October 1, 2021 | Parliament of Australia

Review of the re-listing of five organisations as terrorist organisations under the Criminal Code

Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security
October 1, 2021 | Parliament of Australia

Review of the re-listing of five organisations as terrorist organisations under the Criminal Code

Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security

Video

October 1, 2021

Excerpt

Of full written testimony

Introduction

I thank the committee for the opportunity to contribute to its review of the re-listing of Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the so-called “armed wing” of Hamas.

I serve as senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan, non-profit research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. FDD conducts actionable research intended for consumption by governments, intelligence agencies, the military, the private sector, academia, and journalists. Our work draws upon our skills and experience in foreign languages, economics, law, technology, the military, and more. Since its founding in 2001, FDD has shared its expertise with the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations and congressional offices on a bipartisan basis.

I previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and I have spent more than a decade researching and writing about terrorist groups and rogue states in the Middle East. In 2008, I published the book Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine, which remains the only book on the market analyzing the ongoing Palestinian civil war. In 2013, I published the book State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State, which examines the political dysfunction and mismanagement of the Palestinian Authority. Over the years, I have testified before the U.S. Congress numerous times on Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

I offer the following based on my knowledge of and research on the subject matter.

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Full Written Testimony

Issues:

Jihadism Palestinian Politics Sanctions and Illicit Finance