The State Department warned that aid money was at “high risk” of funding Hamas.
In 2021, State Department officials warned that “there is a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza” and asked for a special exemption from sanctions on funding terrorists.
In 2022, Biden met with Palestinian Authority terror leader Mahmoud Abbas and boasted that, “I reversed the policies of my predecessor and resumed aid to the Palestinians — more than a half a billion dollars in 2021.”
While the Biden administration kept the assessment that it was at high risk of funding Hamas secret, the results could be seen in real time. After the Trump administration and congress cut off foreign aid to the terrorist areas in the West Bank and Gaza, the number of terrorist attacks dropped sharply. So did the casualties. In all of 2020, only three Israelis were killed.
In 2021, when Biden restored aid to the terrorists, Israeli casualties shot up 900%.
They have since consistently risen every year Biden was in office, up another 82% from 2021 to 2022. Even before the horrifying atrocities of the conclusion of the Jewish High Holy Days, twice as many Israelis had been killed in one month of Biden than in one year of Trump.
The money kept on rolling in even days before the attacks. On September 23, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield declared herself “proud to announce the United States is providing more than $73 million in additional funding to support UNRWA”.
In the first days of October, Secretary of State Blinken overrode a hold by Senator Jim Risch on $75 million in funding for UNRWA, which is largely staffed by Hamas. Risch had imposed a hold along with other Republican senators, requiring that Blinken certify every 180 days that UNRWA meets accountability criteria because of its “long history of employing people connected to terrorist movements like Hamas” and “using its schools to store Hamas weapons.”
“It is unthinkable that U.S. taxpayer dollars would be used to help fund such an organization,” Sen. Risch stated.
It was extremely ‘thinkable’ to the Biden administration which knew that it was the case. Despite that it authorized $148 million in aid in the weeks before Hamas launched its attack on Israel. Of that money, $75 million would be directly used for “humanitarian” purposes in Gaza.
Even after 9 Americans have been murdered and more taken hostage (a number that is likely to increase), no halt on aid and no review of past aid has been announced. There is every reason to think that payments to UNRWA will be made regardless of whether they benefit Hamas.
Biden’s UN Ambassador revealed that “in 2023 alone, the United States has contributed more than $296 million to UNRWA. And the Biden Administration has contributed nearly $1 billion since 2021.” Millions, tens of millions of that money, was inevitably used to murder, torture and behead concert goers, to fire rockets, to kidnap children and to finance Hamas operations.
After the High Holy Days atrocities, the European Union announced that it was halting its aid.
“The scale of terror and brutality against Israel and its people is a turning point. There can be no business as usual. As the biggest donor of the Palestinians, the European Commission is putting its full development portfolio under review, worth a total of EUR 691m,” the EU’s Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi announced. “All payments immediately suspended. All projects put under review. All new budget proposals, including for 2023 postponed until further notice. Comprehensive assessment of the whole portfolio.”
“We will put all development aid payments on ice for the time being,” Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg stated. “The scale of the terror is so horrendous. It’s such a fracture that one cannot go back to business as usual.”
No such announcement has come out of the Biden administration. The EU has reacted with shock and horror to rapes, murders and caged children. There’s been nothing like it in D.C. Samantha Power tweeted a condemnation of Hamas, but made no mention of an end or even a review of USAID funding. Secretary of State Blinken likewise offered nothing on foreign aid. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield claimed to be “outraged and horrified” at the “appalling unprovoked, brutal attacks by Hamas terrorists”, but made no mention of ending aid to them.
That should be taken to mean that the Biden administration will go on funding the terrorists.
The European statements only highlight the callousness and lack of humanity in the Biden administration which has offered press releases, but no deviation from its pre-existing agenda.
Before this, the Biden administration was aware that there was a “high risk” that it was funding Hamas. And it could see rising violence and deaths keeping peace with the money it was sending into terrorist areas. Despite that it kept it up. Earlier this year it dispatched $148 million to UNRWA despite widely documented evidence that the UN agency’s workforce is dominated by Hamas terrorists who use its infrastructure to store weapons and carry out attacks.
While the Biden administration was sending hundreds of millions to the terrorists, it was enabling billions of dollars to make their way to Iran which was funding and training them.
The recent release of $6 billion to Iran through its Qatari allies, who also serve as state sponsors of Hamas, was only the latest in a series of payments that, like those of the Obama administration, illicitly bypassed American laws, in this case by going through South Korea.
Even more significantly, the Biden administration failed to enforce sanctions on Iran’s oil shipments to China. While officially the sanctions remained in place, the Islamic terrorist state was swimming in Chinese money from its massive increase in shipments to the PRC.
Beyond the $6 billion in the prisoner swap deal, the Biden administration had covertly agreed to stop intercepting and seizing Iranian oil tankers allowing the terror state to move 1.6 million barrels to China a day. Under Biden, Iran has been able to gain $47 billion from its China trade.
In September, Iman Nasseri, the managing director of the FGE energy consulting firm, suggested that, “I think Iranians have been given unwritten confirmation … that there won’t be any further sanctions on the crude buyers as long as they are engaged in the unofficial negotiations.”
The Biden administration was covertly undermining sanctions even while claiming that they were still in place. Iran’s newfound wealth was used to launch attacks on Americans in Iraq and to finance the extensive infrastructure and planning for the High Holy Days atrocities.
It is unknown how much of the sanctions relief to Iran and the foreign aid to the terrorist areas in Israel financed the High Holy Days atrocities, but there is no doubt that such sizable infusions of money would have played a role in making the unprecedented scale of the attacks possible.
And the Biden administration isn’t even expressing regret or imposing a pause on aid.
The devastating attacks, the murdered Israelis, the raped women and the caged children, fulfilled the foreign policy aims of the Biden administration which were to weaken Israel, and specifically Prime Minister Netanyahu, and to make the terrorists into the focus of negotiations, replacing the anti-Iran Abraham Accords with another round of anti-Israel peace talks.
The Biden administration was warned that its aid money would go to Hamas. It watched terrorist attacks increase every year that money resumed flowing to the terrorist areas. It filled its administration with advocates for terrorism against Israel including its envoy to the terrorists, Hady Amr, and now its policies paid off with the worst day of terror in Israel’s history.
Terrorism costs money. And we’re the ones paying for it.
Wellington says
Can anyone name for me just one thing the corrupt and foolish Biden has gotten right since he has been President? Rear guard actions, reacting to events rather than acting correctly in the first place, do not count, such as supplying Ukraine, which would never have been invaded by Putin in 2022 in the first place were Trump still President, and sending a US Naval fleet into the eastern Mediterranean since last Saturday don’t qualify here as getting anything right because they are just desperate maneuvers to make up for initial Bidenesque errors.
The man is like Karl Marx, i.e., conclude exactly the opposite of what Biden states or stands for and you will have virtually a 100% chance of being right. Besides, he’s a chronic liar and quite creepy, especially when around females. He has also, in traitorous mode, allowed for the criminalization of the chief Republican candidate for President in 2024, Donald Trump, and he has demonized again and again upwards of half of all Americans. And what Biden has allowed on America’s southern border should alone allow for impeachment, conviction and removal from office.
Biden and his handlers are destroying America and that is why anyone who ACTUALLY voted for this monumental nothing should hang their head in shame for a very long time. No one who still defends Biden has any merit at all. None.
tgusa says
Isn’t funding terrorism a violation of the Patriot act? Oh, that’s right, it is used against the little people and not on those who enacted it.
Kepha says
We should use the money to help the settlers leave the land between the Jordan and the Med and move back to where their ancestors came from–Hejaz, Nafd, Yemen, and Hasa.
bill says
I cannot understand how when USA is in deep trouble over its national debt which just seesm to grow, that Biden continues and is allowed to throw money away to all corners of the world. I can understand American aid given to countries which direly need help, though in many cases it is the fault of corrupt leadership who pocket the cash anyway. I can also understand when aid is to influence trade with friendly counties. Millions and billions given to countries which are deeply hostile to USA and its interests I just cannot comprehend. Is Biden so stupid he think he will buy the affections of these people and get them to change?
Iran being a classic example, which regularly chants death to America!
Jimbo says
Article in the Telegraph on how the BBC claimed the Israeli hostages were “arrested by Hamas. The UK public are forced to fun this nonsense.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/14/bbc-arabic-reporters-back-hamas-anti-israel-bias/
FYI says
Joe Biden has dementia and clearly has no idea what planet he is on.Yet there is this pretense that he is in control when he is clearly not.Commander-in -chief of what?The Transjester forces?
So who really is making decisions ,especially military ones?
Forced vaccine mandates[ILLEGAL!},supplying weapons to the Taliban,funding the war in Ukraine…and all those military aged men coming into US{Has nobody noticed?}with UN passports,open borders{undermining National Security surely}
Biden is not in charge of anything:he is an obvious puppet.
Imagine if there was a war on and Biden was CinC.Exactly.
OLD GUY says
Abbas, is a crook, stealing from us and the Palestinian people, to commit through his actions the murder of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians. These corrupt and criminal leaders of Islamic/muslim terrorist organizations and country leaders who support these crimes against innocent people need to be exterminated from mankind. These people are the worst of human beings.
FYI says
I get it !The joke is on us.They are having a laugh.
We are supposed not to notice that he is unfit for office.It’s a BIG SECRET.Just play a long with it.
Like in the koran where allah,it turns out,is NOT OMNISCIENT.{Shhh.We won’t tell}.
So allah is not God then.The koran is a fraud and islam has no crediblity at all.
TOTALLY BOGUS CULT