Democrats have longed railed against the scourge of “dark money” and foreign influence on elections and spent the entire 2024 election promising to “save democracy” from the dastardly Republicans, but it turns out the call was coming from inside the house.
WASHINGTON — A US-based billionaire Palestinian developer was sued Monday by nearly 200 family members of Americans killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack — as well as Israel’s ambassador to Washington — for “aiding and abetting” the terror group as it planned its deadly incursion.
Bashar Masri, a naturalized American who lived as recently as 2022 in Washington, DC, per FEC filings, was accused of providing an “essential part” of Hamas’ “terror infrastructure” by facilitating the construction of tunnels and rocket launch sites as well as providing leaders like Yahya Sinwar the use of electricity at properties he owns in Gaza.
That infrastructure was located at an industrial park just yards from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, near the Karni crossing from Israel into Gaza — and at two lavish hotels on the Mediterranean, one of which became the site of a pitched battle between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas in the early months of the war.“On and after October 7, Defendants provided electricity to Hamas and specifically to Hamas attack tunnels built under and into Defendants’ properties,” wrote attorney Lee Wolosky of Willkie Farr and Gallagher LLP, one of the attorneys representing the victims’ families, in the suit.
“Defendants provided services that legitimized Hamas and gave its operations under and within Defendants’ properties greater protection from Israeli and U.S. action. All of this assistance was beneficial to Hamas in sustaining its iron-fisted rule in Gaza and in committing acts of international terrorism
As recently as last month, Masri was advising President Trump’s then-envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler about postwar plans for Gaza, according to the Jerusalem Post, accompanying Boehler to diplomatic meetings in Doha, Qatar, and Cairo, Egypt.
Masri was sued Monday in federal court by nearly 200 family members of US victims killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack for “aiding” the terror group at several properties he holds — including an industrial park near the border with Israel (above). Obtained by NY Post
Masri has long been a celebrated figure in Washington diplomatic circles — decades after helping with “planning” the First Intifada of 1987 against Israel — and was the driving force behind the creation of the “futuristic” city of Rawabi in the West Bank, according to a glowing “60 Minutes” profilefrom December 2019.
In an interview with CBS News’ Bill Whitaker, Masri characterized his property developments as “a shortcut” toward peace with Israel.
“If we can build a city — a futuristic city, a secular city, a democratic city — then we can build a state,” he said of the Rawabi construction.
Masri has long been a celebrated figure in Washington diplomatic circles — decades after helping with “planning” the First Intifada of 1987 against Israel — and helped build Rawabi in the West Bank. AFP via Getty Images
“I’m creating jobs for my fellow Palestinians. I am populating the land that if I’m not doin’ it, the settlers are. We’re not sugar-coating the occupation. We’re not normalizing with the occupation. We are defying the occupation.”
The entrepreneur’s holding company, Massar International, and other businesses like the Palestine Development & Investment Company received millions of dollars from the United Nations, European Union, World Bank and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to help develop the properties that contained the purported terror infrastructure.
The industrial park, the Gaza Industrial Estate, was in part financed by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation through a green energy initiative that set up solar panels — which later provided electricity to some of Hamas’ terror tunnels.
Masri’s companies helped build solar panels on the roof of the Blue Beach hotel in Gaza that allegedly provided electricity for Hamas tunnels. Obtained by NY Post
Hamas’ Deputy Minister of Economy Abdel Fattah Zrai, who was killed by the IDF last year, also signed on to a joint agreement greenlighting that solar project in a May 2022 ceremony.
The hotels — the Blue Beach hotel and Al-Mastal Hotel, now called the Ayan Hotel — were also used as a training ground for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades and had shafts on their premises that descended directly from some guest rooms into tunnels, according to the suit.
Other solar panels on the roof of the Blue Beach also allegedly provided electricity for Hamas tunnels.
The hotels — the Blue Beach hotel and Al-Mastal Hotel, now called the Ayan Hotel — were also used as a training ground for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades and had shafts on their premises that descended directly from some rooms into tunnels. IDF
Since-killed Hamas leader Sinwar also “regularly used the hotels to host public and private Hamas events,” according to the suit.
In 2021, the head of Egyptian intelligence visited the Al-Mashtal for a meeting with Sinwar.
Hamas killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians and 46 of whom were American citizens, during the attack — while 254 were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza.
Masri has met with Dr. Muhamad Ziyara (right), an engineering professor in Gaza who reportedly helped Hamas construct its tunnels, according to the civil suit. Obtained by NY Post
The civil suit filed in DC US District Court alleges Masri violated the Anti-Terrorism Act in “knowingly” assisting Hamas before it carried out the assault that became the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter, Israeli philanthropist Eyal Waldman, whose daughter was killed at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, as well as family members of Itay Chen and the slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin are all listed as plaintiffs.
The suit cites three causes of action under the Anti-Terrorism Act: aiding and abetting Hamas, conspiracy with Hamas, and providing material support to a US-designated foreign terrorist organization.
Family members of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin are listed as plaintiffs. AP
In addition to his development work, Masri sits on the Dean’s Council of Harvard Kennedy School.
Masri’s office said in a statement he “is a successful and respected Palestinian-American entrepreneur and business leader” who was “shocked to learn through the media that a baseless complaint was filed today referring to false allegations against him and certain businesses he is associated with.”
Jon Polin comforted his wife Rachel Goldberg as she spoke about their son Hersh Goldberg Polin, who at the time was thought to be alive in Hamas custody, during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last August. AFP via Getty Images
“Neither he nor those entities have ever engaged in unlawful activity or provided support for violence and militancy,” the office added. “Bashar Masri has been involved in development and humanitarian work for the past decades.
“His continued efforts to promote regional peace and stability have been widely recognized by the United States and all concerns [sic] parties in the region. He unequivocally opposes violence of any kind. He will seek the dismissal of these false allegations in court.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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