One of the most effective ways to make life difficult for people and entities that deliberately cause harm to others, is to take away their ability to use their existing bank accounts or to raise new funds, and to prevent them from spending those funds still within their possession, to purchase what they need to carry out their nefarious agendas.
So you lock them out of the international banking system, thus taking away their ability to transfer money to vendors and to receive money from donors; you freeze what funds they may have in the banking system; and you ensure that no businesses or manufacturers will trade with them.
That is essentially what happens when the United States designates, under Executive Order 13224, an individual or group deemed to be terrorist in nature, or likely to commit terrorist activity, thus posing an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
That is the case with the Mujahidin Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, or MSC. On August 19th, it was designated a Foreign Terrorist Group by the U.S. State Department, which makes it and anyone associated with it subject to sanctions.
The MSC is an umbrella organization composed of several jihadist terrorist sub-groups based in the Gaza Strip. Its activities include a June 2012 attack that targeted an Israeli construction site, killing one civilian. Since then, MSC has fired rockets into Israel, posted a number of videos and internet messages proclaiming that “there is no place in the Arab and Muslim world for liberal and secular democratic values,” and proclaimed its support for the brutal ISIL jihadist group operating in Iraq and Syria.
By designating the Mujahidin Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, the United States is taking a decisive step toward cutting off its funds, starving it of resources, disrupting its ability to execute its deadly agendas, and ensuring its operatives find it ever more difficult to carry out their acts of violence.