A press release from "Shurat HaDin -- Israel Law Center -- is a Tel-Aviv based lawyers' organization that utilizes legal proceedings and lawsuits to fight the scourge of international terrorism. Shurat HaDin aims at obstructing and economically harming the terror organizations, their leaders and their financial patrons on behalf of terror victims. The organization has succesfully frozen funds of numerous terrorist organizations and is currently in litigation with American Express Bank, Bank of China, and UBS."
Civil Rights Group Files Petition in High Court of Justice to Compel Government Not to Transfer Funds to Gaza BanksIn wake of Israeli decision to transfer NIS 100 million to banks in Gaza, Shurat HaDin petitions BaGaTz to bar Defense Minister and Governor of the Bank of Israel from moving the funds. The lawsuit demands the immediate end to all forced monetary transfers by Israeli banks to Hamas controlled territory.
December, 11 2008 Jerusalem, Israel : The High Court petition filed this afternoon, naming Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, as respondents, alleges that both the Bank of Israel and the Ministry of Defense are using political pressure to force two Israeli banks, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim, to transfer cash to the Hamas run government in the Gaza Strip. Recent reports from Gaza complain that local banks have run out of funds and are unable to replenish cash supplies.
Both Israel Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim announced in October 2007 that they no longer will work with the financial institutions in the Gaza Strip. Since then, Governor Fischer, a former VP of CitiGroup, and Minister Barak have placed immense political pressure on both banks to continue the transfers. Today's 100 million shekel transfer is the largest sum demanded of them.
The petition notes the likelihood that much of the funds will be siphoned off for use by the terrorist led government in Gaza to continue its attacks on Israeli civilian targets. It also points to the violations of Israeli and international law providing financial services to banks in Gaza would entail. In recent years banks in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia have been sued by terror victims for aiding the terrorist groups by providing them and charities affiliated with them financial services.
"The government might as well be providing truck loads of Qassam rockets instead of cash to Gaza. Fischer and Barak have knowingly allowed for the transfer of 100 million shekels, $25 million to the Hamas run government providing for at least 22,000 terrorist paychecks," said the plaintiff's lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Director of the Shurat HaDin Law Center."How is it possible that our government continuously supports those which aim to destroy us?"
Israel consists of several countries. One of those countries, the one in which an Olmert can compare the justified fury of Jewish villagers in Kiryat Arba goaded by the local Arabs beyond endurance to a "pogrom," and in which Ha'aretz columnists, aided by Israelis who control the radio and television, can consistently and deliberately avoid all mention of the texts and tenets of Islam, and blithely describe a "peace" that, they think, can be established if, and only if, Israel continues to make tangible concessions, as it has been making to the Arabs and Muslims ever since the 1948-49 war, though every single resulting agreement or, if not agreement, then assurances by an Arab state -- e.g., Nasser's Egypt to the "international community" in order to get back the Sinai, has in one way or another been breached by the Arab side. And those breaches have been so continuous, so systematic, so blatant, that one might have thought that some in the Israeli government, some in the Foreign Ministry, some in the Israeli media, would begin to ask if perhaps the problem was not with this or that country or leader, but rather with some underlying theory of treaty-observance in Islam that had little to do with the "Pacta Sunt Servanda" (treaties are to be obeyed) principles that underlie the Western understanding, and Western assumptions, about treaties.
And if those in Israel's political and media elites had done what should have been the most obvious thing in the world, which is to say begun to study the law of war and peace in Islam, perhaps by beginning with Majid Khadduri, then the members of those elites -- the Ha'aretz columnists, in all their baseless and smug self-assurance, the political figures who meet with their approval, the television wise men --would have had to recognize, had to come to grips with, had to come to formulate or support policies that were based not on the notion that Pacta Sunt Servanda would prevail, but on the truth: that no Arab Muslim state is ever going to reconcile itself to the existence of the Infidel nation-state of Israel, no matter what its size, and Israeli policies for maintaining "peace" --such a "peace" is maintained right now by the threat of what the IDF can do to those who make war on Israel, and that is the only long-term "peace" that Israel can ever rely on, for it certainly cannot rely on a "peace" that depends on the Arab Muslims ignoring their own texts, tenets, attitudes, and their own insistence that the basis for their treaty-making with Infidels must remain the model of Muhammad's treaty with the Meccans in 628 A.D. at Hudaibiyya, a treaty Muhammad, that Model of Conduct (uswa hasana) and Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil), soon foound a pretext to breach, and within 18 months did so. And he has been hailed for his cunning in deceiving the enemy -- hailed in Muslim texts -- ever since, and Muslims have no other model for treaty-making with Infidels, nor do they wish one.
One way to promote greater clarity in discussions about the Arab Muslim war on Israel is to do the following: every time the word "peace" is written, instead let the phrase "peace treaty" appear. That will do a great deal. And if, every time that phrase "peace treaty" now appears, the phrase "truce treaty" were to be substituted instead, for it is indeed only a hudna, a "truce treaty," that would make things even clearer. And isn't clarity important? Isn't an absence of confusion a good idea, whether one is buying a toaster, or betting the future existence of an entire state and an entire people, on the right understanding of things?
The idea of withdrawing from Gaza was based on divesting Israel of responsibility for that festering cesspool.
The best laid plans...
Too late. Money is already in Gaza through West Bank banks. Hamas government employees got their paycheck - including the jihadi rocket launchers and the Gazan actors and actresses who do a splendid job stirring public opinion. Because to be baking bread out of chicken feed for al-jazeera TV for those poor starved Gazans just minutes after Barak announced the border will be closed the following day is no small enterprise - it requires special skill and a flawless organization. Chapeau! They earned that money.
This is haram! No interest should be made on investments. The Gazans should have never had their monet tied up in legitimate banks.
Now I understand why Israel wants their citizens out of the Territories. They should divest from the West Bank as well.