Donations of this nature would violate election laws, including prohibitions on receiving contributions from foreigners and guidelines against accepting more than $2,300 from one individual during a single election, Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission, told WND in response to a query.

The contributions also raise numerous questions about the Obama campaign's lax online donation form, which apparently allows for the possibility of foreign contributions.

Last week, the Atlas Shrugs blog outlined a series of donations in 2007 made to Obama's campaign from two individuals, Monir Edwan and Hosam Edwan, totaling $29,521.54.

In an online form on Obama's campaign site, the Edwans listed their street as "Tal Esaltan," which they wrote was located in "Rafah, GA."

Rafah is not a city in Georgia. The Atlas blog immediately raised concerns that the money may have been donated from the Gaza Strip town of Rafah.

The Edwans' donations are listed in both FEC filings and other election filing sites, such as CampaignMoney and donordata.org.

Monir made 20 donations ranging from $717 to $2017.50 from October through November 2007. His donations totaled $24321.41. Hosam made seven donations ranging from $508.63 to $1725.96, totaling $5,200.13, all in October 2007.

A WND investigation tracked down the Edwans, who are brothers living in the Tal Esaltan neighborhood of Rafah, a large refugee camp in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

The Edwans are a large clan that include top Hamas supporters.

Speaking 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."

The Edwans denied they are affiliated with Hamas. Palestinian sources in Gaza confirmed the Edwans in question are secular, but could not say whether they supported Hamas.

Monir and Hasam Edwan denied their financial transactions online – listed as donations in U.S. government election filings – were actual donations to Obama's campaign. Instead they claimed they purchased about $30,000 in Obama T-shirts from the presidential candidate's online store – a contention that did not hold up during a WND interview, when they changed their story several times.

"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, speaking by cell phone from Gaza.

"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.

Edwan said any profit made from purportedly selling the Obama T-shirts was not returned to the Obama campaign.

"We have nothing to do with the Obama campaign. We just like Obama and believe he will be the best for the Palestinians and for the world."

At first Monir Edwan claimed he sold the T-shirts in Gaza for around $9 and that a profit was made.

"Some young men even bought the T-shirts for 60 shekel ($17.29), which is a lot to spend in Gaza on a T-shirt, but that is how much Gazans like Obama," Edwan claimed.

But it was pointed out to Edwan the T-shirts for sale on Obama's website are listed as $20.08 and that selling the merchandise for less would not yield a profit.

"Maybe we sold the shirts for a lot more. I can't remember now," said Edwan.

Asked why he would purchase T-shirts at such a high rate and pay the cost of shipping when he could pay a company to produce T-shirts for less, Edwan replied, "We wanted the shirts to come from the campaign."

But Edwan could not explain how he managed to get shipments of T-shirts into the Gaza Strip during the months he claimed to have purchased the merchandise, since Israel imposed a tight closure of the Gaza Strip starting in June 2007 that lasted until June 2008, when the Israeli government agreed to a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza.

"We don't want to cause any damage to Obama's campaign," was Edwan's reply.

Edwan said he wants Obama to be president.

"Not just the people in Gaza but people from all over the world are rooting for this great man," he told WND.

FEC spokesman Biersack told WND contributions from overseas are allowed if the donations are coming from U.S. citizens or green card carriers. But he said accepting money from foreigners would violate election provisions.

He said there are strict guidelines against accepting more than $2,300 from one individual during a single election.

"I am not familiar with the particulars of the case, so I am commenting in general. The FEC will have to examine all the circumstances before determining any wrongdoing," Biersack clarified.

Obama's campaign did not return WND phone calls or e-mail queries.

That the Edwans were able to contribute any money to Obama's campaign from Gaza opens questions into the methods used by the presidential candidate's website to accept online donations.

The website donation form asks each donor to affirm he or she is a U.S. citizen and is above the age of 16 but doesn't require donors to prove their citizenship status, such as providing a 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.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has continued to support Kenya's Raila Odinga, even after Odinga has been blamed for inciting tribal violence and slaughtering Christians, according to an explosive new book written by WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi.

In "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," Corsi argues that Odinga's protests following his loss to U.S.-backed Mwai Kibaki in Kenya's 2007 presidential election led to a wave of tribal and religious violence aimed against Kibaki's majority Kikuyu tribe.

The violence Obama's ally was blamed for included the slaughter of some 50 Pentecostal Christians.

As WND reported earlier, during his first visit to Kenya as a U.S. Senator in 2006, Obama openly campaigned for Odinga, to the point where Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua accused Obama of meddling inappropriately in Kenyan presidential politics. Mutua charged during a television news video that Obama had become a "stooge" to Odinga during the Kenyan presidential election campaign. Obama's father belonged to the same Luo tribe as Odinga.

In the disputed Dec. 27, 2007, presidential vote, Odinga charged he was denied winning the presidency by voter fraud.

After the election, Odinga pressed for a power-sharing arrangement in which he would be the prime minister in a government where Kibaki was president, with the two factions sharing a 50-50 power split in the cabinet.

Odinga's claim led to widespread fighting that killed more than 1,000 people in the weeks after the election, leaving more than 350,000 Kenyans displaced.

While proving involvement is difficult, many in Kenya assumed the post-election violence was supported, if not organized, behind the scenes by Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement party

In a horrifying incident following the election, at least 50 people, including women and children, were killed when an angry mob forced Kikuyu Christians into an Assemblies of God Pentecostal church and set fire to the church, hacking with machetes any of the Christians who tried to escape the flames.

The violence occurred in the village of Eldoret, about 185 miles northwest of Nairobi. The massacre in the church was part of youth gang violence aimed at harassing the Kikuyu Christian minority, which before the election numbered around 20 percent of Eldoret's 500,000 people.

After the church burning, the vast majority of Eldoret’s Kikuyu Christian minority fled the city, in fear of their lives.

Christian missionaries report over 300 Christian churches were severely damaged or destroyed in the violence that swept the country, but mosques were left undisturbed.

Another horrific report came from the Telegram in London, reporting the wave of post-election violence involved members of President Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe being attacked in Nairobi slums by ethnic groups including gangs of Luo tribe youth and men who were engaging in gang rapes of women and sodomizing boys as young as five years of age.

The Telegraph reported the vast majority of the victims were assaulted in their homes and all had been targeted because of their Kikuyu tribe membership.

Mobs slashed their way into homes, attacking everyone they found with machetes and clubs. Youths raped women in front of their husbands and many wives were then dragged from their homes and killed.

In the final days of the New Hampshire Democratic Party primary, after the post-election violence in Kenya, Obama told reporters he had telephoned Raila Odinga by telephone.

Obama sided with Odinga, indicating Odinga was willing to meet with Kibaki.

"Obviously he [Odinga] believes that the votes were not tallied properly," Obama told reporters, almost as if he were running for election in Kenya. "But what I urged was that all the leaders there, regardless of their position on the election, tell their supporters to stand down, to desist with the violence and resolve it in a peaceful way with Kenyan laws."

Reporters asked if Obama had telephoned Kenyan President Kibaki.

"I have not spoken to President Kibaki as yet," the senator answered, "but I hope to get in touch with him some time soon. I want to see if I can be helpful."

It is unclear whether Obama ever spoke with Kibaki, after a rough initial meeting during Obama’s 2006 Kenyan trip.