It has been 5 years since journalists warned that an anti-Israel nonprofit was lending its tax-exempt status to a BDS group whose coalition included Hamas and other terror groups.
Since that time the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) has held on to its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. USCPR’s response to the brutal Hamas butchery of entire families, the rapes and the abductions of children was to state that the “Palestinian people have the right to defend their homeland from Israel” and to retweet messages describing the horrors as a “response” to Israeli oppression and bragging that “Gaza just broke out of prison”.
USCPR, which calls itself the Education for Just Peace in the Middle East in tax documents, had previously been exposed as the “fiscal sponsor” for the Palestinian BDS National Committee which means that when someone donates money to the BDS umbrella group, it uses USCPR’s nonprofit status to make it a charitable tax-deductible donation.
The BDS National Committee referred to the Hamas atrocities as the “resistance of the oppressed” and the “powerful armed reaction of the oppressed Palestinians in Gaza.”
The BDS National Committee’s general coordinator had previously expressed support for Hamas terrorism which is not surprising since the BDS National Committee’s members include a coalition of Islamic terrorist organizations known as the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine.
That includes Hamas.
The Jihadist council features Hamas along with Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and two other terror groups banned by the United States. This terror coalition was the first to sign the call for BDS.
USCPR had previously lost its fundraising account over the Hamas connection, but not its nonprofit status. Both USCPR and the BDS National Committee have defended the horrors committed by Hamas as legitimate. But while many Islamic and allied nonprofits have done as much, the BDS National Committee is unique in its connection to a Hamas-backed organization.
It’s also unique in that the BDS network has been the subject of multiple campaigns to bring this to the attention of the United States government. In 2021, Rep. Burchett expressed concern that money raised on ActBlue by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, part of the BDS National Committee, could be “directed to foreign terror organizations” because of the “ties with foreign terrorist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
After the Hamas mass killings in Israel, the Hilton Houston Post Oak hotel canceled USCPR’s “Seize the Moment US Campaign for Palestinian Rights National Conference” gala, stating that it “cannot serve as the venue for this event because of the potential risks.” Gov. Abbott tweeted that, “Hilton Hotels in Houston was correct to pull the plug on the U.S. Campaign for Palestine Rights event hosted by Hamas supporters. Texas has no room for hate & antisemitism like that supported by Hamas. No location in Texas should host or sponsor USCPR.”
The IRS clearly does not agree. And so USCPR retains the tax-exempt status that it’s held since 2005. Over that time, the pro-terror group has taken in millions of dollars, including $1.5 million in 2021 alone, and over $1 million in 2020, 2019 and 2018. It also received over half a million dollars from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund which funds much of the anti-Israel Left. And $450,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. It’s unknown how much money the BDS National Committee may have received by utilizing USCPR’s sponsorship.
USCPR and the BDS National Committee are deeply integrated organizations. A lawsuit by terror victims noted that, “Nasser Barghouti, the brother of BNC founder and Secretariat member, Omar Barghouti, is USCPR’s Treasurer and member of USCPR’s steering committee.” Omar Barghouti had stated that USCPR “is simply the BNC’s most important strategic ally and partner in the U.S.”
Omar Bargouhti, a founder of the BDS movement, has called for the destruction of Israel and endorsed terrorism against Israel. The Barghouti clan includes top Hamas terrorists including a Hamas leader also named Omar Barghouti, now dead, several of whom have carried out attacks on Israelis including the mass shooting at a bus stop in 2018 whose victims included a pregnant woman, as well as Marwan Barghouti, a top Palestinian Authority terror leader responsible for multiple massacres and who is serving five life sentences in Israeli prison.
USCPR and the BDS National Committee are not the only examples of terror-linked groups who enjoy nonprofit status. The David Horowitz Freedom Center had previously profiled Samidoun, which was banned in Israel as a terrorist front group, and was recently banned in Germany after handing out candy in Berlin to celebrate the Hamas atrocities of October 7.
“Holding spontaneous ‘jubilant celebrations’ here in Germany in response to Hamas’s terrible terrorist attacks against Israel demonstrates Samidoun’s antisemitic, inhuman worldview in a particularly sickening way,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser stated.
Samidoun was too sickening for Germany, but not for the IRS to let it function as a charity.
In the United States, Samidoun celebrated the Hamas butchery on social media, boasting that “the resistance” is “seizing occupation settlers” and urged support for the “resistance”.
The terror front group was linked to pro-Hamas rallies. And even the Ford Foundation, the New Venture Fund and a number of other major leftist donors announced that they would stop directing money to Samidoun’s fiscal sponsor, the Alliance for Global Justice, which also sponsors some BLM groups. However the IRS has still refused to act against Samidoun. And so Samidoun assures donors that they can make a “US tax-deductible donation today, and donate safely and securely from around the world.” This would not be possible without the IRS.
As the David Horowitz Freedom Center has documented in our ongoing project, Internal Radical Service, the failure by the IRS to enforce the laws against leftist nonprofits has wrecked cities, cost lives and spurred the illegal invasion of our borders. The next step is up to Congress.
Islamic terror groups should not be subsidized by taxpayer-backed donations.
Terror nonprofits are exploiting loopholes and IRS complicity to promote banned terror groups. Hamas should not be a charity. Congress can close the ‘terror loophole’ in the tax code.
And that will make America and the world safer.
No comments:
Post a Comment