Wait a minute now. You’re telling me the ships used as part of an anti-Israel publicity stunt belong to an organization that’s less than upstanding? Come now. Next you’re going to tell me Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is antisemitic.

The Turkish organizers of the Gaza Strip-bound flotilla that was boarded this morning by Israeli commandos knew well in advance that their vessels would never reach Israeli waters. That’s because the organizers belong to a nonprofit that was banned by the Israeli government in July 2008 for its ties to terrorism finance.

The Turkish IHH (Islan Haklary Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi in Turkish) was founded in 1992, and reportedly popped up on the CIA’s radar in 1996 for its radical Islamist leanings. Like many other Islamist charities, the IHH has a record of providing relief to areas where disaster has struck in the Muslim world.

However, the organization is not a force for good. The Turkish nonprofit belongs to a Saudi-based umbrella organization known to finance terrorism called the Union of Good (Ittilaf al-Kheir in Arabic). Notably, the Union is chaired by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who is known best for his religious ruling that encourages suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. According to one report, Qardawi personally transferred millions of dollars to the Union in an effort to provide financial support to Hamas.

Qaradawi serves as a leader in the notorious terrorist organization Muslim Brotherhood. You know that group. It gave birth to Al Qaeda, with leader Sayyid Qutb and his brother Muhammad inspiring Osama Bin Laden to carry out jihad against non-believers and moderate Muslims everywhere.

Qaradawi has also singled out Israel as a country where terrorist attacks against civilians are just fine and dandy. He has publicly stated his support for suicide bombings targeting Israel women and children. In fact, he justifies killing pregnant women by pointing out the children may join the Israeli military some day.

Some of his other interesting actions include support for female circumcision, opposition to punishing Saddam Hussein, issuing a fatwa stating that it was mandatory for all Muslims to support terror group Hezbollah, and calls for all Iraqis to rise up and join the insurgency that killed thousands of Americans and countless Iraqi civilians.

So that’s who we’re talking about. Back to the connection.

The U.S. government, it should be noted, also views the Union of Good as a terrorist organization. On November 12, 2008, a press release from the U.S. Treasury announced the umbrella group’s leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), stating that the group was “created by Hamas leadership to transfer funds to the terrorist organization.“…

According to Treasury, Hamas’s leadership actually created the Union of Good in 2000—just after the launch of the armed campaign against Israel—as a means to transfer funds to Hamas. At the time of designation in 2008, the Treasury believed that the Union of Good was transferring “tens of millions of dollars a year” to Hamas-controlled entities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

As the Treasury release explained, “The Union of Good acts as a broker for Hamas by facilitating financial transfers between a web of charitable organizations—including several organizations previously designated… for providing support to Hamas—and Hamas-controlled organizations in the West Bank and Gaza. The primary purpose of this activity is to strengthen Hamas’ political and military position in the West Bank and Gaza.”

It gets worse. The Treasury, drawing from declassified documents, stated unequivocally that the Union of Good “compensated Hamas terrorists by providing payments to the families of suicide bombers. One of [the charities], the Al-Salah Society, previously identified as a key support node for Hamas, was designated in August 2007… The Society employed a number of members of the Hamas military wing and supported Hamas-affiliated combatants during the first Intifada.”

The group’s leadership, according to the Weekly Standard, also includes Abd al-Majid al-Zindani — a Yemeni national designated by the United States government as a supporter of Al Qaeda.

The facts are clear: This flotilla was never intended to bring attention to the pursuit of a peaceful settlement. It was a terrorist-backed initiative designed to provoke the Israelis and create a public relations disaster.