MEF’s Director of Islamist Watch Sam Westrop appeared on nationally syndicated America First radio Friday July 5th to discuss how U.S. charities are raising money that is sent to Hamas-aligned groups and also how USAID has given large grants to terrorist affiliated groups.
MEF is providing the research showing these connections to oversight groups in the U.S. Congress and the relevant executive agencies and helping get these transfers shut down.
Segment 1 – U.S. Charities helping Hamas
(The following transcript has been edited for clarity)
Jim Hanson (JH): Sam Westrop is the Director of Islamist Watch which is a project of the Middle East Forum. Now one of the things you did well before you know a lot of this was going on you were digging into the groups in the United States some of these are US charities you know IRS recognized five oh one C threes and other types of charitable organizations that raise money in the United States and then funnel it overseas to Hamas-affiliated groups, Hezbollah-affiliated groups, you know other terrorist groups not directly but the people who are directly next to them and so in the interest you know that money is fungible in many ways this money raised in the US by nonprofits and charities is benefiting terrorist groups. Tell us a little bit about what you found.
Sam Westrop (SW); From the perspective of Hamas it’s estimated to raise about two to three billion dollars a year revenue at least before October seventh. Some five hundred million of that is likely from what they call the charitable coalition so that’s a non profit infrastructure across the Middle East. the far east, Europe and of course North America.
But that’s money going directly to Hamas there’s also indirect funding and again that predominantly takes place through the charitable infrastructure. Western charities therefore that have an ideological sympathy with these foreign terror groups. Were either set up directly for this effort or have over the years veered to support this effort.
In other words there is a vast charitable infrastructure around the world including in the United States and Europe set up to subsidize to support to underpin terror group operations abroad and as you say that money is fungible and it’s difficult to stop and it’s difficult to track because if you’re a US 501 C and you’re giving money to build a youth centre in the Gaza strip and Hamas is nowhere involved on paper it’s difficult to prosecute that it’s difficult to place interdictions on that without prohibiting vast swathes of of charitable work.
More generally we track all of American Islam both the good the bad and everyone in between and then some eight thousand organizations. That’s mosques schools grant making foundations but charities make up a considerable part of that not in terms of number of institutions but in terms of revenue and expenditure we are talking hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
JH: You’ve identified you know the basic nexus between these charities and the groups that benefit from that overseas but you want to step farther and you began gathering data that these charities in the United States are required to report. So there’s publicly available data that of grants that these charities get from the US government in many cases of grants they make to other organizations that you’ve been able to track through multiple steps to getting to terrorist adjacent groups if not directly to terrorists and all of this is legitimate government validated information that you’ve gathered in a in a database that now is is available to to go ahead and track the movements of this money correct?
SW: That’s right. So i mentioned you know he’s some seven eight thousand organizations four and a half thousand of those at least are registered 501 Cs that still gives us thousands of tax returns published tax returns every year to go through and these tax returns include details to some extent it’s not comprehensive it includes some details of how money is moving through these networks both between the different organizations that make up this network but also to other movements and groups abroad, both terror related and terror adjacent as you as you as you called it. So there’s a huge amount to look through we track well we’ve uncovered now about thirty thousand grants worth over a billion dollars of of Islamist money or Islamic money is more generally rather moving through the 501 C system.
So this is a lot of data and a lot of money and the American 501 C systems both good and bad. It’s great because it’s transparent because these tax returns are published and we can scrape them en masse and understand how money moves. Once you understand how money moves you can understand how people move how ideas move how networks are made up and so on.
The bad is that the American 501 C is the most laissez faire in the world. Now you might regard
that actually as good in some instances but when it comes to the Islamists this is a problem because that means you can set up five oh one C and your only purpose is to support you know tax free extremists either here domestically or overseas and you still qualify for that charitable status so you have some really extreme groups taking advantage of the five oh one C system and
that doesn’t just allow you to take in contributions tax free it gives a whole host of other benefits.
But can’t we can’t we use this information now and I know the attempt and the effort is to provide this to oversight organizations such as in congress and IRS for some of the organizations making grants to these places to push them to do that oversight.
JH: Is that something we can expect traction with? You know it seems so common sense that they should be looking at this. Can we get them to actually do it?
SW: I would hope so. Here’s the problem, the law is just not being enforced we don’t really even need new legislation here we just need the law to be enforced. There’s a couple of things worth pointing out: one we have plenty of examples of federal terror law being broken take a charity called Rama Worldwide, Michigan based charity right now is running around in the Gaza Strip.
Working with Hamas on the one hand and on the other hand on the jackets of its volunteers in the Gaza Strip is the logo of a designated or terrorist organization a Kuwaiti group called the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society.
Here is an American 501 clearly engaging in material support with this designated terror organization. Can we get the federal government to investigate to prosecute? Not so far and this is a problem we come across time and time again. We come across examples of federal law being broken and it might be terrifying or indeed we came across something just last year, sanctions relating to Iran clearly being broken by a powerful network of Iranian Islamist 501 Cs.
Again we couldn’t get the federal government to investigate so if the law can be enforced a significant chunk of this network can be suppressed can be shut down.
Segment 2- USAID funding the enemy
Jim Hanson (JH): Now Sam we talked last segment a little bit about the difficulty of getting the government to engage in the blatant fundraising to benefit terrorist groups that’s being done in the United States and the activities of some of the nonprofits that they’ve gotten together in this pretty vast network that is funding bad activities overseas and here.
But you’ve had actually some success in getting at least one agency to look at this now. The Agency for International Development USAID provides billions and billions of dollars
most of it very useful to operations to help people around the world.
But they were also providing grants to groups that in many cases were very very cozy sometimes directly cozy with terrorist groups and you got their inspector general to actually go ahead and say they’re going to start taking a look at this. Tell us a little bit about what you found and what they might be looking at.
Sam Westrop (SW): OK well first the problem the problem is as you say vast amounts of money going from USAID Agency for International Development to radical groups around the world. So there are two problems here: one- direct funding to foreign radicals but also funding to domestic radicals who then distribute the money further either to sub-grantees or directly to projects under the purview of groups like Hamas.
So for example just writing a couple of months ago on a U S A I D grant or series of grants worth one million dollars to a group in Gaza called the Bayader Association. This association has launched events for its projects that feature the son of Ismael Haniyeh the leader of Hamas. They don’t even try to hide the Hamas ties. This is a serious problem.
The Office of the Inspector general at USAID has now started investigating that that grant but this is just one grant of hundreds and hundreds of federal grants worth tens of millions of dollars going to Islamist groups for the last few years.
We’ve been telling people that the federal government is really the largest single funder of lawful Islamism in the west so now this doesn’t
JH: Can’t we put though a disconnect into this system by requiring actual vetting not the kind of faux vetting they do now you know something with teeth in it something that requires investigations a look at who these these groups are affiliated with a look at where their grant money has gone in the past and and force them to do that?
SW: I mean obviously the money comes from Congress so they have oversight over these agencies to say if you are providing money and we can track it having gone to terrorism why aren’t you doing that on the front end and then also following up when you do give grants to ensure that it doesn’t happen again in the future.
I think because everyone would come out of this looking terrible both parties it is the amount of I mean the money we know about I reckon is a very small proportion of the true amount. And it’s not just a nonprofit sector as well I mean if you look at the private sector there are some major Islamist run corporations doing multi-million dollar deals with the US military which have ties to a group in Virginia called the SAR network which would it was investigated back in the 2000s for its own terror finance ties. Now its businesses as part of this network do million dollar contracts with the US Air Force and others. So this is a huge problem and I think if it were truly investigated there would be yeah a lot of red faces.
USAID is supposed to not give money to groups whose officials advocate for terrorism. Well we have more examples than i can count that exact thing happening. So again it’s the rules not being enforced.
This is a real crisis and if you listen to what European leaders are saying now about Islamism about the growth of radical Islam in their countries they’re saying for years for decades we have been funding this problem we are partly responsible for its growth. I wish we had been more sensible I wish we had been less stupid. I wish we had been less self self destructive.
That conversation is not happening in the US.
JH: Their citizens are making that clear in their voting for parties that have said we are not going to continue importing people who hold an ideology and espouse and push an ideology that literally is trying to deconstruct our society and you know and causing not just criminal damage but doing things that are destructive to an entire way of life so I think now I’m willing for some people to get embarrassed. I don’t have a problem with embarrassment all the way around if that problem can be stopped here.
We need to not be Europe needs to be canary for our coal mine and what they did we need to stop before they get that big a foothold here and like you said if that requires some embarrassment of people for things they did in the past I don’t care as long as it stops the problem going forward.
SW: I mean I quite agree and look there’s a second round of the French elections on Sunday and it’s possible a National Rally government will emerge and form a majority. Probably not now it’s it’s looking but either way their enormous growth of vote their enormous success is because of this problem because of the French people seeing radical Islam destroyed their towns and suburbs especially and taking action.
The same needs to happen here and if you look up at Minnesota and you look at Michigan places like Hamtramck where Islamists now control local government and you see the incredibly dangerous divisive Islamist rhetoric now working its way into Congress then clearly something has to be done.
So as a whole America is not thinking properly about what is happening to Europe and why that might happen here if they repeat those same European mistakes
JH: You know I think I would like to thank the Hamas mobs for bringing this in a very dangerous, rude, belligerent they’re burning flags yesterday you know in Lafayette square on Independence Day in Washington DC right across from the White House so I would hope that may be something that can actually generate the kind of outrage necessary to remind people that our culture is not required to submit itself to Islamist groups that want to destroy it.
