Give 'Til It Hurts, But Not to the Hurters

Ever since the IRS disallowed our tax deduction for sending an Amazon.com gift certificate to Hamas, we've understood that we are forbidden from providing material support to terrorist organizations. In a ruling today, though, the Supreme Court confirmed that even less tangible forms of support may not be offered to such organizations. The Court stated that the congressional ban on "material support" extends to such things as training or educational services--even training in such innocuous or even desirable areas as human rights or peaceful conflict resolution.

The plaintiffs argued that these services fell under the free speech protections of the first amendment. The defendants--in this case, the US government--argued that this was a case where freedom of speech takes a backseat to national security. We're not sure we see it that way: Freedom of speech may be curtailed in the name of security. The famous proscription against yelling fire in a crowded theater comes to mind. The plaintiffs, though, didn't want to yell fire in a crowded theater; they wanted to yell, "peaceful conflict resolution" in a crowded theater--a theater filled wiith car-bombers, no less. We fail to see how this would have posed a danger to anyone--except perhaps for the speakers, themselves.

At the same time, though, we can understand the Court's decision from a different angle--that of neutrality. In other words, we can understand the logic behind barring "material support" in the form of money: Even if the money is earmarked for charitable purposes (e.g., Hamas's provision of food or educational services to certain impoverished), the provision of these funds frees up money for Hamas to build bombs and buy arms.

(Digression: Just for the sake of clarity, we want to emphasize that we are using Hamas as an example of a familiar terrorist organization. We do not want to give the impression that we are sympathetic to Hamas at all. We're not. EOD)

Similarly, we understand a ban on certain "speech acts": a lecture on bomb-building, say, or the best ways to undermine the rule of law in democratic societies. One could argue that such speech--like cash contributions--is fungible: Such training could allow a terrorist organization to better employ its resources. The objection, of course, is that it is unlikely that Hamas has much of a budget earmarked for peaceful conflict resolution, so any information provided in this arena is unlikely to "free up" funds that would not otherwise have been used for destructive purposes. Fair enough, but as uncomfortable as we are with restrictions on free speech, we are even more uncomfortable with what arbitrary decisions on the speech to be restricted: Better simply to bar essentially all services to terrorist organizations, rather than picking and choosing the type of services that may be provided.

Of course, this means we must cancel our special al-Qaeda writing workshop, but we'll survive.