Amidst all the coverage that the scandal has received in both blogtopia and the corporate media, one aspect of it has been curiously underplayed. I was completely unaware of it until hearing about it on Flashpoints! tonight (mp3 download here, relevant section starts at 7:00 into the show) when host Dennis Bernstein interviewed Ali Abunimah from the Electronic Intifada.
And what is this hidden information? It's that more than $140,000 of the money Abramoff "took" (stole) from Indian tribes in the United States was given to radical right-wing Israeli settlers in the West Bank to fund their private war against the Palestinians. The story appears to have been broken by Michael Isikoff in Newsweek last May, and got a one-sentence mention in the Washington Post in June; outside of that, this aspect of the scandal has gone essentially unmentioned in the media.
And what was Abramoff funding? Isikoff says that the money went "to fight the Palestinian intifada," but that's just pro-Israeli out-and-out nonsense. The Israeli government, with its billions of dollars of financial and military support from the U.S. government, has no trouble fighting the intifada. Here's what the money really went for:
The word "outpost" gives the game away. "Outpost" means that even under Israeli standards where other "settlements" are perfectly legitimate (they aren't), these particular settlements were illegal and conducting an illegal land grab, and harassing, terrorizing, and probably killing Palestinians with their Abramoff-provided sniper scopes. As Abunimah points out, the sick irony of taking money from one oppressed group to fund the oppression of another oppressed group is really too much to bear.
Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as "security" equipment.
Abramoff's paramilitary gear ended up in the town of Beitar Illit, a sprawling ultra-Orthodox outpost whose residents have occasionally tangled [How's that for a euphemism?] Palestinian neighbors. Yitzhak Pindrus, the settlement's mayor, says that several years ago the town was confronting mounting security problems. "They [the Palestinians] were throwing stones, they were throwing Molotov cocktails," Pindrus says.
"He used to bring in this equipment—night-vision goggles, telescopes," says Pindrus. At least some of the equipment appears to have come from Abramoff's law firm. An August 2002 invoice obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that $773 worth of paramilitary gear—including sniper shooting mats and "hydration tactical tubes"—was shipped to one of Abramoff's aides at the law firm where the lobbyist then worked.
Abunimah also notes, which I haven't seen in the press but quite likely is there, that as the heat started coming down, two of Abramoff's associates skipped the country and found refuge in Israel, counting on tough extradition standards to keep them from being sent back to the U.S. to face the music along with their boss.
Also paraphrasing Abunimah, just imagine how much trouble Abramoff would be in if he sent $140,000 to Arab terrorists? Why, he'd probably be in the cell right next to Sami Al-Arian.
Update: Juan Cole has similar thoughts on the same subject (thanks to a tip in comments).
