Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) leader Maher Hathout is promoting the annual fundraising dinner of KinderUSA, a charity linked to Hamas fundraising by a former U.S. Treasury Department official. According to the MPAC announcement:
‘The suffering in Palestine should be a priority for every human being with conscience,’ said Dr. Maher Hathout, MPAC Senior Adviser, in a recorded message for KinderUSA’s upcoming annual fundraising dinner. Dr. Hathout stresses the importance of giving and how this must be a conscience priority for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. On May 5, KinderUSA is celebrating ‘A Decade of Giving’ at its 10th Anniversary Banquet Dinner. As the leading, longest-operating Muslim American charity organization working on behalf of the Palestinian children, KinderUSA tries to improve lives through development and emergency relief. Through adversity and challenges, KinderUSA has impacted more than 600,000 children and their families through its programs in Palestine and Lebanon. The program will feature author and activist, Norman G. Finkelstein, PhD; the Religious Director of the Islamic Center of Southern California, Jihad Turk; and Norwegian physician, Dr. Mads Gilbert, who was one of the first Western physicians to enter Gaza during the 2008 – 2009 Israeli invasion as part of the Norwegian People Aid intervention.”
A post from July 2011 reported that Dr. Hathout was scheduled to appear along with Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Tariq Ramadan at a fundraising event for KinderUSA. An earlier post from 2009 reported that MPAC had been holding a fundraising concert and also donating the proceeds to Islamic Relief as well as to KinderUSA.
As discussed in a another previous post, a former U.S. Treasury Department linked KinderUSA to the Holy Land Foundation, recently convicted in the U.S. for terrorism financing in connection with Hamas. As the post noted, Riad Abdelkarim was a Chairman of the KinderUSA board as well as a Holy Foundation board member. He was also the Western Region communications director for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood group that has strongly supported the Holy Land Foundation and itself was an outgrowth of the U.S. Hamas infrastructure.
MPAC, headquartered in Southern California, was established initially in 1986 as the Political Action Committee of the Islamic Center of Southern California whose key leaders likely had their origins in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Since that time, MPAC has functioned as the political lobbying arm of the U.S. Brotherhood. MPAC has opposed virtually every count-terror initiative undertaken or proposed by the U.S. government. At times this opposition was said to be on civil-rights grounds but, just as often, MPAC claimed that U.S. counter-terror efforts were aimed at the U.S. Muslim community itself. MPAC has consistently supported and facilitated terrorism by supporting terrorist organizations and, more broadly, constructing an elaborate ideology defending the use of violence by Islamists and Islamist organizations. More than any other U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organization, MPAC has developed extensive relationships with the U.S. government which have included numerous meetings with the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Dr. Gilbert and Mr. Finkelstein are well known anti-Israeli activists who have been associated with Global Muslim Brotherhood events.