Hamas Would Trade Hostages For Imprisoned Hamas-Linked CAIR Leader

The day after Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, a Hamas top dog, Ali Baraka, appeared triumphantly on Russia Today to crow about how the jihadis fooled Israeli authorities into complacency as they plotted the mass murder of Israeli civilians. Amid his boasting and patting himself on the back, he expressed a desire to trade American hostages that Hamas seized during its massacres for members of Hamas who are imprisoned in the U.S. Most Americans have no idea that there are Hamas members in American prisoners, but there are: they are former officials of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

On Oct. 8, Baraka said, according to Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI): “There are also prisoners in the U.S. We want them. Of course. There are Hamas members sentenced for life in the U.S. We want them too. Of course. We demand that the U.S. free our sons from prisons. The U.S. conducts prisoner swaps. Only recently, it did one with Iran. Why wouldn’t it conduct a prisoner swap with us? After all, it is participating in this war. Biden, the highest authority in the U.S., declared that he stands with Israel against Hamas and the Palestinian people. Therefore, he is a partner to this aggression, he must pay the price.”

In another interview the following day, Baraka was more specific: “There are Palestinians held in America. We will ask for their release. There are Palestinians who were detained by the United States on charges of supporting the resistance in Palestine. They were detained in America because they were accused of running charity organizations that support the people besieged in Gaza and help orphans in Gaza, so America detained and sentenced these people as requested by Israel. They have been sentenced to life in America. We will ask for the release of those Palestinians and it is our right to demand their freedom.”

As Daniel Greenfield pointed out Tuesday, “This almost certainly refers to the Holy Land Foundation case in which key figures in the largest Islamic charity in America were convicted of helping to send millions to Hamas.” So if Old Joe Biden decides to make a deal with Hamas, which is entirely within the realm of possibility, he could offer them Ghassan Elashi in a swap. Elashi is the founder of CAIR’s Texas chapter, and in 2009, he was sentenced to sixty-five years in prison for funneling $12.4 million in charitable contributions to Hamas while serving as head of the Holy Land Foundation. Greenfield notes that “CAIR’s D.C. office was funded by money from the Holy Land Foundation and the trial led to CAIR being named ‘an unindicted co-conspirator’ in terror funding.”

Hamas might also be interested in a deal for Holy Land Foundation fundraiser Mufid Abdulqader, a half brother of Hamas top dog Khaled Mashal. Abdulqader didn’t work for CAIR, but CAIR has championed his case. Abdulqader is currently in prison, but he is set to be released in 2025. Greenfield observes acidly: “Perhaps the Hamas family member will resume his musical career in which he toured America to sing to Muslim communities cheerful ditties such as, ‘with Koran and Jihad, we will gain our homes back… the agony of death is precious, killing Jews … Death to Jews, is precious.’”

Despite his solicitude for Hamas (remember, Old Joe just pledged $100 million for Gaza, which will almost certainly end up in the hands of Hamas), however, Biden is unlikely to conclude a deal with them for Elashi or Abdulqader. Doing so would just bring new public attention to CAIR’s longstanding Hamas ties, and become an occasion to remind people that CAIR’s executive director Nihad Awad said in 1994: “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”

Such reminders would be inconvenient for the Biden regime, for just this past May, the regime revealed that CAIR was among the groups advising it on how to combat antisemitism. This is rather like inviting Colonel Sanders to give advice on how to promote vegetarianism and save the chickens, as CAIR not only has ties to Hamas, but also has a long record of antisemitism. If the Biden regime swapped Elashi and Abdulqader for the remaining American hostages that the jihad terror group is holding, the whole country would see yet again the regime’s stupidity and/or evil, in including an organization that has been and is inveterately antisemitic in an initiative against antisemitism. So Elashi is likely to have to languish in prison awhile longer; if the Left succeeds in destroying the loyal opposition in America; he’ll get out soon enough.