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The brothers Edwan claim the Obama T-shirts sold like hotcakes at 60 shekels a pop to the shabib (illustrative photo)
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| By Israel Insider staff August 4, 2008 |
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Americans who want to contribute to their presidential candidate of choice are strictly constrained in giving no more than $2300 per candidate election. But the same limits apparently don't apply in practice to foreigners who want to help Barack Hussein Obama get elected, although the Federal Election Commission clearly does not agree.
The brothers Edwan -- Monir and Hasam -- hail from Rafah, GA. That's GA as in Gaza, not Georgia. As first revealed by the Atlas Shrugs blog and further developed in World Net Daily, they contributed a whopping $29,521.54 to Senator Obama's campaign, more than 13 times the legal limit that applies to American citizens.
The Edwans' donations are listed in FEC filings and election filing websites.
The Edwans are a large clan that include top Hamas supporters, according to WND. The two brothers praised Obama and admitted giving the money online to his campaign. They said they are not U.S. citizens or green card holders but are citizens of "Palestine."
They said the money they gave to the campaign was to buy T-shirts, even though the Obama sells them for about $20/each and the going price for T-shirts in Gaza is less than a 10th of that price. In an interview with WND's Aaron Klein, the brothers reportedly changed their story repeatedly.
"My brother Hosam and I knew that Obama will be a big hit even before he became a candidate. We knew the guy would be a celebrity in Gaza so we decided to invest the amount of $29,000 to buy Obama T-shirts from his website and sell them in Gaza," Monir Edwan told WND. "I know on the back of this story Obama rivals will present our business as a donation and they will try to use this story to let Obama fall, but I'm telling you, we bought T-shirts," Edwan maintained.
An amusing interchange catches the Edwans hemming and hawing about what a profitable deal the brothers made buying and selling the T-shirts to fashion-conscious Gazans and how he was able to break the Israeli closure with the purported important of what had to be thousands of Obama T-shirt. Perhaps through the tunnels along with the RPGs?
"We don't want to cause any damage to Obama's campaign," was Edwan's reply. "Not just the people in Gaza but people from all over the world are rooting for this great man," he told WND.
Obama's campaign did not return WND phone calls or e-mail queries.
That the Edwans were able to contribute to Obama's campaign from Gaza raises questions about the lax methods used by the presidential candidate's website to vet online donations. The website donation form only asks each donor to affirm that he or she is a U.S. citizen above the age of 16. It requires no proof of citizenship status, such as a passport or social security number.
The form further requires the donor to affirm the contribution is not coming from a corporation, political action committee or lobby group. Wonder if Hamas qualifies.
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