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Posted on 09/12/2001 5:26:39 AM PDT by Nita Nupress
With the breaking news of the suspicious car found in Florida, I thought this may be a timely time to educate ourselves on Ramadan Abdullah Shallah. His possible relevance to the WTC comes from this thread:
Links To Osama Bin Laden Found At Daytona Beach Flight School
FBI agents backed up by local Sheriff's deputies found Osama bin Laden printed materiel while executing search warrent at Embry Riddle flight school in Daytoa Beach. Embry Riddle has about 250 Islamic flight students and has ties to Phoenix East flight school, which has many more. Phoenix East is run by former Saudia Airlines pilot.
Phoenix East is thought to be very close to Iranian factions. P-E student pilots were suspected of transporting an Islamic terrorist to other universities in US while he hid at University of South Florida in Tampa. Ramadan Abdallah later became the leader of Islamic Jihad for Palestine, a known terrorist group that has taken responsibility for the killing of dozens of Israelis, after the assassination in Malta of Fathi Shikaki. Mr. Abdallah was the Administrative Director of the World Islam and Studies Enterprise (WISE), a think tank of the Islamic Committee for Palestine while he was at USF. Embry Riddle has simulators for air carrier level aircraft.
Ramadan Abdullah Shallah and his ties to University of South Florida (my title)
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.St. Petersburg Times
October 16, 2000, Monday
NATIONAL; Pg. 1A
Arab eyes turning to ex-USF professor
SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
JERUSALEM -- After his 1995 departure from the University of South Florida caused a furor that has yet to fully abate, not much was heard from, or about, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah.
But in recent days the former USF professor has been getting considerable attention in the Arab world because of his current job: head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group with a history of terrorism against Israel.
On Oct. 6 and again Saturday, Shallah was interviewed at length on Abu Dhabi TV, a satellite channel that has a wide following among the 2.2-million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Speaking from his base in Damascus, Syria, Shallah blasted Israel and vowed to continue the "new intifada" - a reprise of the 1987-93 Palestinian uprising against the Jewish state. On Saturday, he also sharply criticized Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for agreeing to attend today's emergency summit in Egypt with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Dressed in a well-cut suit, the 42-year-old Shallah presented a calm, intelligent demeanor despite his often fiery rhetoric.
"He's good-looking, he talks very well, he doesn't come across as nervous," said Hamoud Shalloudi, a Palestinian journalist who watched both broadcasts.
Yet after five years at the Jihad's helm, Shallah remains so little known that neither the general manager of Jerusalem's largest Arab newspaper or the head of a leading Arab think tank had ever heard of him until asked by a reporter Sunday.
So why all the sudden interest in Shallah by the Arab equivalent of CNN?
"All sleeping horses are being awakened," said Mahdi Abdul-Hadi of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs.
With many in the Arab world unhappy with Arafat, renewed attention is being focused on Islamic Jihad and the many other Palestinian factions determined to end Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
By far the most famous is Hamas, led by the aging Sheik Ahmed Yassin and known for suicide bombings. Others include Tanzim, a paramilitary faction of Arafat's own Fatah; and a group founded by George Habash, who masterminded several airline hijackings in the late '60s and early '70s.
With his relative youth and smooth, articulate demeanor, Shallah might seem a natural choice for Palestinians looking for a leader. But so far, his tenure with the Islamic Jihad appears to be less notable for what he has done than for the circumstances under which he arrived.
USF is still recovering from it.
Shallah was born in Gaza and got his doctorate in economics from the University of Durham in Britain. In 1991, he came to Tampa where he joined the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, or WISE, a new think tank designed to increase the West's understanding of Islamic faith and culture.
In addition to doing research and editing an academic journal for WISE, Shallah taught an undergraduate course in Middle Eastern politics at USF in 1994 and the spring of 1995. He left Tampa that June, telling a colleague he was going to take care of his sick father and research a book on Islamic banking.
Just a few months later - in October 1995 - the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad was killed in Malta. His replacement: former USF professor Ramadan Shallah.
USF and the rest of the Tampa Bay area were stunned. Had a major Florida university been harboring Islamic terrorists? Arab newspaper accounts suggested Shallah had been active in Jihad before and during his years in Tampa.
Subsequent investigations found no evidence of terrorist activity at USF. However, the professor who helped hire Shallah, Sami Al-Arian, was suspended during the course of the probes. (Al-Arian has denied any prior knowledge of Shallah's Jihad ties.) And Al-Arian's brother-in-law, a former USF teacher, has been jailed for more than three years in what has become a cause celebre for those battling the U.S. government's use of secret evidence against non-citizens.
At first, Shallah seemed eager to cement his radical credentials.
In November 1995, soon after becoming Jihad's head, Shallah hailed the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
"I am not sorry for the killing of Rabin, who is the world's No. 1 terrorist," he said.
A year later, Shallah wrote that Palestinians would "not concede a single meter" of land to Israel. "Our guns and weapons will continue to be aimed at our enemies until all of Palestine will be liberated," he said.
In 1998, Shallah's group claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack that killed the two bombers and injured 24 near a crowded Jerusalem market.
Until recently, however, almost nothing else about Shallah has appeared in the Western media, and even many Palestinians are unfamiliar with him. His predecessor, the slain Fathi Shikaki, continues to be far better known although it has been five years since his death.
(One reason may be that Shikaki's brother, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, is a well-respected and often-quoted Palestinian researcher and political analyst. In another twist to this story, it was Dr. Shikaki who founded WISE in Tampa in the early '90s and helped bring Shallah to Florida.)
Shallah's re-emergence in the public eye has come as the result of Arab outrage over what is seen as Israel's excessive use of force in putting down recent Palestinian protests.
In a joint interview Saturday with the head of another Palestinian faction, Shallah said Arafat should not meet with Israel's Barak before an Oct. 21 summit of Arab nations. Shallah blamed Barak for allowing a right-wing Israeli politician to visit a site sacred to both Muslims and Jews, setting off the violence that has killed nearly 100 people, most of them Palestinian.
"Why should Arafat sit with somebody who has the blood of Palestinian martyrs on his hands?" Shallah told Abu Dhabi TV.
As head of a group with a history of terrorist activities against Israel, Shallah almost surely would be a marked man if he ever ventured out of Syria. His predecessor's death purportedly came at the hands of Israeli agents avenging a bombing in early 1995 that killed 21 people.
However, Shallah's inability to enter Palestinian areas of the West Bank or his native Gaza does not necessarily preclude him from becoming an effective underground Palestinian leader, says Abdul-Hadi.
"These days," he said, "anything is a possibility."
Shallah still is head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad
and made the announcement on Al Jazeera
that they were responsible for the attack
in Megiddo June 5 that killed 17 people.
His friend, Al Arian, still is at U. South Florida
on leave without pay.
Bill O'Reilly of Fox News was persuing the Sami Al-Arian story, but, surprisingly, hasn't mentioned it since Shallah's group has taken "credit" for one of the recent Israeli bombings.
Wonder how many American monsters have been created by these two with American parents paying for it? It is time for Al-Arian to go!
It's getting to where you need a degree in Arabic language just to keep up with all these names.
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