Biden’s Administration Is Not Providing Military Aid to Hamas

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The USA and Biden’s administration are not financing Hamas. The USA is sending humanitarian assistance for the civilians in Gaza, but it does not go to the terrorist organization that has several financiers, out of which the main is Iran. The USA declared Hamas a terrorist organization and prosecutes all of its citizens or permanent residents who finance this militant group

 

We are fact-checking a post on the social network Facebook (screenshot here) claiming:

Who will dare to ask the American Biden administration why US $23 million was provided to Hamas, and it is now securing even more for Israel? When this is answered, the war in the Middle East will end! Can you imagine: USA had no information about the Hamas attack. It was all covert, through secret talks with IRAN?!! Can you imagine that! That was announced by the Israeli ambassador to Slovakia. A month ago, the Slovaks became annoyed and positioned themselves on the borders, allegedly, because of a large influx of migrants. After this global bomb, I have no idea who will prevent the upcoming inflows of migrants!

As illustrated by the fact-checkers of FactCheck, the USA is indeed providing military assistance to Israel, but the assistance provided to Palestine is just humanitarian aid for the Palestinians in Gaza, not military assistance to Hamas, as claimed by the post.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack on civilians and military targets in Israel on 7th October this year, thereby killing more than 1.200 people, including at least 27 Americans. Since then, some posts on the social network Facebook are shared as to blame the administration of President Joe Biden for, allegedly, securing financial assistance for the population in the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas. HAMAS has been identified by the USA as a foreign terrorist organization.

It is true that Biden unfroze US$ 360 million in 2021 and started sending support to Palestine, but the money was not for financing Hamas’ attacks on Israel. In May 2021, the State Department informed that it was providing US$ 38 million worth of humanitarian aid for the West Bank and Gaza. That raised US assistance for Palestinians to US$ 360 million that year, which was a turning point for the assistance for Gaza, after the previous US President, Donald Trump reduced the aid for the Palestinians in 2018.

The State Department pointed out that the money will be used to support humanitarian organizations to provide emergency shelter, food, relief items, and health care as well as mental health and psycho-social support for those who experienced severe trauma.

At the time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the assistance would be used for emergency humanitarian reconstructive assistance for Gaza, following the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in May 2021. Blinken also stressed that he will work with the partners to make sure that HAMAS will have no benefits from these reconstructive efforts.

The USA is indeed sending military assistance to Israel every year. According to the report from March, the USA granted US$ 124 billion worth of military aid to Israel since 1946.

Almost the entire current US assistance for Israel is military aid. The US Army is helping transform the Israeli Armed Forces into one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world, specifies the report.

Regarding the part of the post fact-checked referring to the Slovaks positioning themselves on the borders due to a large influx of migrants, the issue at hand was that Slovakia had faced a rising number of illegal migrants crossing as they headed to Germany and Western Europe. The migrants, predominantly young men from the Middle East and Afghanistan, had mostly come via the Balkan route, through Hungary from Serbia, Reuters reports.

This event is not related at all to the conflict between Hamas and Israel. According to Balkan Insider, the reason for such a large number of migrants from the Middle East heading for Slovakia is a document which they believe, wrongly, grants them the right to stay in the EU.

CNN recently published an investigative story revealing that Hamas is using various ways of financing, including donations in cryptocurrencies. In addition, Hamas is a terrorist organization and it is illegal to fund such an organization in the USA. That means that Biden’s administration is not financing Hamas, but is undertaking all necessary steps to ensure that Hamas is not using the money from American donations for the civilians in Gaza.

Officials from the Department of Defense in Washington demanded a criminal investigation of the use of cryptocurrencies by the militant group, through money-laundering, CNN informs.

The article adds information about the Hamas-linked cryptocurrency accounts the US government seized three years ago. On two of the accounts, as specified by the CNN article, US$ 41 million and US$ 94 million were frozen.

Hamas and other terrorist organizations publish openly on Facebook their crypto wallets telling people how to donate, according to the report published this year by the US Department of Homeland Security, CNN reports.

Charges filed against a New Jersey man in 2019 described how he posted on Instagram that he just donated US$ 100 to Hamas. The man, also accused of sending about 20 dollars in Bitcoin to the group, later pleaded guilty.

A major donor of Hamas is Iran, which has been providing US$ 100 million annually to Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, according to a US State Department report from 2021. Disclosures from the US Treasury Department have outlined how Hamas has at times received Iranian funds through financers based in Turkey and Lebanon. For example, a Lebanon-based financial operative functioned as a middleman between Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hamas and worked with Lebanese group Hezbollah to ensure funds were transferred, according to a 2019 US Treasury report.

Due to all of the above-noted facts, we assess the fact-checked post as not true. The US and Biden’s administration do not finance Hamas. The US is providing humanitarian assistance for the civilians in Gaza, but that aid does not go to a terrorist organization that has multiple funders, including the main funder Iran. The USA has declared Hamas a terrorist organization and persecutes its citizens or permanent residents who finance this militant group.

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