Tel-Chai Nation

FOX News NY5 reports that one of the financial backers of the mosque has made contributions to terror organizations like Hamas, and his name is Hisham Elzanaty (Hat tip: Big Peace):

MYFOXNY.COM - Fox 5 News reported Thursday that one of the financial backers of the Islamic mosque and cultural center project in Lower Manhattan once contributed to a terror group, although the investor says the contribution was made because he thought he was giving money to a harmless charity.

One of the key players in Sharif El-Gamal's Mosque near Ground Zero is Egyptian born businessman, Hisham Elzanaty. Fox 5 News has learned exclusively and confirmed with Mr. Elzanaty’s attorney that Elzanaty made a “significant investment” in the development of the mosque near Ground Zero.

Fox 5 has also uncovered Elzanaty has teamed up with El-Gamal on at least two real estate deals: the controversial mosque site and another deal involving a commercial property in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

In the Chelsea deal, mortgage documents show Elzanaty played a major role signing off as the guarantor on El-Gamal's $39 million mortgage.

When Fox 5 News reporter Charles Leaf tracked down Elzanaty outside his Long Island home in Roslyn Heights last week Elzanaty avoided the camera and did not answer a single question about his business dealings with El-Gamal.

Fox 5 News has also learned that in 1999 Hisham Elzanaty sent money to an organization that would later be deemed by the U.S. government to be a terrorist group.

The organization was the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, also known as HLF. The now defunct group’s 1999 tax records show Elzanaty contributed more than $6,000 to HLF.

Two years later, in 2001, HLF was shut down by the federal government and designated as a global terrorist. After a mistrial in 2007, in 2008 five HLF leaders were convicted of providing material support to Hamas.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group that focuses on radical Islamic terrorist groups. The research group shared its information on HLF with Fox 5 News and IPT’s Managing Director, Ray Locker tells us HLF, “masked what their true purpose was, they funneled money to Hamas which used that money to conduct terrorist operations. In many cases they gave that money to the widows and children of so-called martyrs.”

I don't believe a word of the cretin's "defense" that he thought he was only donating to a "harmless" charity. What I do know is that he, just like Feisal Abdul Rauf, should not be welcome in New York or anywhere else in the civilized world.

Labels: anti-americanism, islam, New York, terrorism, United States