A wanted person ad was posted across the United States this week: "Anyone who knows anything about Hamas' sources of funding is asked to contact law enforcement agencies. A cash prize of up to $10 million will be given to the finder."
The ad includes pictures of Hamas' five investment portfolio managers, whose heads the United States is seeking. The main financing methods are significantly more expensive than his investment portfolios. Why does the U.S. refrain from acting against them, looking for sources of funding in the dark, and at an exorbitant price, with the currency under the flashlight?
The United States knows that Qatar transfers cash to Hamas in the form of fuel, in tax money collected for the fuel, in money from the Qatari charitable fund to Hamas' "humanitarian organizations" in Gaza. These sums amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. The United States maintains its relations with Qatar and does not demand that the flow of money to the Gaza Strip be stopped.
The United States knows that the Palestinian Authority pays for all the infrastructure in Gaza: electricity, water, health and education systems, and the salaries of government officials and municipalities in Gaza. Expenses that Hamas is supposed to bear and pay from the tax money it collects from the residents of the Gaza Strip.
Instead, Hamas takes the tax money and uses it to feed its war monster, to arm itself continuously, and to dig an elaborate and expensive tunnel system. PA funds to Hamas reach up to $1 billion a year. They are also paid to Hamas at the time of writing. The U.S. has never demanded a halt to the payment.
A recent New York Times investigation found that Hamas' investment portfolio stands at half a billion dollars, and in good years yields an annual return of $50 million. With an open budget of $1.5 billion, why is the Biden administration only asking for the heads of Hamas' five investment managers?
This is lip service. A PR stunt by the US government, in light of the pressure on it to demand the extradition of the planners of the October 7 massacre and prosecute them for the murder of American citizens that Saturday.
Instead, he throws a bone at them in the form of a "war" on the financing of terrorism.
The Biden administration, like Obama before it, strongly opposes the war on terror financing. It sends the State Department to dismiss lawsuits in federal courts against the Palestinian Authority and terror-supporting banks on procedural grounds. In one of Shurat HaDin's 15-year cases in New York, the verdict passed by a jury after 50 consecutive days of deliberations found the PA responsible for the intifada attacks and ordered it to pay $655 million in compensation to terror victims. The ruling was based, inter alia, on the payment of salaries to terrorists, and was overturned on appeal due to lack of local authority.
The Biden administration, like Obama before it, strongly opposes the war on terror financing. He sends the State Department to dismiss federal court cases against the Palestinian Authority and terror-supporting banks on procedural grounds
Despite legislative changes that we led to show that the aid the PA receives from the United States is linked to the United States, which grants it local authority, the administration argued that the laws were unconstitutional and opposed reinstating the ruling. Thus, the administration exempted the PA from paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the acts of terrorism for which it is responsible.
This is not how you fight terrorism. If money is oxygen for terrorism, it must be strangled, as the US announced, "Hamas must be defeated at all costs." It is therefore also expected to jump into the swamp and not let go until Hamas is destroyed, not only physically, but economically and ideologically. If we want to completely topple the Hamas regime, and not to crawl back to us from Judea and Samaria and abroad, the flow of money to it must be completely stopped. Not to harass investment managers, but to follow the fat fish: Qatar and the Palestinian Authority. This is the real war, and only through it can Hamas be crushed.
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