Ryan Mauro

Our staff put on this event.

And they slip up enough that they actually say funds for this initiative was raised from personal donations by Palestine Chronicle editors.

Now, what does that mean?

That means money passed.

from that Washington state-based organization, the Palestine Chronicle editors, to the wife of this main hostage holder, who she was also involved in there.

So their defense of, well, our writer, yes, was holding Israelis hostage and writing for us while holding them hostage, but he can't prove that he gave them money.

What we found in their own words, they gave money to his wife.

That is, as far as I can tell, illegal.

It is illegal to knowingly pass money to Hamas operatives.

And by the way, the husband, and they knew this at the time because of the Facebook interactions, was a publicly identified spokesperson for Hamas's Ministry of Labor.

So...

It doesn't get more solid than that.

And we are busy right now mapping out the connections of this organization, of the head of it, Ramzi Baroud, because this leads to all sorts of other organizations, including one in Turkey, led by Sami Al-Aryan.

Who was one of the top Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders, a professor in Florida, who was deported shortly after 9-11.

So this shows that this group, yes, they're connected to Hamas, but they're actually part of this broader Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad connected network out of Turkey.

I also need to mention that the chief editor of Palestine Chronicle, at least used to be, maybe still is, a non-resident scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

I certainly believe so.

And from a few different angles to your earlier point, actually, since I was a teenager, I started doing this when I was 16 professionally.

That's when I was first hired.

I based it on the idea that civilians could be almost like an intelligence counterpart.