Hamas-Linked Groups in US and Middle East Got Millions from Biden Admin, Including COVID Relief Funds
The Biden administration has indirectly funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to groups that support Hamas, according to multiple reports.
The payments have come under scrutiny since the terrorist group killed 1,400 people in a brutal surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
As the Biden administration tossed dollars at the COVID-19 pandemic, it sent $33.7 million from the American Rescue Plan to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Fox News reported this month.
That came years after the New Republic, a liberal publication, called for the agency to be defunded because as “effectively a branch of Hamas” it was impeding the development of a peaceful two-state solution.
The COVID funding was part of a massive infusion of American cash to UNRWA, according to the New York Post.
After it was defunded by then-President Donald Trump in 2018, President Joe Biden has made up for lost time by sending the group more than $730 million.
Earlier this year, the nonprofit watchdog group UN Watch warned that teachers at UNRWA schools “regularly call to murder Jews, and create teaching materials that glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis and incite antisemitism.”
Enia Krivine, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Israel Program, told the Post that the U.N. agency “was established to perpetuate the refugee problem.”
“The whole purpose of refugee programs is to reduce refugees and to repatriate refugees and to give them a life and a nation. UNRWA does the inverse. UNRWA also teaches anti-semitic, anti-Israel content in their schools. It’s really a scandal that the US and the Europeans have funded these curricula through generations of Palestinians,” she said.
“UNRWA has been used as staging grounds for attacks. They’ve discovered terror tunnels under UNRWA buildings, registered Hamas members have been employed by UNRWA — it is rotten to the core,” Krivine said.
Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, said similar things to Fox News.
“Facilities of UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, have been repeatedly used by Hamas Palestinian terrorists for military purposes, as staging grounds, weapons depots, and hideouts,” she said.
“They have also been used as shields, giving cover to nearby military assets. UNRWA officials have had all kinds of inappropriate relationships with Hamas itself. Whenever these facts — war crimes — are revealed, the UN does a quick ‘investigation,’ sometimes accompanied by a meaningless expression of regret, and carries on,” Bayefsky said.
“The fallout from their past behavior is that it is impossible and unwise to take them at their word, or to assume they are a neutral party, instead of serving as an enabler of Palestinian terrorism, today,” she said.
The Biden administration claims it conducts “extensive” due diligence efforts to ensure no cash goes to any group supporting terrorism, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
However, the Hamas-supporting Al-Quds University in the West Bank, allegedly a hotbed of pro-Hamas activity, received $160,000 last year, the outlet reported.
The Gaza-based Natuf for Environment and Community Development received $18,315, according to the Washington Examiner, which said it was linked to a Palestinian bank that in turn is linked to Hamas.
The group Fares Al-Arab, which the Examiner said has been linked to terrorist activities in Gaza, received $41,213.
The Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia has received $340,000, according to the Free Beacon. It said the mosque is tied to Islamic Relief USA, which has been linked to funding Hamas.
Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News that the Biden administration funding has “indirectly benefited Hamas.”
“We can say for certain it indirectly benefits the Hamas government in Gaza,” Schanzer said. “UNRWA provides services that the government should be providing … this has alleviated some of the Hamas government’s burden in the Gaza Strip.”
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