At first blush this looks innocent enough:
https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/902225427871215616
Until you discover that @KShikaki is Khalil Shikaki. He’s described as a pollster but his history is significantly richer than merely someone who makes up numbers to please Mahmoud Abbas and confuse the gullible.
His dearly departed brother, Fathi, founded Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Jesus. @jdgreenblatt45 is meeting with a guy who helped distribute funds for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. https://t.co/nuTb1Spenn pic.twitter.com/sfyk7WKSl2
— Kyle Shideler (@ShidelerK) August 28, 2017
The article containing the excerpt is here. You can read a lot of stuff here | here.
Long story short, Shikaki was a close associate of Sami al Arian who was eventually deported based on charges that he was involved in sponsoring terrorism. The key part is this: after Shikaki returned to the West Bank after leaving University of South Florida, he continued to accept funds raised by al-Arian on behalf of Islamic Jihad and he doled that money out to various Islamic Jihad run organizations, including those who paid bonuses and stipends to the relatives of “martyrs.”
I realize that when you deal in the Middle East you have to deal with unsavory characters, but decency demands there is some sort of limit. It seems to me that being a bagman for Islamic Jihad probably reaches that level. Perhaps Trump should have invested is an actual diplomat to lead this adventure rather than a real estate lawyer who writes travel books.
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