By Joe Biden has long been known as a fabulist who will make one claim while doing the opposite, but putting him in the White House and watching the federal government adopt his persona has taken the cake.
Nothing has revealed Biden, and the Democrats, commitment to using the power of federal spending to support their friends and crush their enemies more than the White House’s commitment to “fighting disinformation.” As New Conservative Post has noted several times, the terrorist attack by Hamas and subsequent war launched by Israel has revealed how little Democrats are committed to the principles they often tout to attack Republicans.
Nothing has better exemplified this point than the administration’s tapping of pro-Hamas groups to “fight antisemitism.”
According to an investigation by the Washington Free Beacon into federal spending records, the State Department has sent over half a million dollars to an organization dedicated to spreading misinformation and propaganda pieces against Israel.
The task they were hired to do? Fight misinformation.
MENAACTION Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Virginia, received $573,000 by the State Department on October 1. The primary objective of these funds was to help protect “media and society against disinformation” and to provide training to Jordanian journalists to help them recognize and distinguish “fake news.”
It’s a topic that MENAACTION’s founders know all about. Cofounder Chris Aboukhaled pushed Hamas’s claim that Israel bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. The rocket that struck the hospital was actually fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist group in Gaza. MENAACTION’s other cofounder, Mohammed Abu Dalhoum, who also suggested that Israel was behind the bombing, claimed Israel’s military response to Hamas “isn’t self-defense” and accused Israel of “genocide.” Experts agree that Israel’s targeted retaliatory strikes against Hamas do not constitute genocide, reports The Washington Free Beacon.
The grants to a group behind that kind of rhetoric could raise concerns about the administration’s ability to curtail disinformation in the Middle East. It also raises questions about the Biden administration’s funding for both anti-Israel groups and initiatives to fight disinformation. Earlier this year, the White House tapped the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an anti-Israel advocacy group, to serve on its “national strategy to counter anti-Semitism.” The White House scrubbed references to CAIR’s role on the task force this week after the group’s leader said he was “happy to see” Hamas fighters attack Israel.
The State Department recently awarded $260,000 to a Palestinian university that hailed Hamas as “righteous martyrs,” and another known as a hotbed of Hamas activity in the Gaza Strip. The Department of Homeland Security awarded millions of dollars to mosques that have called for the annihilation of Jews to mosques as part of a program to protect against terrorist attacks.
MENAACTION, which says it “advocates for the rights of Middle Eastern youth and the Middle East in general,” has been highly critical of the Israeli government and of what it refers to as the “Israeli occupying forces” in Gaza and the West Bank. Dalhoum, the MENAACTION cofounder, suggested Secretary of State Antony Blinken could not serve as an impartial mediator in negotiations between Israel and Palestinian leaders because he is Jewish.
“Misinformation” much like “fake news” from the right, has been used by Democrats to attempt to shutdown critics, but this may be the first time that the White House has used the moniker to fund what could easily be called a propaganda outfit.
Nor is it the first time that the White House has said to be a stalwart supporter of Israel while appearing to fund or bolster its enemies. The administration recently had to “scrub” its website of all mentions of CAIR, Council on American–Islamic Relations, a “partner” in the president’s antisemitism strategy, saw its leaders state that he was “happy” to see the terrorist attacks on October 7.
A recent RealClear Investigations report noted that the organization was also discovered to have been funneling money to Hamas by the FBI.
“The story began in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan in the 1960s, where Awad and a co-founder of CAIR, Omar Ahmad, were born. Both men eventually came to the United States for university studies. By 1992, Awad was a key member of the so-called Palestine Committee in America, which helped finance Hamas. According to a 1992 letter from the Gaza Strip, Hamas asked the Committee for money to buy “weapons, weapons, our brothers.” The letter continued: “The meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any jihad on earth.”
Around the same time, the FBI was eavesdropping on several Hamas leaders in connection with terrorist activities, which produced tapes documenting the incarnation of CAIR in 1993. At a secret meeting that October, Omar Ahmad called to order the Hamas summit in Philly at a Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Philadelphia to discuss the formation of a new front organization to support their “movement” in America. Awad also attended the meeting.
According to court testimony by FBI agent Lara Burns, who runs a major counterterrorism program for the bureau, Ahmad, Awad, and the other leaders who gathered there hatched a scheme to disguise overseas payments to Hamas terrorists and their families as charity. FBI wiretaps also recorded them stating the need to deceive Americans about the true aims of their planned American front group as Hamas launched a campaign of terror attacks on Israel known as the “Intifada.”
They compared the deception to the ‘head fake’ in basketball, where a shooter tricks an opponent guarding him into moving in a different direction. The group, according to the wiretap transcripts, envisioned an ‘alternative’ organization whose pro-Palestinian stripes were ‘not very conspicuous.’ Burns testified CAIR was what they had in mind. During the talks, they tried to mislead any authorities who might be listening in by referring to Hamas as ‘Samah’ – Hamas spelled backward.”
On top of domestic spending, the White House has sent billions to Iran, despite the country turning around and shelling out money to attack American troops in the Middle East.
Biden has already admitted he’s not sure what’s going on in foreign policy. It might be time to start double-checking everything he’s saying at home, too.
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