
The U.S. government is turning a blind eye to illegal activities by the communist-linked International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which raises money for flotillas linked with terror, Dafka investigative reporter told Israel National News TV.
The U.S. government is the reason the flotillas are allowed to survive and grow,” Lee Kaplan said during a visit to Israel.
Kaplan, a long-time investigative journalist for his Dafka website, explained that the ISM was put together by the Arab communist and terror-linked PLFP group, “allied with communist anarchists...and now with Hamas... to promote the destruction of the State of Israel. They are doing a great job. I believe they pose a greater threat than the armed terrorists do.”
He said one of the reasons for his trip is to try to convince Knesset Members “to create new laws to penalize members of the ISM, when they are caught here, with jail and fines.”
Kaplan charged that left-wing groups are violating American fund-raising laws by rising money for ISM-sponsored flotillas to break Israel’s maritime embargo against bringing weapons into Gaza.
The left-wing groups are "non-profits, completely tax-free in the United States,” Kaplan continued. “They are educational foundations, which means they are only allowed in educational things. They are not supposed to be buying boats, ships, yachts and planes in order to aid a terrorist group. It is against the law. The Internal Revenue Service knows about this, and they ignore it and look the other way.”
Kaplan says he has a photograph of someone giving money to the foreign minister of Hamas-controlled Gaza, on behalf of the ISM. “This is giving material aid to Hamas,” which the United States has outlawed as a terrorist organization, Kaplan added. But our attorney general – the Justice Department – will not prosecute them, and then the President has the nerve to say to Israel, 'Well, we want an investigation of what happened on the flotilla,'” referring to the IHH terrorist-backed ship whose activists attacked Navy commandos trying to steer the ship from Gaza last May 31.
He charged that the demand by U.S. President Barack Obama that Israel conduct an investigating of its actions “is outrageous.” Kaplan suggested that Israel ask the United States, “Why don’t you enforce your own laws and stop allowing these people to raise money for these flotillas?”
Kaplan also had harsh words for the Israeli government, whose leaders he met and who apparently did not appreciate an American giving them suggestions.
“I warned Israeli intelligence about the flotilla boats one year before the first one went out, and nothing was done," he declared. They had a second one and a third one…and on the seventh one, they recruited IHH personnel and injured our soldiers. It was the inaction of the government that allowed it.”