Almost a year after the October 7 attacks, one of the leading Hamas-aligned charities in the United States has not only escaped federal scrutiny after partnering with designated terrorist organizations, but now apparently enjoys the ear of the White House and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in its pockets, despite signing agreements with Hamas to implement the terror group’s social programs.
In September, the Biden administration’s national security officials met with Rahma Worldwide founder, Shadi Zaza, just a year after he and his colleagues entered into a public partnership with senior Hamas officials and a designated Kuwaiti terror financing group.
New Middle East Forum research, covered today by the Washington Examiner, has uncovered that in October 2021, Rahma’s CEO and his colleagues met with Hamas minister Ghazi Hamad and other terror officials at the Ministry of Social Development. Rahma offered its support for Hamas’ social and charitable programs, which are vital components of Hamas’s system of radicalization and control.
Ghazi Hamad is a leading Hamas figure and a member of its politburo. Weeks after the October 7 attacks carried out by his movement, in which almost 1,200 Israelis were murdered, Hamad promised that Hamas would repeat the attacks “time and again until Israel is annihilated,” and enthusiastically promised the “sacrifice” of more Palestinian “martyrs.”
At their meeting in Gaza, Rahma’s American staff members, including CEO Shadi Zaza, appeared to present gifts to Hamad and his fellow Hamas officials.
Rahma’s kowtowing was rewarded with a spot in Hamas’s social programs the very next day. The Hamas government published social media posts celebrating the ministry-supported work of Rahma, along with a U.K. charity, Hand in Hand for Aid and Development (HIHFAD).
Rahma’s complicity in Hamas’s dawah (ideological welfare) efforts continued over the next two years, with the Michigan charity embracing other arms of the Hamas regime.
In interviews, Rahma’s CEO, Shadi Zaza, disclosed collaboration with Hamas’s “Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, the Ministry of Education, and the General Administration of Zakat.”
At a March 2023 event organized by Hamas, terror leader Ghazi Hamad signed yet another partnership agreement with Rahma, which was represented by the Michigan charity’s official Adib Chouiki. Hamad is quoted praising the “depth of the ministry’s relationship with donor institutions such as Rahma Association.”
Rahma officials’ last public meeting with Hamas in Gaza took place just a few days before the October 7 attacks. Rahma’s patron and partner, Hamas minster Ghazi Hamad, was notably not present this time. He had already fled to Lebanon, a week earlier, in presumed anticipation of the Israeli response to Hamas’s planned pogrom.
Rahma has also embraced other terrorist organizations. In 2023, FWI found that Rahma was working with and receiving money from Kuwait’s Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS).
The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated RIHS in 2008, citing its support for Al-Qaeda, and its efforts to use “charity and humanitarian assistance as cover to fund terrorist activity and harm innocent civilians.” RIHS is also accused of funding Hamas.
In Gaza, Rahma’s involvement with RIHS was so intimate that the terrorist group’s logo was even sown on to the jackets of Rahma officials and volunteers.
Now, FWI has found that it was Hamas itself that apparently facilitated Rahma’s partnership with RIHS. At a press conference, one Hamas official explained that the ministry’s work had been “funded by the Kuwaiti Islamic Heritage Society and implemented by the Rahma Worldwide.” At that same event, the Rahma CEO praised the Hamas government’s support for his and the RIHS’s efforts.
Zaza and Rahma’s involvement with Hamas goes back at least several years, with statements by Hamas government offices noting, in half a dozen posts, the terror group’s financial and logistical relationship with the Michigan charity.
How did Rahma get away with this?
Western Governments Look the Other Way
Social media posts by Rahma Worldwide frequently report that its officials and supplies are quite easily traveling to Gaza, with one recent post claiming charity officials had “broke [through] the siege” to get into the territory.
Such melodramatic rhetoric belies the fact that Rahma officials have apparently coordinated with Israeli authorities to transfer staff and materials into Gaza, through Israeli crossings, in spite of the Michigan charity’s open embrace of terrorists.
Arabic media recently reported that Rahma has been working closely with Aid 48, a pro-Hamas aid initiative run by the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, an important Islamist force. Israel’s security agency Shin Bet suspended the organization in April, after finding that the Islamist group had “transferred large sums to and carried out joint activities with a Turkish organization called Khir Ummah, which serves as a Hamas front group.”
Rahma staff in Michigan have seemingly since distanced the charity from Aid 48, releasing a statement that blamed “volunteers” acting independently.
This apparently worked, with Israeli authorities granting permission for subsequent Rahma convoys to enter the Gaza Strip.
Given the Israeli authorities’ failure to halt Western Islamist contributors to Hamas’s dawah infrastructure, it is perhaps not too surprising that the Biden administration has also failed to act.
Indeed, the problem in the United States might not be one of ignorance but of complicity. Around 2008, the federal government conspicuously shut down efforts to monitor and prosecute Hamas networks in the United States. Since then, Hamas proxies and supporters have not just flourished, but even enjoyed collaboration and funding from government.
Some in the security establishment have even regarded Islamist charities aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas as useful partners even in the battle against Salafi-jihad. As Jonathan Schanzer at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies noted in testimony before Congress, “One official candidly told me that suspected Hamas activists in the United States were viewed then as protected sources in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group.”
Rahma may well be one of these government-tolerated groups. The charity’s CEO Shadi Zaza announced, just a few days ago, that he was at the White House to attend a “meeting with national security counsel.”
Meanwhile, over the past decade, federal departments have authorized tens of millions of dollars of funding to Hamas-aligned charities across America.
Beneficiaries included Rahma, which, in October 2023 – just as its officials were meeting with Hamas leaders in Gaza, and days before the October 7 attacks – received over $174,000 from Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Moderate Muslims and counter-extremism analysts hoped, in the days following October 7th, that policymakers and media might wake up to the threat that Islamism poses, not just in Gaza, but across the world.
A year later, however, terror-tied Islamists remain tolerated and utilized by governments across the Western world. In the United States, whether sanctions and foreign agent rules or statutes on material support for terrorism, the law is simply and deliberately not being enforced.