worrying that the administration clearly doesn’t share this understanding. The 2009 aid that remained in the pipeline is still being handed over as scheduled, because, a State Department official told the Jerusalem Post, the U.S. is still trying to determine the facts of the incident.

Yet on Wednesday, a day after the incident occurred, UNIFIL — an organization not known for its pro-Israel bias — had already confirmed that the Lebanese soldiers fired first, without provocation, and that no Israeli soldiers had strayed into Lebanese territory, contrary to Lebanon’s claim.

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