The family of Kayla Mueller, the American hostage and humanitarian who was killed by ISIS earlier this month, has launched a new 501(c)3 charity in her memory. The charity, Kayla’s Hands, was announced by the family in an interview with NBC News that aired on the Today show Monday morning. It links to a website that promotes causes with which Mueller had worked, including the International Solidarity Movement, a radical pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel organization.
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) campaigns to isolate and demonize Israel by bringing volunteer activists from abroad to stage anti-Israel demonstrations on behalf of Palestinians. In 2003, two terrorists from Britain attacked a pub in Tel Aviv after reportedly using ISM contacts to establish their presence in the country (a charge ISM denies). In 2007, ISM leaders launched the “Free Gaza Movement” in an attempt to open shipping to Hamas-controlled Gaza.
ISM members are often involved in dangerous demonstrations against Israeli attempts to prevent terrorists from striking innocent civilians, both Jewish and Arab, in Israel. In one infamous case, American volunteer Rachel Corrie was killed in an accident involving a bulldozer that was clearing Palestinian homes near the Gaza border for security reasons (the same type of anti-smuggling, anti-terror operation recently undertaken by the Egyptian government without global protest).
Mueller was involved in protests against the “wall”–the security barrier, mostly composed of high-tech electronic fencing, that was erected during the second intifada to keep Palestinian suicide bombers from the West Bank out of Israel. Since the construction of the barrier, the number of illegal crossings from the West Bank into Israel dropped to near zero, and many hundreds–if not thousands–of innocent lives were saved. ISM claims to have no links to Palestinian terror organizations.
Kayla’s Hands links to a page, www.forkayla.org, that links in turn to a page about her work for the ISM and the Palestinian cause. It states, erroneously: “Depending on where they live, Palestinians experience discrimination, denial of basic human rights, and an extreme degree of military violence against their civilian populations. The plight of Palestinians has been labeled ethnic cleansing by the United Nations and apartheid by leaders such as Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter.”
It adds: “We know that Kayla would have been deeply concerned about the Summer 2014 invasion of Gaza and accompanying humanitarian crisis, in which more than 2100 Gazans were killed, including 450 children.” The war was started by Hamas, which targeted Israeli civilians with rockets and attempted to use tunnels to carry out massive terror attacks. Nearly half of Palestinian deaths were combatants.
Mueller also worked at a charity for African refugees in Israel.
Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak edits Breitbart California and is the author of the forthcoming ebook, Wacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea Party, available for Amazon Kindle.
Follow Joel on Twitter: @joelpollak
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