Officials of Gazan charities funded by British and American Islamist groups, and even the U.S. government, have expressed support for the Hamas operation killing and kidnapping Israelis.
Mansour Rayan, head of the Qawafil Al-Khair Association, has praised the murders by “resistance fighters.” Rayan has gleefully posted dozens of pictures and videos of Israeli hostages being beaten and paraded through the streets of Gaza, along with footage of terrified “Zionist female soldiers detained by Gaza fighters.”
As uncovered by FWI in February, the Qawafil Al-Khair Association is considered by Palestinians to be a major Hamas institution that “supports only the sons of Hamas and those affiliated with the movement.” The terror charity servies primarily to support the families of Palestinian “martyrs” killed in fighting with Israel.
Rayan is a terrorist himself. In 1994, he broke into an Israeli home, stabbing a man to death, and wounding his wife. He was released back to Gaza in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal.
Despite its role as a charitable arm of designated terrorist group, the Qawafil Al-Khair Association nonetheless fundraises openly in Britain, partnering with major British Islamist charities such as Interpal, along with other British groups such as the We Care Foundation, A.R To The World And Back Foundation, Seven Spikes Relief Foundation and the Reading ILM Group.
Qawafil Al-Khair Association also receives significant funding from Qatar.
Other Gazan charities have also commented on the Hamas’s attack into Israel. The Fares Al Arab Foundation for Development published a statement on October 8 mourning loss of “martyr” Sami Labad, the father of one its officials. Other social media posts separately report that Labad was killed “assisting the mujahideen on the Gaza Strip border.”
Posts on the Fares Al Arab Foundation’s Facebook page reveal that the organization works extremely closely with the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs and the State Department, with dozens of posts by the Gazan charity showing events ostensibly organized in collaboration with the U.S. government.
Data at usaspending.gov shows that the State Department has handed the Foundation almost $100,000 in the past six years.
The Foundation also works closely with Islamist charities in the West, such as Islamic Relief, to which European and American governments have handed millions of dollars over the past decade.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is a particularly generous financier of Hamas proxies in the Gaza Strip. In August 2022, USAID announced funding for the “Unlimited Friends Association [UFA] educational and community center in Gaza.”
As previously reported by FWI, UFA officials are open supporters of Hamas, and the charity itself serves to aid “the families of martyrs and prisoners.”
UFA officials also back the violent anti-Semitism of Hamas, with UFA director Jomaa Khadoura calling on God to “cleanse Al-Aqsa [Jerusalem] from the impurity of the Jews.” Posts on the USAID-subsidized charity’s Facebook page itself have praised the “heroic prisoners in the Nazi Zionist jails” and called to “free Al-Aqsa Al-Sharif from the filth of the most dirty Jews.”
UFA has enjoyed support from half a dozen American Islamist charities, including Helping Hand for Relief and Development, Life for Relief and Development, the Zakat Foundation of America, Syria Relief & Development, United Muslims Relief, and American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA).
Meanwhile, Islamist charities in the West, which have admitted to funding Hamas in the past, have also received significant funding from Western governments. Muslim Aid, for instance, previously received over $1.5 million from the American taxpayer, and millions more from British and European governments.
Muslim Aid previously admitted to funding organizations controlled by the terrorist organization Hamas, including a grant of over $18,000 to the al-Ihsan Charitable Society, which is designated by the U.S. government as a sponsor of terrorism.
The U.S. federal government also funds organizations that work closely with international terror financing networks. USAID handed $50,000, for instance, to Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), while the Federal Emergency Management Agency has handed millions to the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). Both Islamist grantees partner closely and openly with South Asian terror financer Al-Khidmat, which proudly boasts of funding Palestinian terrorist group Hamas for its “just jihad.”
Officials of the European Union and various Western European countries have recently announced reviews of funding to the Palestinian territories, following Hamas’s massacre of Israelis. Similar calls may soon be echoed in the United States. Even recent American federal spending data reveals hundreds of thousands of dollars given to other Palestinian charities accused of terror connections. Ard El-Insan, for example, has received almost $130,000 from USAID since 2022, despite its close coordination with Hamas authorities, as reported by NGO Monitor.
(Ard El-Insan is also a partner of Muslim Aid and other Western Islamist charities.)
Operating with impunity for far too long, these incestuous radical networks of Islamist charities serve as the fundraising arms of Hamas terror. Many of its component organizations work openly to legitimatize and participate in terror against Israeli civilians, propelled by the subsidies of Western taxpayers and the assistance of Western Islamist NGOs.