America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Thursday, March 9, 2023
MURDERING MUSLIMS AND JOE BIDEN - Military Could Have Stopped Afghanistan Bomber Who Killed 13 Americans, Service Member Testifies
Previously, Waltz accused President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin of “selling this country a fiction” that the U.S. could manage a resurgence of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan “with nothing” there, following the U.S. pullout of troops.
Rep. Mike Waltz Slams Biden’s ‘Callous, Incompetent’ Afghan Withdrawal: ‘Never Been More Disgusted with My Own Government’
The Biden administration’s “callous, cold-hearted, incompetent” withdrawal from Afghanistan was a “failure at leadership at the most senior levels,” according to Republican lawmaker Mike Waltz, who claimed he had “never been more disgusted with my own government” which he accused of having “betrayed” veterans, as he argued that neither the Taliban, al Qaeda, nor ISIS has yet to “get the memo” the war is over.
During Wednesday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the Biden administration’s 2021 emergency evacuation from Afghanistan, Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, heard testimony from veterans and Afghan evacuation groups concerning the “disastrous” withdrawal of American troops from the area.
Waltz, who served as a Special Forces commander in Afghanistan and currently serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, described the “deeply personal” events, relaying how a personal interpreter of his whom he fought alongside was executed by the Taliban.
“I know this is painful,” he began, “and it’s deeply personal. It’s deeply personal to many of us.”
“I have here pictures of one of my interpreters, Spartacus, who was beheaded by the Taliban,” he continued. “A young man of 19 years old who only wished to one day come to America as he was literally saving my life.”
Waltz, a colonel in the National Guard as well as a former White House and Pentagon policy adviser and the first Green Beret to be elected to Congress, also presented a picture of an interpreter who was able to escape through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program for Afghans.
“I have here a picture of Rahim who we did manage to get out on the SIV program; I’m standing next to him building a well for his village,” he said.
However, Waltz explained the reality for such escapees remains difficult.
“What did the Taliban do when we ‘successfully’ — since this was such an outstanding ‘success’ — get these people out? They’re hunting down his family,” he said, noting:
They’ve captured his cousin, tied him up behind a Taliban truck, [dragged] him through the village, and killed him, [all in order] to say: ‘Don’t you dare ever work for America or work with America, or work with the West again.’ And they’ve also beaten his brothers nearly to death.
“So even when we’re ‘successful,’ they start targeting and going after the families,” he added.
Addressing Allied Airlift 21 executive chairman Francis Hoang and Task Force Pineapple founder Lt. Col. (Ret.) David Scott Mann, who both worked to help evacuate Americans and allies from Afghanistan, Waltz suggested the two had to become their “own state department.”
“You had to charter international flights, you had to arrange country clearances, [and] you had to deal with international borders because the State Department failed,” he said.
“Is that an accurate statement?” he asked. “Do you disagree with that statement?”
“I don’t disagree with that, congressman,” replied Mann.
“The State Department found itself in a very difficult situation with very little guidance, as far as we can tell, no advanced planning for this exact scenario and unclear lines of authority,” replied Hoang.
“And so while many individuals at the State Department tried their best to help us, they found themselves hamstrung by the bureaucracy,” he added.
As a result, Waltz asserted that the evacuation was a “failure at leadership at the most senior levels of the [Biden] State Department and the White House.”
He then asked Mann if American veterans of his Task Force Pineapple — founded by Mann to rescue Afghan allies in danger — had “exhausted their personal savings trying to help these Afghans.”
“I do,” replied Mann, noting a friend in the veteran-run Moral Compass Federation who claimed “so many of our veterans have basically taken on an Uncle Sam-size problem with their pension funds.”
He also noted members that “exhausted their children’s 529 plans,” some whose marriages “survived multiple deployments” but are now heading to divorce, and others who have committed or considered committing suicide as a result.
Waltz mentioned his own operations officer who was “now dead because of this moral injury,” adding that “there’s been a 40 percent increase just in the last anniversary in texts to the suicide hotline.”
When asked by Waltz if it was “fair to say these veterans feel betrayed by their own government,” Mann responded in the affirmative, adding that it was quite “hurtful” that President Biden did not even mention the “successful” Afghanistan operation in two State of the Union addresses.
Waltz questioned whether the war in Afghanistan had indeed reached its conclusion:
Is this war over? Does anybody think this war is over? Because we’ve had members of this committee, the House Foreign Relations Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee, the United States government, United States House of Representatives and the President of [the] United States and the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State celebrate the fact that the war is over. Did the Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS, get the memo that we decided — that the president decided — the war was over?
Referencing the over 80,000 people still “trapped behind enemy lines,” Waltz described a “desperate e-mail” he received from an interpreter that morning.
“Today, this morning at 9:23 AM, I received a desperate e-mail from one of my interpreters who was formerly a school teacher but decided to work for a better future for women and children in Afghanistan,” he said. “He’s now being hunted; he’s been in hiding for two years.”
“Do you think he thinks this war is over?” he asked. “Are the Taliban systematically hunting these people down? Anybody disagree with that; that this is top down, top driven?”
Arguing that “what happens in Afghanistan does not and will not stay in Afghanistan,” Waltz recalled how “members of this committee celebrated when President Obama pulled us out of Iraq in 2011 with no follow-on plan [and then the] ISIS Caliphate comes roaring in three years later and we now have more military members back dealing with that than when we left in 2011.”
“They were wrong then, and they’re wrong now,” he stated.
Waltz concluded by simultaneously expressing pride in Americans, and this group of veterans in particular, and “disgust” in the Biden administration.
“I’ll just close with saying I have never been more proud of my fellow Americans and veterans as I am with this group,” he said. “But I’ve also never been more disgusted with my own government.”
“This was a callous, cold-hearted incompetent episode on the part of this administration, and it is not worthy of the men and women that we all carry on these bracelets and their sacrifice,” he added.
Previously, Waltz accused President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin of “selling this country a fiction” that the U.S. could manage a resurgence of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan “with nothing” there, following the U.S. pullout of troops.
The Biden administration has continuously come under fire for a lack of coordinated planning in the 2021 summer withdrawal of U.S. troops and the swift Taliban takeover of the country despite the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and NATO over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces.
Last month, top House Oversight Committee Republicans launched a probe into the president’s deadly Afghanistan withdrawal, demanding all associated documents and communications from the Biden administration, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
U.S. military snipers stationed at the Afghanistan airport in 2021 prior to a deadly terror attack that killed 13 Americans had an opportunity to kill the suspected bomber but were not given authority from military leaders, according to one of the American service members on the ground that day.
Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps who was dispatched to Kabul during the Biden administration's bungled evacuation, on Wednesday told lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee that his sniper team was stopped from taking out the suspected terrorist bomber. Vargas-Andrews also recounted how the Biden State Department turned Afghans away from the airport, "condemning them to death" at the Taliban's hands. The Aug. 26 bombing left 13 U.S. military members dead and Vargas-Andrews severely wounded.
Vargas-Andrews's sniper team was provided with detailed information about the suspected bomber, including what he looked like. "I asked the intel guys why he wasn't apprehended sooner since we had a full description," the military veteran testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee during its first public hearing on the bungled withdrawal operation. "I was told the asset could not be compromised."
Soon after, Vargas-Andrews and his team spotted the bomber but were told to stand down by a commander in charge. "We reassured him of the ease of fire on the suicide bomber," Vargas-Andrews said. "Pointedly, we asked him for engagement authority and permission. We asked him if we could shoot. Our battalion commander said, and I quote, 'I don't know.'"
"Plain and simple, we were ignored," Vargas-Andrews testified. "Our expertise was disregarded. No one was held accountable for our safety."
Soon after that exchange, the suicide bomber attacked. Vargas-Andrews recounted "a massive wave of pressure. I'm thrown 12 feet onto the ground, but instantly knew what had happened. I opened my eyes to Marines dead or unconscious lying around me." Vargas-Andrews lost multiple organs and two of his limbs. He has had 44 surgeries to date as a result of the attack.
Following the explosion, Vargas-Andrews said that "no one wanted my report post-blast. Even [the Naval Criminal Investigative Service] and the FBI failed to interview me." The withdrawal, he said, "was a catastrophe and there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence."
Vargas-Andrews laid a large portion of the blame on the Biden State Department, which he said turned away scores of Afghans seeking refuge from the Taliban.
"Some Afghans turned away from [Hamid Karzai International Airport] tried to kill themselves on the razor wire in front of us that we used as a deterrent," the veteran said. "They thought this was merciful compared to the Taliban torture that they faced."
The State Department would not process those seeking to board American evacuation planes during the evening, according to Vargas-Andrews, creating a backlog. The State Department pulled Marines from their security posts to help remove Afghans whom the department was unable to process, Vargas-Andrews said, accusing the administration of "condemning [these Afghans] to death."
Under questioning from committee chairman Michael McCaul (R., Calif.), Vargas-Andrew said, "both myself and team leader asked for engagement authority and [the commander] responded [by saying] he does not have that authority."
"As a result we have 13 dead service men, woman, 170 afghans killed, and 35 including yourself injured because that threat could not be taken out because your commanding officer could not give you the order," McCaul said.
Retired Lt. Col. David Scott Mann, who also helped coordinate civilian-led evacuation efforts after the Biden administration stopped chartering flights for those still trapped in the country, said the suicide bombing reignited mental health issues for scores of American veterans who fought in the Afghanistan war.
Mann described a "mental health tsunami" in the year after the bungled evacuation, saying that "73 percent of our Afghan war veterans say they feel betrayed by how this war eneded." Calls to veterans hotlines spiked 81 percent in the year after the withdrawal.
"My friend Brad was found dead a few months ago in a Mississippi hotel room," Mann said. "His wife, Dana, confirmed to me that the Afghan abandonment reactivated all the old demons he managed to put behind him from our time in Afghanistan together, and he just couldn’t find his way out of the darkness of that moral injury."
"We might be done with Afghanistan but it’s not done with us," Mann warned. "The enemy has a vote."
He said the administration's failure to implement a follow-up plan after removing U.S. troops resulted in the country becoming a safe haven for dozens of violent extremist groups.
"This colossal foreign policy failure," Mann said, "will follow us home and ultimately draw us right back into the graveyard of empires where this all started."
Some Afghans put their lives, and the lives of their families, on the line by aiding U.S. troops during our two-decade misadventure in their country, and now the very thing they risked everything to prevent has come to pass: the Taliban is back in power, and according to a new report, they are being hunted down in Afghanistan every day. The desperate situation in which these people find themselves is yet another terrible result of the fecklessness and indifference of Old Joe Biden and his handlers.
Fox News reported Tuesday that a new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction “detailing the chaos in Afghanistan following the American troop withdrawal in 2021 says the Taliban is now using fingerprint and gun records to hunt down Afghans who worked with the U.S. government.” According to a former officer of the fallen Afghan national government’s military intelligence apparatus, this is happening “on a daily basis.” The officer added: “They search their homes and if they cannot find the individual they will go after their family members. They punish their family until the person they are looking for surrenders. They will arrest someone at their home and beat them all the way to the police station.” This is, of course, because “the Taliban fear these forces because they think these people might be against them one day or have connections to the opposition fighting the Taliban.”
The Taliban is carrying out a sophisticated operation, “using biometric devices to detect and find former ANDSF,” that is, Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. “They take fingerprints and if there is a match, they take the individual to the police station.” As a result, “a lot of National Directorate of Security, Afghan National Army, and Afghan National Police officers were arrested through the use of biometric devices. Some are still in prison right now. Their families have no food or money. If the Taliban continue with this [these families] won’t last, they will collapse.”
The former officer who has revealed all this is still in Afghanistan; he says that he has moved four times since the Taliban returned to power, and if the Taliban jihadis find him, “will be executed.”
Gen. Besmullah Taban, who was previously the director of the Afghan National Police’s criminal investigative division, confirmed all this, saying that his mother has told him “that the Taliban sent people to my family’s house asking for my gun. They are looking for everything now, because there were systems showing which pistol or whatever belongs to whom,” thus alerting the Taliban to the identities of people who worked with American troops. “They are going through and trying to get that stuff.”
Meanwhile, a U.S. Marine infantry officer observed that “you’ve got guys who certainly do deserve to come to the U.S. who aren’t able to, and they’ve got a target on their back. The Taliban knows where they are and how to find them. It’s like we gave this guy a rope and noose around his neck and then kicked the chair out from under him.” Exactly. And why did we do that, except that Biden’s handlers seem intent on choosing to do what is absolutely the worst thing to do for Americans and their allies?
It would have been impossible to get everyone who helped us out of Afghanistan, but the Biden regime didn’t just leave a few of our friends behind. It actively brought other people who didn’t help U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, rather than those who did help. Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) were issued to people who aided the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Back in September 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas explained that most of the Afghans who were brought over here after the catastrophically botched withdrawal from Afghanistan weren’t SIV holders at all: “Of the over 60,000 individuals who have been brought into the United States” at that time, Mayorkas said, “and I will give you approximate figures and I will verify them, approximately 7 percent have been United States citizens. Approximately 6 percent have been lawful permanent residents. Approximately 3 percent have been individuals who are in receipt of the Special Immigrant Visas.”
Three percent? Why so low? Neither Mayorkas nor anyone else in the Biden regime has ever offered a satisfactory explanation of this. It’s clear that the U.S. military was too busy implementing Critical Race Theory programs and enforcing vaccine mandates to formulate a coherent plan for an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now those who stood by us there are paying the price. Chalk up another reason why Old Joe will be remembered as the worst president in American history.
An ex-soldier from Louisville, Kentucky, will spend the next 45 years behind bars for planning an attack on other soldiers, the Hill reported Saturday.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) detailed the case in a press release on Friday:
Ethan Phelan Melzer, aka Etil Reggad, 24, of Louisville, pleaded guilty to attempting to murder U.S. service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and illegally transmitting national defense information on June 24, 2022, before U.S. District Judge Gregory H. Woods, who imposed today’s sentence. According to court documents, Melzer planned a jihadist attack on his U.S. Army unit in the days leading up to a deployment to Turkey and sent sensitive details about the unit — including information about its location, movements, and security — to members of the extremist organization Order of the Nine Angles (O9A), a white supremacist, neo-Nazi and pro-jihadist group.
Woods described his crimes as “repugnant,” adding, “He betrayed the United States of America. He betrayed the US military,” he said in court moments before imposing the sentence, according to the New York Post.
Meanwhile, Melzer said he regretted everything, stating, “I wish I could say I’m sorry to my platoon.”
Per the DOJ’s news release, Melzer is a member of O9A, a group that espouses Neo-Nazi, antisemitic, and Satanic beliefs. The organization also “promotes extreme violence to accelerate and cause the demise of Western civilization” and has voiced admiration for Adolf Hitler and jihadists such as now-deceased former head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.
In May 2011, then-President Barack Obama (D) announced the United States conducted an operation resulting in bin Laden’s death, describing him as “a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”
Melzer joined the Army reportedly in 2018. The following year, he deployed to Italy with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. At that time, he consumed propaganda from several extremist groups.
In May 2020, Melzer was reassigned to a unit preparing for deployment. The unit was supposed to guard an isolated, sensitive military base.
During his training for the assignment, Melzer learned details about the base. He eventually started sharing that information with O9A.
“Melzer secretly used an encrypted messaging application to propose, advocate for, and plan a deadly attack on his fellow service members,” the DOJ’s press release said.
IRS Allows PFLP Terrorists to Fundraise Through Leftist Nonprofit
The IRS investigates waiters, but won’t touch Islamic terrorists.
[Order David Horowitz’s and John Perazzo’s new booklet: “Internal Radical Service: Abuse Of Taxpayer Dollars To Advance Leftwing Causes Illegally And Unconstitutionally”: CLICK HERE.]
Rabbi Eitan Shnerb was hiking to a spring with his son Dvir and his daughter Rina when the bomb went off. For a moment, as he described it in the hospital, everything went black. Then, badly wounded, he saw that the two teenagers were bleeding. Rabbi Shnerb was a trained paramedic. He saw that Rina, his 17-year-old daughter, had absorbed most of the blast. He kissed her on the forehead. And then he turned his Tzizit, the biblical garment that Orthodox Jewish men wear, into a tourniquet for his 19-year-old son to stop the bleeding.
Dvir told his father that he couldn’t breathe and passed out. His daughter was already dead.
“I wanted to believe it was just a dream,” Rabbi Shnerb said from his hospital bed. “I have experienced several bombs in my life and been saved, thank God, but this one got us,..I immediately called to Rina, shouting ‘Rina, Rina,’ I looked down and saw that she was not alive.”
Rabbi Shnerb had stopped a terrorist attack earlier this year by two armed attackers. This time he had not seen the explosion coming.
The terrorist group behind the 2019 terrorist attack was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And the IRS is accused of allowing it to fundraise through a leftist nonprofit group.
One name that keeps coming up in the Freedom Center’s investigations of nonprofits is the Alliance for Global Justice. AFGJ was spun off from the Nicaragua Network which had been set up to support the Sandinista Marxist terror regime. It went on to operate the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign in support of the narcosocialist Maduro regime in that country.
While the IRS has harassed pro-Israel groups and interrogated them about their views, it has apparently never found the time to ask the AFGJ about its support for enemy nations. It currently features a commemoration of Chavez’s legacy in support of a regime whose bosses are wanted criminals for their role in a cartel smuggling cocaine into the United States.
AFGJ’s backers include George Soros, Tides, the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, and other wealthy leftists, and it has used its status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to offer fiscal sponsorship to some of the worst of the worst close to home. The 130 groups it sponsors include several Black Lives Matter chapters, the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition in support of a cop killer, pro-illegal alien groups, as well as several brail funds whose mission is freeing rioters and criminals.
Some of these groups might not be able to obtain nonprofit status on their own, but benefit from the fiscal sponsorship of the Alliance for Global Justice.which allows them to accept tax-deductible contributions. When Refuse Fascism, a group linked by some to Antifa and which has defended Antifa violence, solicits donations, it does so using the Action Network, a platform utilized by both Antifa and the DNC, and directs tax-deductible donations through AFGJ.
The same is true of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network which asks supporters to direct checks to AFGJ. Samidoun does not bother to disguise what it is. It describes terrorists as “resistance fighters” and “martyrs”, and urges support for the “resistance”. The cheerleading for terrorists is accompanied by a call, “Make your US tax-deductible donation today, and donate safely and securely from around the world.”
The AFGJ states that, “Fiscal sponsorship services are offered to grassroots non-profits that agree with the AFGJ vision and mission statements.” Does that include terrorists?
After the murder of Rina Shnerb, Israel arrested members of a PFLP terror network embedded inside nonprofit groups. Israel designated Samidoun as a subsidiary of the PFLP terrorist organization. Multiple PFLP figures have been accused of serving leadership roles in Samidoun including its executive director, former vice chair, and multiple coordinators.
PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and other financial services have cut off access to Samidoun and the latest also cut off AFGJ. Currently, AFGJ and its various sponsorees warn donors that they can only take paper checks.
“AfGJ cannot accept credit donations—and neither can the 140 organizations that rely on AfGJ to provide them with fiscal sponsorship,” the leftist group cautions.
While AFGJ is running low on online sites willing to process donations to them, the IRS has yet to take any action. The Zachor Legal Institute, a pro-Israel group fighting BDS, filed an IRS complaint and directed a letter to the DOJ noting that the “PFLP has built a financial system supported by an infrastructure of the Seven PFLP Proxies who raise money on various humanitarian pretexts” while “directing money to the PFLP.”
And yet the odds of the IRS taking action are slim. Even though the PFLP was designated as one of the terrorist groups listed by President George W. Bush after September 11, it was less difficult for Zachor and conservative media to persuade financial services companies to stop processing donations for AFGJ than to get the IRS to enforce tax code regulations and the law.
AFGJ informed the IRS that its mission is to “achieve social change and economic justice”. In reality it has helped unleash violence at home and abroad. The beneficiaries include BLM’s Louisville Community Bail Fund which bailed out Quintez Brown, a Black Lives Matter activist, who walked into the campaign office of a Louisville political candidate and opened fire.
While payment processors have cut off the Alliance for Global Justice, the IRS has yet to act. After over two decades, the IRS has shown no interest in taking action even as the AFGJ continues to act as a fiscal sponsor for groups that would not qualify for nonprofit status. The fiscal sponsorship loophole continues to be abused to fund everything including terrorism.
The Freedom Center’s pamphlet, Internal Radical Service by David Horowitz and John Perazzo, has exposed how the IRS routinely allows leftist nonprofits to violate tax codes and the law. The fiscal sponsorship loophole is widely used by radical leftists to make illegal activity tax deductible. Tax code regulations state that “exempt purposes may generally be equated with the public good, and violations of law are the antithesis of the public good”. They warn that, “violation of constitutionally valid laws is inconsistent with exemption under IRC 501(c)(3)” and that “planned activities that violate laws are not in furtherance of a charitable purpose”.
Terrorism is one of the most blatant possible examples of behavior at odds with the public good.
While the IRS is warning waiters to report their tips, it allows terrorists to benefit from tax deductible money. Payment processors have shown that they have a higher level of compliance with the law than the IRS. When the IRS refuses to enforce the law while demanding that everyone abide by it, that is a culture of lawlessness and, in this case, it’s costing lives.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
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Biden Admin Awards Grant to Palestinian Activist Group Whose Leaders Hailed Terrorist as 'Hero Fighter'
Community Development and Continuing Education Institute board members also applauded Hamas missile attacks on Israel
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine militants in 2008 / Getty Images
The Community Development and Continuing Education Institute (CDCEI), an activist group based in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories, received the grant to promote "youth participation and accountability in local governance," the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced in November.
But an anti-terrorism watchdog group is raising concerns about the funding, after finding that the activist group's board chairman participated in a celebration for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group, while other board members lauded convicted terrorists as "heroes" and applauded Hamas missile attacks on Israel.
NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that investigated the CDCEI funding, questioned the federal government's vetting process for grantees. The news of the USAID grant comes as the Biden State Department has faced criticism from lawmakers for funding a Gaza-based journalist training program run by another charity, Fares Al-Arab, that has worked with terrorists and has promoted anti-Israel views.
"These findings reinforce the need for USAID to consult a wide array of publicly available sources when vetting potential grantees, to ensure that taxpayer funds are not provided to organizations led by individuals that glorify violence, espouse anti-Semitic rhetoric, or embrace anti-normalization," NGO Monitor said. "USAID grantees should align with U.S. goals and values."
USAID did not respond to a request for comment. CDCEI did not respond to a request for comment.
CDCEI is a "nonprofit organization established in Bethlehem in 2010" that "promotes the values of human rights, pluralism, equality, good governance, and civic participation within the Palestinian society," according to its website. But Arabic-language news articles and social media posts provide a different image of the group's leadership, according to an NGO Monitor investigation shared with the Washington Free Beacon.
Imad Al-Zeer, who has served as chairman of CDCEI's board of directors since 2012, in Dec. 2019 attended a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine event celebrating the 52nd anniversary of the terrorist group's founding, according to an Al-Hadaf news report translated by NGO Monitor. Photos from the event showed Al-Zeer posing next to Popular Front signs.
In social media posts, senior board members also indicated their support for terrorists.
"Together, with one another, to support the release of George Abdallah," wrote Salman. "One of the idioms used by the hero fighter George is 'I shall never compromise, I shall keep resisting.'"
In a 2021 post, Salman also celebrated six escaped Palestinian prisoners as "heroes"—including Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror chief Zakaria Zubeidi and a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member convicted of killing an Israeli teenager in 2006.
After the Israeli military killed five members of a Hamas terrorist cell in Sept. 2021, Salman wrote, "May Allah have mercy on the spirits of Palestinian hero martyrs, including the five martyrs that rose to the supreme companion yesterday."
Yasser Shaheen, a CDCEI board member, in a May 10, 2021, Facebook post translated by NGO Monitor applauded Hamas missile attacks on Israel as "rockets of the Palestinian resistance." He also mourned "hero martyr Omar Abu Layla," three days after Layla killed a rabbi and an Israel Defense Forces soldier.
Board member Jiries Abu Ghannam published a Facebook post in "solidarity with the prisoner fighter Marwan Al-Barghouti in his 19th year in Israeli prison." Barghouti is a convicted murderer who helped instigate the first and second intifadas.
Rana Abu Farha, another board member, in a post last March translated by NGO Monitor celebrated the "44th anniversary of Dalal Al-Mughrabi and 11 Palestinian revolutionaries' martyrdom" and praised the female terrorist as a "beautiful and brave fighter."
The post was a reference to Al-Mughrabi's 1978 bus hijacking and massacre of 38 Israelis, including 13 children. Al-Mughrabi also killed American photographer Gail Rubin, the niece of a then-U.S. senator, in the attack.
CDCEI isn't the only Palestinian group funded by the Biden administration to come under scrutiny in recent weeks. Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) sent a letter this week calling on the State Department to suspend funding to the Gaza-based charity Fares Al-Arab, following a Free Beaconreport that found the group has worked with terrorists.
The group worked with the Hamas government as recently as 2021 on a housing project. The charity also gave a media award to a radio network run by the Islamic Jihad Movement, honored a self-described journalist who belonged to the Popular Front, hosted a press freedom event that featured a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, and co-led a human rights training course with a convicted terrorist.
Taliban Has $7.2 Billion Worth of U.S. Military Equipment Abandoned in Afghanistan, Report Says
Aircraft, guns, vehicles left behind during Biden's bungled withdrawal
Taliban fighters in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021 / Getty Images
The Taliban is in possession of nearly $7.2 billion in U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons, ammunition, and aircraft as a result of the Biden administration’s bungled 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a government watchdog.
"Nearly $7.2 billion worth of aircraft, guns, vehicles, ammunition, and specialized equipment" was abandoned in Afghanistan when the Biden administration carried out its rushed evacuation, according to a report published in late February by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the federal watchdog group that monitors U.S. expenditures in the country.
"At least 78 aircraft worth $923.3 million, 9,524 air-to-ground munitions valued at $6.54 million, over 40,000 vehicles, more than 300,000 weapons, and nearly all night vision, surveillance, communications, and biometric equipment provided to the [Afghan defense forces] were left behind," according to information disclosed in SIGAR’s report.
The report comes ahead of the first public hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal in the Republican-controlled House Wednesday and is likely to fuel questions on why the administration failed to prevent the Taliban from stealing U.S. military hardware. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) says the Biden administration has stonewalled his committee's attempts to obtain documents that could provide a window into the administration’s mishandling of the operation.
The Pentagon told SIGAR investigators that there "currently is no realistic way to retrieve the materiel that remains in Afghanistan, given that the United States does not recognize the Taliban as a government," according to the report.
Taliban units now "patrol in pickup trucks and armored vehicles likely procured by the U.S.," according to the report. Taliban-run special operations forces also "wear helmets with night vision mounts likely provided by the United States, and carry U.S.-provided M4 rifles equipped with advanced gunsights."
The terrorist group also is using "more advanced U.S.-provided equipment," such as armored vehicles and Mi-17 helicopters.
Furthermore, the Taliban is recruiting former Afghan military personnel to join its air force and fly the abandoned U.S. planes. "The pilots working for the Taliban reportedly need jobs and say the Taliban are the most reliable employer in Afghanistan," according to the report.
A portion of the most advanced equipment and technology "remains vulnerable to exploitation by adversarial states" who want to analyze how U.S. weapons systems work. This includes "optical and communications equipment, computer software and hardware, and biometrical data."
SIGAR also found evidence the Taliban is "attempting to summon former government employees to provide access to servers belonging to the former government that included biometric data."
Another concern is that the Taliban "could sell a portion of the captured arms and equipment to augment its revenue flow."
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