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From the Washington Free Beacon: As the Trump administration works to shutter the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), current and former U.S. officials who worked closely with the embattled aid group say they watched for years as it funneled millions of dollars to anti-Israel advocacy groups and entities linked to terrorism.
That funding caused internal friction across multiple administrations, according to those who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon. In some cases, USAID fought to conceal how taxpayer funds were spent. And when it came to Israel, officials recalled battling USAID over funding for groups that worked to undermine the Jewish state or maintained ties to terror organizations.
“For those who believe in a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, elements of USAID have been problematic for years,” said one former State Department official who worked with USAID during the Biden administration. “There was even a lack of embarrassment among some USAID staffers about being associated with terrorist organizations.”
Some of the terror-tied funding initiatives are publicly known. In November 2022, for instance, USAID awarded $100,000 to a Palestinian activist group whose leaders hailed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group. Just six days before Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel, USAID handed $900,000 “to a terror charity in Gaza involved with the son of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.”
The Middle East Forum, a U.S. think tank organization, released a report on February 1 and announced:
The Middle East Forum’s multi-year study of USAID and State Department spending has uncovered $164 million of approved grants to radical organizations, with at least $122 million going to groups aligned with designated terrorists and their supporters.
Billions more of federal monies has been given to leading American aid charities which have consistently failed to vet their terror-tied local partners, and show little interest in improving their practices, to the apparent indifference of the federal government.
The MEF also announced:
- State Department money has been handed to radical domestic groups such as the Tides Foundation, which members of Congress have accused of funding pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish violence in college campuses across America.
- Easily manipulated and complicit fellow travelers, including major aid organizations such as World Vision and Catholic Relief Services, as well as advocacy organizations such as InterAction, serve as important vehicles, sometimes knowingly, for terror-tied Islamists, both in the United States and abroad. These charities are dependent on federal funding, receiving billions of taxpayers’ dollars.
🚨 New MEF report exposes $164M in #USAID grants to Islamist orgs—$122M linked to terror groups.
With USAID now under State Dept control, reforms are urgent. How did taxpayer $$ fund jihad?
Read more:https://t.co/pSOQ38NdEU
— Middle East Forum (@meforum) February 3, 2025
The Daily Caller also reported last week that the Biden administration had funneled $1.3 billion in taxpayer funds to groups that sponsored or committed terrorism. Below are excerpts from the Daily Caller:
The Biden administration gave $1,053,400,000 in taxpayer money to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which claims to help war-afflicted Palestinian civilians but is tied to terrorists fighting Israel, according to U.S. and Israeli intelligence. Biden reversed a Trump-era ban on UNRWA funding in 2021 but brought back the ban last year after Israel accused UNWRA workers of participating in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
Intelligence officials later revealed that more than 1,000 UNRWA employees, or around 10%, were linked to the groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to documents found on the bodies of dead terrorists and other evidence. A dozen took part in the Oct. 7 massacre, including a Hamas commander who was teaching in elementary school for UNRWA and led a siege against an Israeli kibbutz that killed almost 100 people.
USAID secretly poured uncountable hundreds of millions of dollars toward Hamas, including tens of millions of cash they could never account for.
Throughout the Biden admin, they knew the money they were pouring into Gaza would benefit Hamas. They did it anyway.…
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 6, 2025
USAID funded terrorists.
Your tax dollars funded terrorists.
This is despicable, which is why I’m supporting every effort to get rid of USAID once and for all.https://t.co/t24jxH60ss
— Rep. Diana Harshbarger (@RepHarshbarger) February 10, 2025
At USAID, Funding for Terror-Tied Groups and Internal Hostility Toward Israel Goes Back Years | @FreeBeacon https://t.co/87lPuCwFZY
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) February 10, 2025
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