By Debbie Schlussel
It’s headline news in Detroit that Hezbollah-money-laundering restaurant chain La Shish has closed its doors and is now out of business. The restaurant, owned by fugitive Hezbollah-financier Talal Chahine, laundered over $20 million to Hezbollah and is now out of business.
But that’s not the headline to me. The headline is that–even though Chahine defrauded the IRS out of $7 million in taxes on about $21 million in income and used that to fund a terrorist group that murdered hundreds of Americans–it was allowed to remain open for business for more than two years after the fraud was discovered by the government and for nearly two years after its owner, Chahine, was indicted.

While the stories (the Free Press front-pager and prominently-placed Detroit Newsistan story) mourn the loss of this poisonous Michigan business, there are plenty of innocent, hard-working Michigan businesses shutting their doors in our difficult economy. Those businesses did nothing to defraud the U.S. government. And they didn’t finance mass murder by a terrorist group that has murdered the second highest-number of Americans, after Al-Qaeda (more, if you count the many American soldiers who were victims of Hezbollah IEDs in Iraq).
No, here’s the real headline: The U.S. government–led by Bush U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy a/k/a “Abu Porno”–not only refused to freeze and/or seize Chahine’s assets, they refused to seize his passport, allowed him to flee to Lebanon, and to operate his restaurant chain from there. If you defrauded the IRS of millions, do you think your business would still operate, with you collecting the profits in Lebanon? Or do you think the IRS would seize the assets, shutter the place, and sell it, while freezing any and all bank accounts? None of that was done to Chahine.
Yup, our government treats Hezbollah terrorist financiers way better than you, the little guy who didn’t finance the mass murder of hundreds of innocent civilians worldwide.
And don’t forget that Chahine was also running an illegal immigration ring, through which he facilitated marriage fraud of his multiple sisters-in-law and other Lebanese employees, and paid off INS/ICE official Roy Bailey to help him in this endeavor. Also don’t forget that he enlisted his sister-in-law, Nada Nadim Al-Aouar Deladurantaye Valley Prouty, to spy on the U.S. by infiltrating the FBI and then the CIA. And for that, the U.S. allows this man to continue operating his restaurant for two years even though he’s a “fugitive” (they allowed him to flee) in Lebanon?
Chahine still has access to all of his multi-millions in banks here from Lebanon, and has reportedly transferred most of them to offshore accounts. My Lebanese intelligence sources tell me he has married a new wife and started a new company, reportedly in steel and construction. And while he reportedly has over 11 children with different women in Michigan–some of whom are now on welfare here–he still has the good life, because the U.S. government has allowed all that for the last two years.

Sickening: Sob Stories Over Hezbo Financier Talal Chahine
And then there are the various pigs in Detroit who kept this business afloat. There are pigs like aging new age hag/annoying Detroit Free Press columnist Susan Ager. In a column, she recommended that Michigan employers, desperate to attract bright employees from elsewhere to our dying state, should take them for a meal at La Shish. When one of my readers e-mailed her asking why she’d recommend a restaurant that defrauded America and financed terror, she nearly tore the person’s head off. The death of outrage against terrorists started long before 9/11, and it is a symptom of sick souls like Ager. If she were starring in her own Nicholas Berg video, she’d probably try to gurgle down her last bite of shish tawook and sing the praises of the restaurant in the process.
I won’t be suprised if Ager joins the group-think chorus in the Detroit media, full of nauseating sob stories over this terrorist financier and his restaurant. It’s sad that hard-working, innocent Michigan business owners don’t merit this sympathy when they go under. If only they, too, financed Islamic terrorism.

U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy a/k/a “Abu Porno”:
Allowed Hezbollah Financier to Flee U.S., Restaurant to Stay Open
Then, there is this pig, Linda Nowinski. This resident of the Detroit suburb of Livonia wasn’t ashamed to tell the Detroit Free Press that she continued to patronize the restaurant with her equally piggish coworkers and is upset that she won’t be able to eat there anymore:

“Now what am I going to eat?” customer Linda Nowinski, 56, of Livonia said Sunday after pulling up to a La Shish drive-through window in Westland. She said she and coworkers regularly ate at the restaurant.

Yup, this is why we’re losing the domestic and international wars on terror. We can’t even get a post-middle age woman to stop financing terrorism, lest it interrupt her regularly scheduled diet of shawarmeh. If you know this woman and her La Shish-patronizing co-workers, you are friends with a conscience-less piglet.
They–and too many others in the Detroit area–kept La Shish afloat in the two years after it was made clear the restaurant financed terrorism. They didn’t care. Because they needed their tabbouli fix, and wouldn’t sacrifice eating at even another Middle Eastern restaurant to do the right thing. Lazy gluttons, who put “vastly more important priorities” like gastronomic matters over matters of conscience, will be the death of us. American wants versus what’s good for America against terrorists is a losing battle that we–not the terrorists, not Muslims–are losing for ourselves.
And still there are sleazy others–Arabs that Jews in Detroit continue to patronize, despite the fact that they knowingly and eagerly did business with Chahine. One of those is Samir Saleh–frontman of several Mezza Mediterranean restaurants in the Detroit area. He opened La Shish franchises, knowing full well who Chahine was–it was well known in the Arab (and FBI) community here for years what Chahine was up to.
Yet, despite willingly engaging in business with this Hezbollah financier and contributing substantially to his profits, the Detroit Jewish News–twice!–wrote false articles encouraging Jews to patronize his restaurant in a Jewish neighborhood, which had been faltering after Chahine’s indictment. More bellies of pigs at work? No, in this case, it’s an ideological self-hatred of the Jewish establishment that begs to bend over for its avowed enemies and their enablers, like Saleh.
And then, again, is the government–which under the “leadership” of Bush and his man Stephen Murphy, looked the other way on Chahine and his restaurant and bent over backward to give him and his falafel joint every break imaginable.
On the Detroit Free Press website, a minority Detroit-area ICE agent wrote that he was persecuted for refusing to eat there after Chahines was indicted. His comment should not surprise you:

iceman721 wrote:
I work in Homeland Security and sat in a briefing over a year ago where the Detroit FBI detailed the contributions from this guy to Hezbollah. I refused to eat there when I first got wind of the “possible” links to terrorism by this business. I am a minority but many of my Caucasian friends still ate there and then called me racist for not taking them my money. The Detroit area FBI & IRS agents should be commended for their fine work getting to to the bottom of their terrorist ties. Oh and for the extreme liberals out there the Patriot Act was used extensively to gather the intelligence that took this guy down!
3/3/2008 8:11:51 AM

Although he doesn’t say specifically that federal agents continued to eat there, I happen to know that Michigan/Ohio ICE Special Agent in Charge Brian Moskowitz a/k/a “Abu Moskowitz“ ate there repeatedly with his Muslim friends, including “former” Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad and designated Hezbollah-agent Osama Siblani. Ditto for all of the tops feds in town, as well as top DHS federal officials when they visited town. I’ve written about this before.
Now, that La Shish is out of business, the feds in town are bragging to the Detroit Newsistan that they will sell off La Shish’s assets to pay its debt to the Michigan Department of Treasury and the IRS, now that those assets are basically worthless. Big deal. Again, they waited two years, refused to seize the vast millions Chahine possesses, and now they are doing this tiny, meaningless pittance for the benefit of press and PR.
Thank Heaven for small favors. And that’s my response to this whole thing–Thank Heaven for small favors.
The fact remains: The big fish in financing Hezbollah, defrauding the IRS, running an illegal alien smuggling ring for countless Hezbollah Muslims who now live in our midst, and spying on the U.S. at the highest levels–that big fish, Talal Chahine, remains free and unblemished, living his millionaire lifestyle.
Thanks, President Bush, for being so “tough” on terrorism.
***
Another sign that Chahine lives the good life: Last week, he reportedly orchestrated the prison breakout of his son-in-law, who is serving in a Lebanese jail. It’s an apparent trap. As I’ve noted, Chahine’s son Khalil Chahine is in a Michigan prison for an honor killing of a Maronite Christian engaged to his Muslim former girlfriend. Chahine has argued that the son-in-law, not his son, did it, and reportedly orchestrated the breakout so that the son-in-law will face the charges for what his son actually perpetrated. More on that later, but the point is that Chahine has the protection of Hezbollah and the Lebanese government at the highest levels. They do what he wants.
And we let him go.