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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | |
| Arab-Israeli party suspected of multimillion-shekel fraud | |
| 2016-09-19 | |
Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! in massive sweep; Balad calls allegations ’baseless,’ part of ’persecution campaign Israeli police on Sunday arrested more than 20 activists and members of the Arab Israeli party Balad, saying an investigation revealed that the party had concealed the origin of millions of shekels in donations. Balad, which holds three Knesset seats and is one of the four parties comprising the Joint (Arab) List faction, said the arrests were part of a systematic campaign of political persecution. Those arrested in the sweep of Balad’s offices included senior members and activist, among them lawyers and accountants, a police statement said. Police said they opened their investigation into Balad with the approval of the attorney general after a state comptroller report raised the suspicion that senior members and activists had created a mechanism to "systematically misrepresent" the origins of millions of shekels donated to the party to finance its operations in recent years. The party allegedly reported large donations from "various sources in Israel and abroad" as if they were hundreds of smaller contributions made within Israel. Police said the suspicions included "falsifying corporate documents, forgery, use of forged documents, money laundering, and violating the party financing law." In a statement to the press, Balad denied the charges, calling them "fabricated" and "baseless." "The latest arrests are a brazen and dangerous escalation, but will not deter us from continuing our work," the statement said. Balad called the arrests an "authoritarian" attempt to undermine the party’s "national and democratic role." A statement in Hebrew added that the arrests were part of a "campaign of persecution against the Arab minority in general and against the political movement [Balad] specifically." The Joint List said in a brief statement that it would not comment on the arrests. Balad, which advocates for a binational state for Paleostinians and Israelis, has been dogged by controversy. Its founder, Azmi Bishara, fled Israel in 2007 amid accusations that he had provided the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah with information during the Second Leb War in 2006. He has since been living in Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates... Earlier this year, the party’s three Knesset members were widely condemned after they visited the families of Paleostinians killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis. They were suspended on February 8 by the Knesset Ethics Committee: Hanin Zoabi and Basel Ghattas for four months and Jamal Zahalka for two. More recently, Ghattas made headlines for calling former president Shimon Peres a "blood-covered war criminal," after the Nobel Peace Prize-winner was hospitalized due to a stroke. | |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #1 How much from our State Department or OneVoice? |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2016-09-19 08:59 |