Terrorists in our
children’s midst

The world watched last week as Islamic terrorists in Russia massacred the children of Breslan. And as we watched, many of us pulled our kids closer to us and wondered if the same thing could happen here.

At first glance, you would think that our children are safe in their schools in America. After all, life is not a Bruce Willis movie. Everyone knows that schools do extensive background checks on the people who work there and who are around our children.

Or do they?

Mohamed Salah: Teaching the children of Chicago

Take the case of Mohamed Salah, who is currently under federal indictment in Chicago. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the following about Salah and the others named in the indictment: “This cell allegedly financed the activities of a terrorist organization that was murdering innocent victims abroad, including American citizens.”

Ashcroft said the plans go back as far as 1998.

“The indictment … alleges that the affairs of the enterprise were committed through multiple acts of conspiracy to commit and solicitation of first-degree murder, conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons in a foreign country, money laundering … providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations” and other crimes. In addition to racketeering, Salah, 51, was charged with providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization and obstruction of justice.

Salah was arrested by Israeli intelligence in 1993 on a visit to Israel and confessed to recruiting Islamic militants and then helping to instruct them in the use of poisons, chemical weapons and explosives. The training supposedly occurred in the late 1980s. In 1991, Salah allegedly served as a financial agent for Hamas, opening accounts at a number of Chicago-area banks. He spent several years in prison in Israel, and upon his release he returned to the U.S.

What job did the man, who had formerly worked in Arab grocery stores, as a used car salesman and with the Quranic Literacy Insitute, get?

Salah also worked for a time as a substitute teacher for the Chicago public schools. He also applied for a job as a part-time lecturer on computer systems at City Colleges of Chicago’s Olive-Harvey College. He was fired in 2003 for failing to disclose the Israel conviction and was removed from the list of approved substitutes for the Chicago public schools at the same time he was fired by Olive-Harvey College.

Driving the children of Minneapolis

Or consider the case of Mohamed Kamal Elzahabi. Elzahabi was indicted this year on two counts of lying to agents with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in connection with an international terrorism investigation.

According to a criminal complaint filed earlier in the case, Elzahabi allegedly attended a jihad military training camp and fought in Afghanistan in 1988 and 1989. Later, he acted as a sniper in combat and also served as an instructor in small arms and sniper skills for other jihadists attending the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Elzahabi applied with First Student of Minneapolis to become a school bus driver. Elzahabi spent four months as a First Student school bus driver in late 2001, transporting students for the Minneapolis Public Schools. The company fired him in January of 2002 after he failed to report to work, said Jeff Pearson, region vice president with First Student Inc. (First Student is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and employs 19,000 drivers on 15,000 school buses nationwide.)

Elzahabi also held commercial driver’s licenses in Massachusetts, Colorado and Minnesota, and also had a HAZMAT certification.

Shaping the minds of our children

Article 15 of the charter of Hamas states as follows:

It is necessary that scientists, educators and teachers, information and media people, as well as the educated masses, especially the youth and sheikhs of the Islamic movements, should take part in the operation of awakening (the masses).

Rafiq Jaber agrees, saying:

“Formerly most Muslims were doctors and engineers. Now more are getting into political science, law, teaching and journalism.”

Jaber was an award-winning salesman with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company until his retirement in 1997.

But Jaber also served as president for two years of the Bridgeview Mosque. He also is a founder of the Chicago chapter of the Islamic Association for Palestine and a past IAP national president and national chairman.

The IAP was founded by Mousa Abu Marzook, the head of the political wing of Hamas, who is currently under federal indictment on terrorism charges. (According to the U.S. Justice Department, Abu Marzook is a senior commander of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas. From his current residence in Syria, Abu Marzook openly advocates and celebrates suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.)

The Islamic Association for Palestine openly sends out Hamas communiqu?s, and in filings in federal court cases, federal agents have described IAP as the propaganda arm for Hamas in this country. IAP has reproduced and distributed Hamas’ charter (which calls for the total destruction of the state of Israel) across the United States, has produced training material for terrorists on how to interrogate suspected “collaborators,” and has even sponsored a Hamas-affiliated music troupe whose theme song includes the lyrics “We Buy Paradise with the Blood of the Jews.”

In an interview with the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs magazine, Jaber is quite open about how he expects change to occur:

“The problem is that we’ve been looking to start from the roof instead of the foundation,” he explains. “If we start from the grass roots, senators and presidents will come to us. When you go to visit a member of Congress, he’ll listen to you if he knows you can bring him votes or donations.

“Politicians don’t get elected to Congress because they’re dummies. They’re practical and they’re realistic. You can see that the IAP is one of the most effective organizations. We don’t compromise our principles.”

Preventing a tragedy

In a letter to the editor in yesterday’s New York Post, Robert Lewis says the following:

“Anyone who thinks that a massacre like the one in Russia couldn’t happen here is living in a fool’s paradise.

“All of our schools are gun-free zones.

“If just one radical Islamist with an automatic rifle walked into one of our schools, what would the teachers do? To borrow from Zell Miller, would they throw spitballs at the terrorists?”

Are any schools ramping up any training programs, providing instruction to teachers and administrators on how to handle a terrorist attack? Or do they respond as the administrator I spoke with, who said, “Come on, we’re in a small town, hours from a major city. The terrorists don’t even know where we are. This is not New York or Washington, D.C.” The people of Breslan, a small rural farming village probably felt the same way two weeks ago.

Teachers certainly know how to handle a fire drill; domestic events like Columbine show us that that they need to be equally prepared for a terror threat, whether it comes from within or from foreign groups.

The training is available. Groups like Operation Shiloh offer extensive counter-terror training for civilians. According to OpShiloh.com:

“After Sept. 11, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft called on Americans to establish ‘anti-terrorism neighborhood watches.’ In that vein, the OpShiloh team has been urging you to form a Volunteer Security Committee (VSC) in your church, synagogue, school or organization.

“Every church, synagogue, school and community center should have a security committee, and those people should take the OpShiloh course. If your organization does not have a security committee, we will show you how to start one.

“While the Department of Homeland Security is doing a great job, it must be understood that they are focused on protecting hard targets and critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants, bridges and tunnels, and the transportation, electrical and communications grids. There are literally hundreds of thousands of unprotected, high-value soft targets in the US – places like churches, synagogues and schools. Your VSC can help fill this security.”

We need to start by making sure that those who are with our kids for one-third of their day have the best interests of the children at heart.

Now with all fairness, most of the Muslims teaching and working with our children are equally horrified at what happened in Breslan. But can we afford to have those with ties to violent terrorist groups working with our kids?

I don’t think so.

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Laura Mansfield has over 20 years of experience dealing with issues pertaining to the Middle East. She spent nearly seven years living and working in the region for a wide range of clients, including the United States Embassy, the United States Agency for International Development and various international corporations.