How Obama’s church and associates link him to the ISM

Some media pundits have tried suggesting that Barack Obama’s recent speech about his association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago is comparable to the Gettysburg Address in calling for national “unity.”

But if one parses some key statements by Obama in that speech, one can see how Obama poses more of a threat of creating disunity in America and how he will probably use racism as a vehicle do so.

Some liberal Jewish groups have begun an email campaign trying to persuade American Jews concerned by Jeremiah Wright’s comparison of the black American experience with that of the Palestinians in the Middle East as not being compatible with Barack Obama’s views. Led by Democratic Florida Congressman Robert Wexler (D) Florida, Obama’s Jewish supporters have claimed that after meeting with members of AIPAC, the Israel Lobby, Obama stated that the Palestinians must renounce the right of return, the Catch 22 used by the PLO and its front group, the International Solidarity Movement, that prevents any other solution to the Middle East conflict other than the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state. In addition, the email claims, Obama stated that the missiles fired on Sderot are unacceptable and that Israel should have a right to defend itself. But that same email also contains the tired (and untrue) old leftist platitudes that so many Israelis would not have been murdered by Arab terrorists since Oslo were it not for the Likud Party in Israel that has refused to give away unconditionally Israel’s security in exchange for empty promises from the terrorist warlords in Fatah and Hamas. Both terrorist groups agree in Arabic the only acceptable real end game is the dismantling of the Jewish state, something that is always glossed over by lefties when someone euphemistically talks about “peace.” “Peace” to the Arabs is newspeak for Israel becoming Palestine.

Obama’s statements, were, for the untrained ears of pampered Jewish leftists in the Democratic Party what might be classified as being “so far so good.”

However, without losing a beat, an article has appeared on the ISM affiliated website Electronic Intifada (EI) by one of its co-founders, Ali Abunimah, in which Abumimah recounts his close past working relationship with Obama prior to the presidential campaign and how Abunimah believes Obama is merely giving lip service to the Jewish community to get elected, and that once in office he will work for the Palestinian cause. Abunimah lists himself and is mentioned in subsequent Obama articles in the mainstream press merely as a “Palestinian activist.” Abunimah insists that Obama will “come around” once elected.

But Ali Abunimah is more than just some “Palestinian activist” based in Chicago, the same location as Reverend Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ. He is, in fact, one of the founders of the fiercely anti-Semitic ISM Arab group Al Awda, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition. Abunimah is a high level international leader of the ISM for the Arabs who travels extensively between Chicago, Europe and Ramallah.

Al Awda in Arabic means “The Return,” and the group not only calls for the complete destruction of Israel, even denying Israel’s current existence on its website and urging boycotts against not only Israelis, but American Jews and their businesses, but also calls for specifically supporting Arab terrorists in Iraq who kill US soldiers. Among its more than 130 chapters across the US and Canada, Al Awda’s New Jersey chapter is led by a young woman named Charlotte Kates who has called Israeli children killed by suicide bombers “fair game.” The ISM’s Al Awda openly supports terrorism as “legitimate resistance” in ISM revolutionary lingo.

Al Awda’s anti-Semitism has also linked to neo-Nazi groups in promoting the boycott and divestment from Israel on American campuses and in the US business community. It became so virulent that the group was booted by the UC Riverside campus administration from holding an international conference on that campus last year. Ali Abunimah, even today, is featured on the Al Awda website supporting terrorism against Israelis because he considers that “nonviolence is overrated.”

In short, Obama saw no problem being lobbied in the past by someone who openly promotes terrorism and discrimination against Jewish-Americans.

Al Awda is commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe of the creation of Israel) this coming May thanks to the willingness of the management of Hilton Hotels to overlook anti-Semitism in its facilities to make a buck. A new petition is in the works to get Hilton to stop this. Al Awda’s scheduled guest of honor will be a PFLP terrorist member named Khalida Jarrar, and their website recently gave an homage to the late PFLP founder George Habash. Al Awda wants convicted Islamic Jihad financier/terrorist Sami al Arian released, a murderer of over 100 people abroad, some of them Americans, from terrorist attacks.

If Barack Obama didn’t know about Abunimah’s writings (and Abunimah says he did), the same as his claims of being unaware of Reverend Wright’s remarks after 20 years, then Obama is not competent to be our President. Abunimah likes to lie and claim Al Awda has nothing to do with the ISM or Electronic Intifada, though plenty of evidence exists on the website the homepage at www.StoptheISM.com showing the contrary.

But Obama’s association with the ISM through his church and lobbying in Chicago goes even deeper than just his past links to Al Awda and Ali Abunimah. His pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, are both equally involved with the ISM.

Since 2001, the ISM has been tasked by the PLO and other Arab irredentist groups with getting new generations of American college kids to consider democratic Israel as somehow a violator of human rights, all the while as the Palestinian Arabs who practice open anti-Semitism, honor killings, and the murders of their own people as well as Jews, as commendable practices. At their 2003 national organizing conference at Ohio State, ISM activists set out to deconstruct American narratives about Israel as a democratic state with firm support from secular radical Americans of Jewish ancestry. In one workshop set up to discuss ways to put a good face on suicide bombings, ISM activists spoke of new ways of reinterpreting the Bible so Israel did not belong to the Jews, but to the Palestinians.

In working with the Saudi funded Muslim Students Association in campuses across the US, the ISM has managed to cloud the image among American youth through disinformation and propaganda campaigns against Jews and Israel in order to try and make American students believe Israel is an apartheid state like South Africa was in the 1980s. At the same time, these same Palestinian groups like Al Awda insist the West Bank and Gaza must be Jew-free. Since this campaign has been largely successful in organizing anti-Israel attitudes on campuses all over America, and since Jewish organizations in America have been slow to react, the ISM moved on to another program to do the same thing only this time alienating US churches, particularly evangelical churches that have a long-term sense of Biblical support for the Jewish state. Thus was born the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theological Society created as part of the ISM to do in US churches what various ISM groups succeeded to do in American colleges.

At the same time, a foothold already existed to a small degree in the American black religious community such as is led by Louis Farrakhan.

The mainstream ISM leadership is made up of Palestinian Christian Arabs who are also communists/anarchists and pan-Arab nationalists first, that hold to the philosophy of the Popular Front for The Liberation of Palestine, the second largest faction of the PLO. Using communist revolutionary practices of “solidarity,” it has been these Palestinian Arab Christian “revolutionaries,” aligned with Jewish- American communists and anarchists, that have been working so well on the campuses in the US and the UK.

Now, it has become the ISM’s time to deconstruct religious dogma of Israel belonging to the Jews as is preached in US churches and to increase the number of black churches in America that are working in “solidarity” with this program. Jeremiah Wright’s church is one of them. Even though the national synod of the United Church for Christ rescinded a boycott and divestment plan against Israel, a wing of the UCC church keeps trying to get it reinstated. That wing includes Reverend Wright’s Trinity UCC Church in Chicago. Few people know also, that there are many Muslim members of Reverend Wright’s “Christian” church, a close ally of Sabeel.

Led by a Palestinian Christian pastor named Naim Ateek, Sabeel’s purpose is as part of the ISM to especially convince churches in America that the diminishing Christian population in the West Bank, particularly Bethlehem, is not due to persecution by the Muslim majority in the Palestinian Authority against Christians caused Christian flight, but because of Israel’s Jews and “the occupation.” In order to achieve this, Sabeel practices something called “replacement theology “ which aligns itself closely with the ideas of its Muslim fundamentalist allies.

 Replacement theology advanced by the ISM and Sabeel holds that Jesus was not a Jew, but a Palestinian. It also holds that the fulfillment of scripture is not Jews returning to the land of Israel, but Palestinian Arabs taking control of Israel from Jewish oppressors to become Palestine. In replacement theology, Abraham’s son, Isaac, was not to be sacrificed before God, but it was rather Ishmael, the father of the Arab people. This is also the Muslim interpretation of the Torah in the Koran. Yasser Arafat always claimed that Jesus was a Palestinian, not a Jew. Arafat, though a secular Muslim, also saw the value of his allies in the PFLP in recruiting pan-Arab revolutionaries and Arab communists to achieve his goals.

Why should a Christian Arab pastor like Naim Ateek teach such things? He does so because his religious teachings are based more on politics than anything else, and it gives him a power base and funding as a religious leader he could only dream of among the Christian Arab minority population.

Sabeel has been actively working in cooperation with Chicago’s Trinity UCC among certain other politically active churches in America to promote anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic beliefs that can erode American Christian support for Israel and hasten Israel’s destruction. And Pastor Jeremiah Wright, pandering to his majority black congregation, has been teaching his own replacement theology, only this time its called “black replacement theology.” Jesus was not a Jew, says Wright, but a “black man.” Trinity UCC’s relationship with the anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (funded by anti-Israel Libya) fits in nicely with this formula also. The Christian religious icon is no longer a Jew, but a black man and to accept this interpretation is the way to salvation for the black man. This not only deconstructs American church views of the legitimacy of Israel, but has a nice foothold with the likes of the Nation of Islam in the US black community.

In his speech, Obama actually tried to give some credibility to Wright’s speech claiming it portrays the real experience for black Americans without saying what specific parts of Wright’s diatribes he was referring to. By accusing the US of bombing innocent people of color at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of America infecting black American with AIDS, or of “chickens coming home to roost” for 9/11 (ignoring that plenty of black Americans died in those attacks), were more than just blanket “issues” that Obama called them and said he does not agree with “totally.”

But does this all really link back to Obama? Can’t he still get by, saying that his pastor Wright and church of 20 years, and Ali Abunimah also do not bespeak his personal opinions?

To the contrary, in his speech about Wright, Obama said he does believe such things when he said he cannot disavow them from Reverend Wright or disassociate himself from the demagogical pastor any more than from the black community. He just did it in veiled language. He just spoke about his close family-like relationship with Wright and then suggested Wright speaks to the black experience in America.

Here is the most important parsed line from Obama’s speech (and it’s no Gettysburg Address):

“The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.”

So the man who “introduced” Barack Obama to his “Christian faith” also teaches that Jesus was not a Jew, and that the white Jews exploited the “black Palestinians” in the Bible, and who espouses ISM and Sabeel religious terminology among his fellow Christians, particularly blacks, even against the wishes of his own synod.

Jeremiah Wright certainly knows his market.

That is the Christianity of Jeremiah Wright and based on Obama’s speech, the same Christianity that Wright introduced Obama to, and one the presidential candidate still believes and won’t disavow no matter what it costs him.

True, Obama mentioned how Wright taught him to be kind unto others. But according to Wright’s interpretation, that “kindness” has more to do with fighting “white oppression” than urging nonviolence and brotherly love among all races. Wright’s church even praised Hamas in the past, and has always touted it as an Islamic charity organization showing such social kindness despite its charter calling for unyielding murder and expulsion of Jews in the Middle East.

The ISM’s training manual says that international ISM volunteers in the West Bank should not tell people they are human shields for terrorist groups but “peace activists” because it deceives people from their real purpose of attacking Israel any way they can to the benefit of their Palestinian handlers. So, too, does Barack Obama talk about loving one another as taught to him by a pastor who then accuses America of murdering innocent people of color at Hiroshima and Nagasaki over 50 years ago. The American servicemen whose lives were spared back then by ending the war quickly were also black men, Latinos and others who were fighting Japanese racists who murdered Chinese, Filipinos and other “inferior” people on a regular basis, who ran experimental death camps for American and British prisoners-of-war, and who were allied with a Nazi Germany that was allied with the same Arab nationalist leadership that is still trying to destroy the Jews today.

“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” said Obama. So then it is clear that Obama believes that Wright’s ideas represent the black community and black experience in America when they represent only the radicalized fringe of black America that wants to aid America’s enemies abroad. It is doubtful many black Americans who served proudly in the US military feel the same as Wright on this issue.
 What is more, militant Islamists see a potential to sow internal problems and promote their fascist goals in the US by trying to divide the American black community against the US government. Whereas blacks have been exploited in the past, this is now seen as a way to achieve the goals of expanding the Muslim ummah inside the US from in the Middle East. That is why Libya gives money to Farrakhan and why the ISM and Sabeel work with Reverend Wright whose personal interpretations of Christianity are entrenched in Obama’s mind as the True Word of Christianity. Wright actually visited Mohammar Ghaddafi in Libya with Farrakhan in the past.

I attended an AIPAC (Israel lobby) conference two years ago where another black candidate for congress, Barbara Lee (D) Oakland, was in attendance as the representative for Oakland/Berkeley. Ms. Lee sat very respectfully as she was fawned over by a crowd of Jewish Israel supporters and acted as if she was really concerned about Israel. Ms. Lee even smiled at me personally as she left. Meanwhile, she was the only member of Congress who voted against going after Bin Laden after 9/11 in Afghanistan and also supports groups like Hamas, Hizballah and Al Awda in their anti-Semitic goals. Congressman Wexler needs to understand that what Obama says to a meeting of Jews will not translate into what he does once he is in office. In that regard, Ali Abunimah of Al Awda is probably right about Obama going to work for the Palestinians once in office Obama’s staffers certainly suggest the same.

The question is if we want a man in the White House who will regularly give his ear to the likes of a Reverend Wright, his and Sabeel’s replacement theologies, and pro-terrorist propagandists like Ali Abunimah on a regular basis? In one sense, Obama could be considered the ISM’s Manchurian candidate given his wide connections to ISM activists and campaign movements such as the Wheels of Justice Tour, Joseph Carr a.k.a. Joseph Smith, Hannah Mermelstein, Anna Baltzer and others.

"God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11"
--Rev Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for twenty years

Rev. Wright:
"In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns."
http://www.cmaucc.org/EMRJeremiahWright2.pdf

Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle
FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...

Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02

The 1981 Weather Underground/Black Liberation Army Brinks robbery:

"David J. Gilbert, 37, rented the vehicle that same day in the Bronx. Gilbert was a long time member of the Weather Underground and a fugitive from the state of Colorado where he faced charges of assault and possession of explosives. The passenger in the front seat of the U Haul was Kathy Boudin, on the run from the law since the townhouse explosion in 1970. The couple had dropped off their one-year old child with a babysitter in the morning and was waiting for the return of the red van."

"In the back of the red van were Cecilio 'Chui' Ferguson, 35, Samuel Brown AKA Solomon Bouines, 41, Samuel Smith AKA Mtayari Sundiata, 37, and Donald Weems AKA Kuwasi Balagoon, 35. There were others present, but it has never been proven who, or how many. All the men in back of the van were members of a group they called 'The Family.' Most of them had ties to the Black Panthers or the Black Liberation Army, radical political groups that had many violent confrontations with police during the 1970s."

"At approximately 3:55 p.m., Paige, a 24-year Brink's veteran and his partner, Joe Trombino, 48, exited the doors to the Mall rolling out the moneybags on a hand truck. They walked over to the Brink's truck and began to load up the bags onto the rear deck. Simultaneously, the red van pulled up and the rear doors swung open. One of the suspects, armed with a shotgun, ran to the front of the truck and immediately fired two blasts directly at the bulletproof windshield. The guard in the front seat ducked just in time and was unhurt.

Another suspect, wearing a ski mask, opened up with his M-16 automatic rifle before his feet even hit the pavement, striking Paige in the neck, arm and chest. He was killed instantly.

Joe Trombino fired just one shot before he was hit several times in his upper arm and shoulder. The bullets all but severed his arm off his shoulder. "I've got no arm!" he screamed. But Trombino would survive that day, only to perish years later in another terrorist attack at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001."

Weather Underground/Black Liberation Army Brinks robbery:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/brinks/4.html

Why Does Obama's Pastor Matter?
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 04, 2008

[excerpt]
"In the book titled When Black Men Stand up for God, a collection of sermons and reflections on the Million Man March, Wright identifies Kwanzaa founder Maulana Karenga as an attendee of the rally.[13] In the end notes that follow a transcript of one of Wright's sermons, Karenga is described as 'an internationally acclaimed social activist and scholar in Pan African Studies'; 'the founder and creator of Kwanzaa, the well-known African American holiday'; and 'the director of Pan African Studies and Visiting Lecturer in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside.'[14]

Unmentioned is the fact that Karenga is a self-identified 'African socialist' whose 'Seven Principles of Blackness,' which are observed during Kwanzaa, are not only the Marxist precepts of parity and proletariat unity, but are also identical to those of the 1970s domestic terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army [re: Patty Hearst]. Nor is it noted that in 1971 Karenga was convicted of torturing two women who were members of United Slaves, a black nationalist cult he had established."
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=c19d4d91-618e-40d3-a5d9-c07d7a87a5ba

______________________________________________

Here’s an even better view of Conyers going off on the Detroit city council president.

On Oct 5, 2006, Democrat Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers Jr, *gave a speech* to the World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime organization.
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3114&Itemid=243

Before that he *publicly endorsed the movement* See "Endorsers of the Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime Include...". (Conyers' endorsement appears soon after Ward Churchill's)
http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2538&Itemid=2

FACT! World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime is a MAOIST- revolutionary movement initiated and controlled by the Revolutionary Communist Party!
(scroll down the list that appears to find the World Can't Wait organization --rwor.org is the website of the Revolutionary Communist Party) :
http://rwor.org/a/rwlink/links.htm

From David Horowitz's
FrontpageMag.com /DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime (WCW)

*Revolutionary communist movement that stages protests against the Bush administration

*Organizes college and high-school students

*Founded in June 2005 by Charles Clark Kissinger, a longtime leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7213

From the website of the Revolutionary Communist Party, parent org behind World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime, the same organization that democrat Chair of the House Judiciary Committee endorsed, then gave a friggin SPEECH to!

The RCP "Mission Statement":
"Create Public Opinion, Seize Power! We are preparing minds and organizing forces for the time when there is a major crack in the system, whenever it comes and wherever it comes from: an opening that makes it possible to bring the future Revolutionary Army of the Proletariat (R.A.P.) into the field and wage a revolutionary armed struggle that actually has a chance of winning.

And we have said that building our party itself is the most important part of organizing forces for revolution. This is true now, and it is true looking forward to the creation of that future R.A.P. and the waging of that armed struggle. ":
http://revcom.us/a/v20/1000-1009/1000/barw.htm

Here's the Revolutionary Communist Party (see link below) boasting of a FULL PAGE 'World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime' ad of theirs which actually appeared in the New York Slimes.
(either "rwor.org" or "revcom.us" takes you to the website of the Revolutionary Communist Party). The NY Times allowed a 2nd full-page RCP/WCW ad to be run several months later.
Article" Who Hated the Bush Ad"
http://www.rwor.org/a/028/who-hated-bush-ad.htm

Again from the RCP website, rwor.org: "Tearing Up the U.S. Paper Tiger in Korea: How 300,000 Chinese Troops Snuck into Korea and Kicked the Ass of the U.S. Armed Forces" RW #1059, June 18, 2000: http://rwor.org/a/v22/1052-059/1059/korea.htm

Revolution Interview with "Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan: October 29, 2005: ('Revolution' is the newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party) http://rwor.org/a/021/cindy-sheehan-interview.htm

According to "Discover the Networks,"

* Radical, anti-Israel organization that recruits westerners to travel to Israel to obstruct Israeli security operations
* Justifies Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was founded in August 2001 by Adam Shapiro, Huwaida Arraf; Ghassan Andoni, and George Rishmawi. The organization describes itself as "a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles."
ISM's activities fall under three major categories, which the organization describes as follows:
Direct Action: "challenging crippling checkpoints and curfew, confronting tanks and demolition equipment, removing roadblocks, participating in nonviolent demonstrations, accompanying farmers to their fields and protecting families whose homes are threatened with demolition"
Emergency Mobilization: "escorting ambulances through checkpoints, delivering food and water to families under curfew or house arrest, assisting the injured or disabled to access medical care and walking children to school"
Documentation: "documenting and reporting to local and international media about the daily life under occupation and the countless human rights and international law violations by the Israeli military"
Though professing, as noted above, a commitment to nonviolence, ISM members openly advocate the "liberation" of Palestinians "by any means necessary," including "legitimate armed struggle."
Led by Palestinians working closely with American recruiters, ISM invites American volunteers to travel to the Palestinian territories and disrupt the actions of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), which is engaged in anti-terror operations in the region. ISM maintains a continual, low-level presence in the territories year-round, punctuated by occasional large, episodic campaigns. At various times, ISM members have temporarily taken over Israeli military checkpoints, interfered with the arrests of Palestinians charged with terrorism, and attempted to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes containing subterranean tunnels for weapons smuggling.
Among ISM's most well known members was the late Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old volunteer who, in March 2003, was crushed beneath a bulldozer in Rafah when its operator failed to see her trying to block the destruction of a tunnel through which Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were receiving smuggled weapons.
ISM is an uncompromising supporter of the Palestinian "right of return" not only for the few remaining survivors who were among the 725,000 Palestinians who fled Israel during the 1948 war (when eight Arab armies attacked Israel on the very day of its creation), but also for all their descendants born since 1948. Thus ISM places the number of refugees who should be permitted to "return" to Israel at approximately 6 million.
ISM also opposes what it dubs "Israel's Apartheid Wall," the recently constructed anti-terror barrier bordering the West Bank. According to ISM, this wall is an affront to Palestinian dignity and a violation of their human rights. As of July 2004, one of the ISM officials leading the protests against the security barrier was Hisham Jam Joun, a veteran of the Marxist-Leninist terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The Chicago chapter of ISM has endorsed the "Declaration Regarding Caterpillar Violations of Human Rights," a document that impugns the U.S.-based Caterpillar Corporation for selling its machinery to the Israeli army, which in turn uses that equipment to demolish Palestinian terrorists' homes and bases of operation. This Declaration characterizes the Israeli actions as malicious and unprovoked acts of indiscriminate destruction that constitute "grave abuses of human rights and humanitarian law."
In the wake of two April 29, 2003 suicide bombings in an Israeli bar that killed three people and wounded more than 50, Israeli officials discovered that the bombers, both British nationals, had met with ISM leaders just prior to carrying out their deed -- though there is no evidence that the ISM representatibves were aware of the pair's intentions at the time. This incident prompted the Israeli government in June 2003 to formally accuse ISM of maintaining ties with Palestinian terrorism. "For us," said the Foreign Ministry's Information Chief Gideon Meir, "that was the turning point. Defying army bulldozers was one thing; providing cover for suicide bombers to slip into the country quite another."
Israeli officials immediately announced that all foreign nationals seeking to enter Gaza would thenceforth be required to sign a form swearing they were not members of ISM, and absolving Israel of responsibility should they be killed or injured in what the army defined as a "war zone." To this day, ISM remains the only organization specifically mentioned on the waiver form. "We have nothing against the internationals," says a senior IDF officer. "But, as far as we are concerned, ISM is not an international organization or a peace organization. It's a pro-Palestinian organization, set up by Palestinians, funded by Palestinians and linked to Palestinian terror."
ISM also lobbies for the release of Marwan Barghouti — an Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades leader who was captured by Israel in April 2002 and was charged with terrorism and the murders of 26 people. Ultimately he was convicted of five counts of murder, each carrying a sentence of life in prison.
In addition, ISM raises funds for the Palestine Children's Welfare Fund and the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.
A member organization of the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, in the post-9/11 era ISM has taken a stand against the U.S. war on terror, the Patriot Act, and the American military incursions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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