Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration gave Hamas $75 million in early October, just days before the group launched an assault against Israel and after learning that a terrorist attack was imminent.
The aid was pushed through in a quiet move bypassing Republican obstructionism.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved the release of $75 million in funding for Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Blinken diverted the cash to Hamas just hours before the funds were set to be redistributed elsewhere.
The move was hushed through with little attention in early October, just days before Hamas launched its terrorist attacks against Israel, slaughtering, raping, and kidnapping hundreds of innocent civilians.
However, the funding was approved after the U.S. government learned that Hamas was likely planning an upcoming terror attack against Israel.
Blinken’s decision came after months of pressure from Democrat lawmakers and dozens of civil society groups.
They warned that blocking the aid would create a humanitarian disaster for over one million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The aid had been held up by Republican Senators who were pushing back against the release of the funds.
Senator Jim Risch and Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republicans on the Senate and House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committees, have since late July been blocking the State Department from providing funds to the UN’s Palestine refugee agency (UNRWA).
After he assumed office, Biden reversed President Donald Trump’s efforts to squeeze off funding to the UN agency and Hamas.
UNRWA thanked Blinken for the funds that will sustain its food distribution through early 2024.
“Thank you [Blinken] for providing $75 million in food assistance to Palestine refugees in Gaza!” said UNRWA
“This generous support from the American people will allow UNRWA to continue this critical aspect of its humanitarian and human development work through the end of Q1 2024.”
Meanwhile, more details have emerged the Biden admin also sent $33.7 million from the American Rescue Plan.
The spending bill was meant for Americans to combat Covid during the pandemic.
It was sent to a Palestinian relief organization that has previously been accused of providing safe harbor to terrorists in Gaza.
The group has been referred to as “effectively a branch of Hamas.”
New: The USAID inspector general warned just a few weeks ago that the Biden administration was ignoring risks in sending aid to Gaza.
The Biden admin has indeed funded groups in the region that have links to Hamas and terrorism, a review found.https://t.co/Lrwoktb9MP— Sarah Bedford (@sarahcbedford) October 11, 2023
The American Rescue Plan, a COVID-19 relief bill pushed through Congress with unanimous Democrat support in the Senate and almost unanimous in the House, allocated $33.7 million to the United Nations Relief & Works Agency through the State Department’s Migration and Refugee Assistance program, according to data from USASpending.gov, as part of $500 million that was included in the bill for the State Department to fund migration and refugee assistance.
In 2014, the left-leaning New Republic described UNRWA as “effectively a branch of Hamas.”
UN Watch reported earlier this year that UNRWA schools were complicit in teaching children to hate Jewish people and glorify terrorism.
UN Watch reported that USRWA has acknowledged that teachers “mistakenly” produced and distributed inciting material but promised in 2021 that it no longer circulates such material.
UNRWA acknowledged in 2014, and condemned, Hamas missiles that were found at one of its schools in Gaza twice in one week.
“UNRWA strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible for this flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law,” the group said at the time.
“Facilities of UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, have been repeatedly used by Hamas Palestinian terrorists for military purposes, as staging grounds, weapons depots, and hideouts,” Professor Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News.
“They have also been used as shields, giving cover to nearby military assets. UNRWA officials have had all kinds of inappropriate relationships with Hamas itself. Whenever these facts — war crimes — are revealed, the UN does a quick ‘investigation,’ sometimes accompanied by a meaningless expression of regret, and carries on,” added Bayefsky, who is also president of Human Rights Voices.
“The fallout from their past behavior is that it is impossible and unwise to take them at their word, or to assume they are a neutral party, instead of serving as an enabler of Palestinian terrorism, today.”
READ MORE: Egypt Warned Israel about Hamas Attack ‘Three Days’ before It Started
