This is complicated, so bear with me.
GOP Senate candidate David Perdue is locked in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent, Michelle Nunn, daughter of retired Sen. Sam Nunn. So the desperate Perdue camp has decided to hit below the belt. It’s running ads claiming a foundation once co-managed by Ms. Nunn “gave money to organizations linked to terrorists.”
One little problem: This foundation was founded by George H.W. Bush and is co-managed by his son, Neil Bush.
Of course, the Bushes didn’t give money to terrorists, and the ad’s claims are based on a string of absurdly tenuous connections akin to “Michelle Nunn’s cousin lives next door to someone whose dog bit a mailman.”
The Perdue attack ad is directed against the Points of Light Foundation. Fox News reports that “a subsidiary [of PLF], acting as an independent contractor, [did work] for eBay. EBay users, through the company’s website, gave thousands of dollars to the U.S. affiliate of Islamic Relief Worldwide, a federally approved charity …. The group was accused of having Hamas ties by an Israeli official [i.e. the Prime Minister], but denied it.”
So that’s Michelle Nunn’s “terrorist” connection. She co-managed a Bush foundation whose subsidiary did contract work for eBay that involved raising money for a federally approved charity that was accused by Israel of having Hamas connections. Before we dig into those Israeli accusations, let’s do a short background briefing here.
According to Wikipedia, Islamic Relief Worldwide is “an international humanitarian organisation [that] provides development programmes and humanitarian relief around the globe, regardless of race, political affiliation, gender or belief. Founded in 1984 in the United Kingdom, … IRW is a member of the UN’s Economic and Social Council …. It is also a member of BOND (British Overseas NGOs for Development) and is part of the global Make Poverty History coalition which is campaigning to end extreme poverty. In the United Kingdom, Islamic Relief is also a member of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) along with 13 other charities.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Relief
Israel did accuse IRW of “being a front for terror activities” (Wikipedia). Here’s how that came about. “The prime minister’s office seems to have mixed up a hospital with a Hamas charity and a banned organisation with a firm of accountants.” Although Israel deported IRW’s man in Gaza, an accountant named Ayaz Ali, the Israeli government released him without charges after its intelligence agents interrogated him.
Following Mr. Ali’s explusion, “Islamic Relief’s chief executive, Haroun Atallah, accused Israel of a smear campaign against the group, which has worked in the occupied territories since 1994. ‘I think it’s a face-saving exercise because they arrested an innocent man … and they’re trying to justify it,’ he said.”
Digging deeper, “Israel names two organizations it says are outlawed Hamas fronts assisted by Islamic Relief as ‘Al Wafa’ and ‘Al Tzalah’. Islamic Relief says Israeli intelligence seems to have confused the proscribed group, Jamaiat Al-Wafa LiRayat Al-Musenin, with a well-known hospital in Gaza called Al-Wafa, which received medical supplies from Islamic Relief in 2002 and is funded by the US and British government.”
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/may/31/voluntarysector.israel
That is the basis of Mr. Perdue’s attack ad accusing Ms. Nunn of financing terrorists. The fact he’s also attacking the Bush family to get at Ms. Nunn makes his campaign tactics even more ludicruous. Bottom line, a few weeks from now Georgia voters will have to decide whether they want someone as intellectually dishonest as David Perdue representing them in the U.S. Senate. I would expect even some Republican voters to hesitate on this one.