The Holy Land Foundation

The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was one of many casualties that followed the September 11 attacks. This charitable organization had sought to alleviate the suffering of dispossessed Palestinians living under the brutal conditions imposed by military occupation. It found itself crushed beneath the wave of anti-Arab sentiment that was allowed to sweep through the United States.

In today's article about the struggle of the Holy Land Foundation to clear its name, the Washington Post cites Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Hardly a voice of objectivity, Matthew Levitt is known for working on behalf of the Israel's most powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Moreover, while the Washington Institute for Near East Policy denies formal ties with AIPAC, its officers and board members overlap considerably. Moreover, the Institute is a publisher for Daniel Pipes, whose record of Arab American defamation includes his statement that Muslims serving in the US military "need to be watched for connections to terrorism."

Sadly, Isarel's lobbyists have been frighteningly successful in their ability to similarly slander Muslim charities that provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Even more sinister, any valid criticisms of Israel's policies on legal, moral, or spiritual grounds are blasted as de facto acts of anti-Semitism. Matthew Levitt is certainly entitled to lobby on behalf of a foreign government in the same way that South Africa's lobbyists managed to keep the US Congress silent about apartheid for decades. But does the Israeli lobby have the moral authority to condemn a charity that seeks to alleviate the oppression of Israel's occupation of Palestinians?

In his keynote address to a religious conference in Boston last year on ending the Israeli occupation, Archbishop Desmond Tutu compared his observations in Palestine with what he remembers happening to blacks in South Africa. Witnessing "the horrific attacks on refugee camps, towns, villages, and Palestinian institutions," Archbishop Tutu asked, "Why is there no outcry in this country about the Israeli siege in the West Bank?" There are, in fact Jewish, Christian, and Muslim voices speaking out against the humanitarian nightmare in the occupied Palestinian Territories. But, as long as the Washington Post gives inordinate space to the defenders of injustice, voices like Archbishop Tutu will be marginalized. The government will continue to bow to pressure from lobbyists who demand that charities working on behalf of oppressed Palestinians be designated as terrorist fronts.