Well, now we know a little more about Elzanaty, no thanks to the lamestream media who has no interest in his ties to radical Islamists.
An Egyptian-born businessman who lives on Long Island — and who once gave thousands of dollars to a Hamas front group — is a major investor in the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, it was reported last night, in the first disclosure of the money behind the controversial project.Sure, thaty's believable. Well, if your name is Michael Bloomberg, that is. Does anyone have a concern here?
Hisham Elzanaty was a “significant investor” in developer Sharif el-Gamal’s $4.8 million purchase of the former Burlington Coat Factory building, where the mosque and Islamic cultural center will be built, the donor’s lawyer, Wolodymyr Starosolsky, told Fox 5 News.
El-Gamal himself has refused to disclose where he got the money to buy the building in July 2009. Elzanaty owns a $2 million home in Roslyn Heights, and operates medical companies out of a building in The Bronx. He also owns the New York Neuro and Rehab Center in Morningside Heights.
State records show he was ordered to repay $331,000 after an audit revealed Medicaid had overpaid him in 2004-2005.
Elzanaty didn’t return calls last night. Starosolsky would not discuss the Fox 5 report with The Post.
Shortly after the Burlington building was acquired, Elzanaty also co-signed a $39 million mortgage so that el-Gamal’s company, Soho Properties, $45.7million building in Chelsea from developer Stei k ff money man,” a source told The Post.
In 1999, he donated $6,000 to the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which was later shut down because of its ties to terrorism.
The foundation was the largest Islamic charity in the US until the feds froze its assets and designated it a terrorist organization following an FBI probe after 9/11.
In 2008, five of its leaders were convicted of providing material support to Hamas.
Elzanaty’s contribution to the Holy Land Foundation was uncovered by the DC-based Investigative Project on Terror.
Elzanaty believed he was spending $500 a month to help orphans, his lawyer told The Post.
So now it transpires that a key money- man behind the proposed Ground Zero mosque is a one-time supporter of a group shut down by the feds because it was a front for Hamas.
No wonder the mosque's principal imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, refuses to discuss the project's finances.
Or, for that matter, refuses to speak harshly of Hamas -- an Iranian cat's-paw that's long been one of the deadliest Islamist terrorist organizations operating in the Mideast.
It was reported last night that Hisham Elzanaty -- an Egyptian-born businessman from Long Island -- provided a big chunk of the $4.8 million needed to buy the building that will be demolished to make way for the mosque.
Among other things, Elzanaty runs a Bronx-based medicial supply company that had to refund more than $300,000 in Medicaid payments in 2004-2005.
In 1999, he donated thousands to the Holy Land Foundation, later shuttered by the feds because of its Hamas ties.
All of this is, as they say, enough to give one pause.
But we doubt it will truly surprise any among the 71 percent of New Yorkers found this week by Quinnipiac University pollsters to oppose the mosque.
Mayor Mike and others think they are bigots, but most seem to have asked -- and answered to their own satisfaction -- a fair question:
How close to the scene of that deadly Islamist attack on America is too close to build a mosque?
Answer: The proposed site was close enough to have been hit by a landing-gear assembly from one of the crashed airliners -- and that's way too close.
They're also nervous about the project's backers -- even before Elzanaty popped up -- deciding that, with those folks involved, anywhere might be too close.
As The Post reported yesterday, Rauf has been catching iffy tax breaks since 1998 for an organization run from his wife's Upper West Side apartment.
How'd he do it? By telling the IRS the one-bedroom digs were actually a mosque where 500 people prayed daily.
These are only the latest revelations about the mosque's backers, who've run up a cumulative record of petty crime, slumlording and tax-scamming.
And that's being generous.
Rauf, who's due back in New York this weekend after a long trip abroad, has plenty of explaining to do to the people he's been thumbing in the eye for weeks.
First there is Elzanaty's role, of course.
Then there's the elephant in the room: Whence the $100 million needed for the mosque?
And then there is this.
At a forum in Dubai on Tuesday, Rauf appeared to call the 71 percent of New Yorkers who oppose his project religious "extremists."
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