Gaza and Charities at War: How HAMAS Uses Charities to Kill Jews

From Terrorists Turn to Bitcoin for Funding, and They’re Learning Fast

There were three witnesses Tuesday at the Ways and Means and Oversight hearing examining how exempt organizations support Hamas and other terrorists.  Their written statements are available at the link above.  There were no nonprofit or tax exemption witnesses.  And not a single Democrat attended the hearing.  The topic is deadly serious and important for both civil society and national security.  But by conducting repetitious hearings with cheerleaders instead of witnesses, and issuing indignant and grandstanding statements, Ways and Means Chairman Smith is just getting in the way of serious people trying to figure out how to balance legitimate national security interests against equally legitimate needs of Civil Society.

Here is an excerpt from Lara Burns’ written testimony before Ways and Means and Oversight on Tuesday:

Terrorist organizations have used nonprofit tax-exempt organizations as fronts for their activities for decades in the United States. These activities persist today. They use these organizations as cover and concealment for their illicit financing, and they also use them to further their propaganda and influence campaigns where they seek to radicalize, spread disinformation, and recruit support for their causes. HAMAS’ foundation is and has always been in its social services programs that it uses to groom, recruit and radicalize. As HAMAS emanated from the Muslim Brotherhood, it had a network of social service programs at its disposal upon its birth.

The overall purpose of the charitable organizations inside Gaza and the West Bank is to gain the hearts and minds of the local population. They aim to do this in two ways: 1) by providing aid to those in need and 2) by radicalizing the youth. For decades, HAMAS has provided aid in all forms to the people of Gaza and the West Bank, in an attempt to secure a large pool of potential fighters and facilitators, to gain the ability to use homes, businesses, and hospitals as cover for their weapons, leaders, tunnels and operations, and to ultimately seize control over the population like they did in Gaza in 2007.

The second purpose of its charitable wing inside the territories is to build and direct schools, mosques, youth groups, and youth sports clubs, so that they can seed their radical, extremist, antisemitic ideology into young children and ensure that their messaging is persistent throughout their youth and into adulthood. Some of the schools they have created and operated, with the assistance of charitable organizations in the United States, teach kindergartners and elementary school children to celebrate the killing of Jews, to praise suicide bombers, to march with HAMAS flags while carrying grenade launchers, and to mimic murdering Jews.

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darryll k. jones