In addition to the Council on American Islamic Relations, a second “mainstream” Islamic advocacy group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial is the Islamic Society of North America, a group with which Steven Emerson is very familiar: Counterterrorism Blog: ISNA’s Lies Unchallenged Again.

Newsweek put a call into ISNA to ask about its status as un-indicted co-conspirators in the HLF trial, and this is the result:

In a brief telephone interview with NEWSWEEK Wednesday, Magid pointed a reporter to an e-mail statement saying that the ISNA was seeking an immediate retraction of the government’s “unfounded allegations” in the Holy Land case. “ISNA is not now and has never been involved in any covert or illegal activity and has never supported any terrorist organizations,” the statement read. “Rather, ISNA is an open and transparent membership organization that strives to be an exemplary and unifying Islamic organization … ISNA hereby reaffirms its unqualified condemnation of all acts of terrorism.” (emphasis added)

Isikoff and Hosenball, however, let that statement go unchallenged. And this is the same Newsweek that, several months ago, uncritically reported that new ISNA President Ingrid Mattson was, “bringing the moderate viewpoint to the world.”

Yet, as I recently reported here, ISNA’s sympathy with terrorism, and individual terrorists, runs quite deep.

ISNA has never condemned terrorist groups like HAMAS or Hizballah by name. More notably, in June of 1997, two and a half years after HAMAS was officially designated as a terrorist organization by the United States government (and long after common sense and reality indicated as such), top HAMAS official Mousa Abu Marzook thanked ISNA (and several other U.S.-based Islamist and “civil rights” organizations), writing that ISNA supported him through his “ordeal” – Marzook had been detained at JFK airport in 1995 and arrested and the Israelis were seeking his extradition. Marzook wrote that ISNA’s efforts had “consoled” him.

ISNA’s magazine, Islamic Horizons, is a hotbed of pro-jihadist literature, and has long championed HAMAS and HAMAS officials, notably Mr. Marzook himself. In the November/December 1995 issue, almost a full year after HAMAS was officially designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, Islamic Horizons published an article titled, “Muslim Leader Hostage to Israeli Interests.” That leader was Marzook, characterized by ISNA as:

[a] member of the political wing of Hamas, disliked by the Zionist entity for its Islamic orientation, continues to be held hostage in the U.S. at the whims of his Zionist accusers.

And in the September/October 1997 issues, two and a half years after the designation of Hamas as a terrorist group, Islamic Horizons published an article describing Marzook as:

[j]ailed without trial in New York for-months for alleged ties to organizations seeking Palestinian rights.

The pro-Hamas rhetoric and apologia in Islamic Horizons is off the charts, yet ISNA continues to get a free pass as a “moderate” organization by much of the government and media, who have probably not bothered to pick up a copy of its magazine.