US-Designated Hamas Front Gets Symbolic Win in France

By Matthew Levitt

This week a French court ordered the Wiesenthal Center’s Director for International Relations in Paris, Dr. Shimon Samuel, to pay a symbolic one Euro fine in a defamation suit brought by a U.S.-designated Hamas front organization. The Comité de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (CBSP – Committee for Welfare and Aid to the Palestinians) charged that it had been defamed by Dr. Samuel’s allegation that it finances terrorism and raises funds in support of the families of suicide bombers recruited by Hamas. The Paris Court acknowledged the 150 exhibits Dr. Samuels submitted “indeed constituted an impressive body of evidence,” but nonetheless issued a symbolic ruling in favor of the plaintiff. In the Wiesenthal Center’s press release, Dr. Samuel pledged to appeal the ruling.

The decision, however, appears to have more to do with the intricacies of French libel law than with the facts documenting CBSP’s ties to Hamas.

In August 2003 the U.S. Treasury Department designated CBSP as a terrorist entity – along with four other charities tied to Hamas and six senior Hamas leaders.

According to declassified information Treasury made available at that time:

Commite de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (CBSP) and a Swiss subsidiary are primary fundraisers for HAMAS in France and Switzerland, respectively. Founded in France in the late 80s/early 90s, CBSP acts in collaboration with more than a dozen humanitarian organizations based in different towns in the West Bank and Gaza and in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. ASP, a subsidiary of CBSP, was founded in Switzerland in 1994. The group has collected large amounts of money from mosques and Islamic centers, which it then transfers to sub-organizations of HAMAS. Khalid Al-Shuli is the president of CBSP and ASP.

France has long resisted banning Hamas fronts in Europe, despite European Union’s 2003 decision to ban Hamas writ large (including not only it’s terrorist wing, the Qassam Brigades, but it’s social and political wings as well). A French government position paper sites “reticence” to ban Hamas among “a certain number of EU member countries,” including France, and highlights “the movement’s social activities, which partially but significantly make up for some of the Palestinian Authority’s difficulties in guaranteeing essential services to Palestinian society.” Despite the EU ban, the paper explains, “France continues to oppose the inclusion on the list of the Committee for Palestinian Charity and Aid (CBSP), which raises funds for social actions in the Palestinian territories. Several administrative and judicial investigations have produced no evidence that this group uses such funds for terrorist purposes.”

In contrast, U.S. officials maintain they have provided indisputable evidence of the links between Hamas and European fronts like the CBSP. Israel has also provided hard evidence. Israeli authorities point to documents seized in raids in Jenin and Ramallah showing bank transfers between the CBSP and Hamas-run welfare groups. The transfers reportedly include the transfer of €45,000 in the first half of 2004 alone. Moreover, other intelligence services, including the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service, have also highlighted CBSP’s ties to Hamas. CBSP and the other Hamas entities banned by the United States are similarly banned in Australia too.

Both the French and Italian branches of CBSP, as well as Interpal in London, the al-Aqsa International Foundation branches throughout Europe, and many others, belong to an umbrella organization called the Union of Good (I’tilaf al-Khayr, also known as the Charity Coalition). Founded in October 2000 by Sheikh Yusef Qardawi, the radical Islamist sheikh noted for his religious rulings (fatwas) legitimizing suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, and for calling for attacks on Americans--military and civilian alike--in Iraq, the Union of Good was outlawed in Israel in February 2002 for its ties to Hamas.

Funds raised under the auspices of the Union of Good and its constituent organizations like CBSP make their way to Hamas through local charity committees, the vast majority of which are affiliated with Hamas. According to an Israeli assessment of December 2004, the Union of Good had transferred tens of millions of dollars to the Palestinian territories, via local Hamas charities.

For more information see HAMAS: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale, 2006).

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