Why Within Our Lifetime Supports the 'Holy Land 5'
It is with no shame that Within Our Lifetime (WOL) is openly making support for the “Holy Land 5” their cause célèbre.
Within Our Lifetime (WOL) is a radical anti-Israel organization dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel. Their name refers to the group’s goal. It is the complete takeover of Israel by Palestinians “within the lifetime” of the group’s members.
The Holy Land 5 are the five leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). The men set up the Holy Land Foundation as an Islamic charity to serve as a front to fund some of the worst global terrorists. In 2008, they were convicted of 108 different counts of funneling $12.4 million dollars to Hamas.
The United States designated Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization in 1995. The Holy Land Foundation trial was the largest terror funding case in U.S. history. The convictions came after painstaking investigations by federal authorities.
What Was the Holy Land Foundation
The FBI began investigating the Holy Land Foundation’s financial ties to Hamas in 1994. Over the course of the investigation, agents traveled the globe. They conducted more than 100 interviews and sorted through hundreds of boxes of documents. They watched hundreds of videos, listened to audio tapes and reviewed thousands of pages of bank records.
By 2001, HLF was named a Specially Designated Terrorist by the U.S. Treasury Department and shut down.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, from its inception, HLF existed to support Hamas. The terror organization’s goal is to create a Palestinian state by eliminating Israel through violent jihad.
Holy Land was the chief fundraising arm for the Palestine Committee, a U.S. entity created in the early 1990s by the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ parent organization. Through the committee, the Brotherhood planned to establish a network of organizations in the U.S. to spread a militant Islamist message and raise money for Hamas.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is just one of the Brotherhood front groups originating from the Palestine Committee.
America began to scrutinize fundraisers for Islamist terrorists by the early 1990s. According to a government wiretap of a 1993 Palestine Committee meeting, Holy Land President and CEO Shukri Abu Baker spoke about playing down the organization’s ties to Hamas so they could keep raising money for the terrorist organization in America.
On another wiretapped call, HLF representative Abdulrahman Odeh referred to a suicide bombing as "a beautiful operation."
During the trial, the government presented evidence that Holy Land was so concerned about investigators uncovering the group’s real intentions that they wrote a manual detailing security protocols.
These protocols included hiring a security company to search HLF for listening devices, ordering an HLP rep to learn advanced methods in detecting wiretaps, shredding documents after board meetings and keeping incriminating documents at off-site locations.
Gaslighting About the Holy Land 5 by Within Our Lifetime
In a long tweet thread on November 2, 2022, Within Our Lifetime disingenuously wrote about the Holy Land Foundation leaders. WOL contended that the five were “wrongfully imprisoned.” They further accused “zionists + U.S. imperialists” of targeting the “largest Islamic charity in the U.S.”
WOL portrayed Holy Land Foundation President and CEO Shuri Abu Baker as “sacrificing everything for our freedom.”
“Later this month marks 14 years since Shukri Abu Baker + the Holy Land 5 were wrongfully imprisoned in the U.S. WOL calls on all those involved in the struggle for Palestine to TAKE ACTION to free Shukri, Mufid Abdulqader + Ghassan Elisha! #FreeTheHL5 #FreeThemAll #FreePalestine”
“The HL5 were targeted by zionists + U.S. imperialists for their work with the Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Islamic charity in the U.S. Their crime?: feeding Palestinian orphans and raising $ for medical equipment in Palestine.”
Within Our Lifetime is known for its aggressive and often violent protests in the streets of New York. They bill their actions as support for “Palestinian resistance and liberation by any means necessary.”