US drops 5 groups from foreign terror blacklist
The Biden administration rescinded the foreign terrorist organization designations of the Gaza-based Mujahidin Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, Jewish extremist group Kahane Chai and Egyptian militant group Gama’a al-Islamiyya.
The United States removed five groups from its terror blacklist for inactivity on Friday, including a radical Jewish organization in Israel and two Islamist movements in Egypt and the Palestinian territories.
The State Department has revoked the foreign terrorist organization designations of the Mujahidin Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, Kahane Chai and Gama’a al-Islamiyya, as well as Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo and the Spanish separatist group Basque Fatherland and Liberty.
Kahane Chai is an ultranationalist Jewish organization that advocated for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel. Three years before its FTO designation in 1997, one of its supporters killed 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron.
- The group’s founder, US-born Israeli politician Meir Kahane, also helped found the far-right Jewish Defense League. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990.
- Kahane Chai is outlawed in Israel, but its founder is still celebrated by some in Israel’s far right.
The Mujahidin Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem is a Palestinian jihadist group added to the terror list in 2014. The Gaza-based group claimed responsibility for a string of rocket attacks in 2013 and declared support for the Islamic State the following year.
