The Hamas Networks in America: A Short History

·  Over the years, US authorities have conducted several activities to clamp down on the network, including deporting and prosecuting Hamas operatives and shutting down multiple front organizations. The 2001 designation of HLF and subsequent prosecution of part of its leadership for funneling approximately $12.4 million to Hamas constitutes to date the largest successful terrorism financing prosecution in US history.

·  Yet, US-based Hamas networks and individuals have displayed a remarkable resilience and many of the core activists of the Palestine Committee are still engaged in various forms of support (albeit at times purely political and not material) for Hamas.

Hamas in America
Individuals and networks providing various forms of support for Hamas have been active in America for decades.1 Small numbers of Palestinians who belonged to Muslim Brotherhood networks in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, in fact, arrived in the US since the 1960s to study at American universities or as immigrants/refugees (Hamas, as its charter states, is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine”2 )

Over time, from the official foundation of Hamas in 1987 onwards, this network increasingly organized itself, creating a relatively large set of public-facing organizations devoted to activities such as funding, lobbying, education and dissemination of propaganda. Since the US government first designated Hamas as a terrorist organization in 19973 , US authorities have conducted several activities to clamp down on this network, including deporting and prosecuting Hamas operatives and shutting down multiple front organizations.

Materials introduced as evidence by the government during these procedures represent an unique treasure trove of information on the otherwise extremely secretive network of Hamas operatives in America.4 Drawing largely from internal Hamas documents seized by the FBI and wiretaps of conversations among Hamas operatives conducted by the FBI and introduced as evidence during the 2007 terrorism financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a Texas-based charity U.S. authorities accused of financing Hamas5 , this report seeks to outline the history and evolution of the Hamas network in the US from its early days.6

1 For a history of Hamas, see Sara Roy, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector (Princeton University Press, 2013); Azzam Tamimi, Hamas: A history from within (Olive Branch, 2010); Matt Levitt, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale University Press 2006); Joas Wagemakers, The Muslim Brotherhood: Ideology, history and descendants (Amsterdam University Press, 2022).

2 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

3 https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/

4 Interview with Barry Jonas, trial attorney for the Department of Justice Counter-terrorism Section and prosecutor in the HLF case, Washington, June 2009. The most interesting documents, outlaying the history, structure, and aims of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States were found by authorities in the home of Ismael Selim Elbarasse. Elbarasse, a resident of Annandale (Virginia), was detained in August 2004 by Maryland police after he and his wife were caught videotaping the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Elbarasse is a close associate of Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook.

5 United States v. Holy Land Foundation et al., 3:04-cr-240 (N.D. Tex.). The documents are available at the NEFA Foundation’s website: http://www.nefafoundation.org/hlfdocs.html

6 This report draws heavily from a chapter in Lorenzo Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (Columbia University Press, 2010).