On October 18, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)imposed sanctions on ten “key Hamas terrorist and financial facilitators in Gaza and elsewhere including Sudan, Türkiye, Algeria, and Qatar.” Only ten? What about the rest?
The absence of the Islamic Republic of Iran from this list is glaring. Iran controls Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Hezbollah, and many other terrorist groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
Larry Kudlow, the former director of President Trump’s National Economic Council, fittingly pointed out that “Iran is the financial facilitator, “master planner” and “chief puppeteer” of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other terror groups, and it is increasing its threats to the US. So, why is Biden reluctant to sanction and sternly warn Iran?
And why did he fail to Sanction Qatar? Qatar – erroneously presumed a US ally, has been funding Hamas and sheltering its leaders for decades. It also uses its wealth to incentivize and corrupt Western institutions, businesses, officeholders, politicians, influential personalities, and media outlets.
According to Just the News, since June 2020, Qatar has spent at least “$1.6 billion” on lobbying campaigns in the US and “$5.4 billion in total in donations to American universities from Harvard, to George Washington University, Arkansas State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Northwestern University in Qatar, Texas A&M University at Qatar, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, and City University College.
Qatar’s generous funding works like fentanyl, addicting universities’ boards, administrations, and professors to Qatar’s money. Not surprisingly, they allow and sometimes endorse pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian propaganda and let antisemitism flourish to satisfy Qatar and keep the money flowing.
The Qatar Foundation, which distributes these funds, is headed by Sheikha Hind, the sister of the Qatari Emir oversees. On October 12, she asserted “unreserved solidarity with Gaza.” She praised the activities of students “enrolled at universities across the foundation” for their “global awareness campaigns condemning Israel’s ‘Murder and Destruction’ In Gaza.”
Qatar’s money also influenced many Washington-based think tanks. Among them is the Brookings Institute, which operates a branch in Doha. For years, it kept secret the millions of dollars it received from Qatar. A payment of $14.8 million to Brookings’ former vice president, former US ambassador to Israel (twice), and Obama’s Middle East envoy Martin Indyk proved a good investment. Indyk has made many public statements harshly criticizing Israel, often parroting Qatar’s, the Palestinians’, and Hamas’ lies against the Jewish state. When Qatar’s payments to him were exposed, Indyk contended Qatar’s payments did not influence him or Brookings’ positions.
However, in June 2022, then Brookings’ president, John Allen, was forced to resign because court documents showed the retired four-star general and Obama’s appointed former commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was secretly lobbying for Qatar in violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Allen denied the charges. The Department of Justice closed the investigation in January 2023.
Support of pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian groups in the US is not limited to foreign entities. It also comes directly and indirectly from US-based foundations. George and Alexander Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) is one of them.
The Washington Free Beacon revealed the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) in San Francisco, “a “fiscally sponsored project” of the George Soros-funded Tides Center, is “urging high schoolers (added emphasis) around the country to join a “Walk Out for Gaza” protests. The AROC advocated chants, such as “Israel, Israel you can’t hide, We charge you with genocide,” and “Free, Free Palestine, and “circulating media talking points—saying the United States is “complicit” in the “genocide” of Palestinians and must demand an immediate ceasefire—and signs that read “Decolonize Palestine” and “Palestine Will be Free.”
The OSF has been funding the two pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow that invaded the Capitol on October 18, demonstrating against Israel’s response to Hamas atrocities, accusing it of “genocide” and demanding a ceasefire. Since 2017, Jewish Voice for Peace has received $650,000 from Soros for its “human rights” work in the Middle East, and it was granted an additional two-year award in 2021. IfNotNow, received $400,000 in 2019 and 2021 from the OSF.
For decades, the OSF also funded progressive pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel individuals’ training and “continuing education.” The “graduates” are helped into academia, nonprofits, and media positions and win extra funding from Soros and his friends, win local and national elections, furthering Soros’s and the pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian messages and influencing US policy.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan progressive Democrat, the Squad member who keeps a Palestinian flag at her Congressional office, is an excellent example of how beneficiaries of Soros’s largess operate. The $225,180 grant Tlaib received from OSF in 2016 as a “Leadership in Government” fellow paid off.
Tlaib, a virulent anti-Israel, pro-Hamas activist, supports boycotting Israel, comparing it “to boycotting the Nazi regime,” and claims Israel is an apartheid state. She has a “map in her office where Israel is covered with a sticky note that says ‘Palestine.’
The Soros Agenda details the OSF’s funding–directly and indirectly–of many other organizations and influential individuals linked with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), all designated terrorist organizations.
Some still consider the funding of organizations and individuals spreading the poisonous genocidal ideology of Iran and its proxies, Hamas, as free speech instead of incitement to and support of terrorism. But don’t expect the Biden administration to stop this incitement anytime soon. After all, the President just gifted Hamas $100 million as “humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
Rachel Ehrenfeld is the author of The Soros Agenda and Funding Evil –How Terrorism is Financed -and How to Stop it, and is the director of the American Center for Democracy.
*This article was first published by Townhall.com, on October 21, 2023, and FrontPagemag.com