The Department of State is financially supporting a nonprofit group in the Gaza Strip that has close ties to Palestinian terrorism, according to a new report.
Between September 2022 and December 2023, the State Department has a $41,000 agreement with Fares Al-Arab, a Gaza-based charity, to support a 15-month program to train Palestinian journalists, according to federal grant data. That same foreign charity has in the past partnered with Hamas, an anti-Israel terrorist group that is responsible for suicide bombings and violent attacks, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
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“Anyone who tried to work with the State Department following the abandonment of Americans in Afghanistan knows it is a deeply disappointing institution,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Washington Examiner. “To learn that it is actively funding groups that advance terror and seek to censor American free speech means that the problems there are even worse. Congressional oversight is already well underway. State should consider this fair notice.”
The grant is part of a program called “Investing in People in The Middle East and North Africa.” As a whole, the State Department dished out $187 million in 2021 in connection to the program and roughly $20 million in 2022, according to federal data.
Fares Al-Arab’s “views on Israel will not be part of the media training program,” Areej Al-Massry, a spokeswoman for the group, told the Free Beacon, noting that program participants will be handpicked “in partnership with the project’s management staff in the U.S. Department of State.”
Fares Al-Arab, which has called Israel an “apartheid” regime, collaborated with Hamas in 2021 on a housing project and has worked with the terrorist group on other projects. In 2021, Gaza’s Ministry of Public Works and Housing reportedly contracted Fares Al-Arab to help “repair partial damage to 50 housing units” due to Israel being provoked by Hamas to launch rocket attacks.
Four years earlier, in 2017, Fares Al-Arab held a meeting with Ghazi Hamad, a top Hamas official, as well as government representatives to mull “joint cooperation” on “charitable and social work systems,” a Palestinian government-run news outlet reported.
The Gaza-based charity also provided its media award in 2010 to Voice of Al-Quds radio, a network managed by the Islamic Jihad Movement, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, a press release shows. Later that same year, Fares Al-Arab visited and honored journalist Hassan Jaber, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, according to a press release.
Fares Al-Arab also participated in World Press Freedom Day in 2007, an event that saw anti-Israel activists demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners, Wafa News reported. One person featured at the event was Daued Shehed, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, the Free Beacon reported.
Jamal Farwana, an anti-criminal justice system activist, was a member of Fares Al-Arab’s board until at least 2008, according to its website. Farwana, who has called for violent criminals and terrorists to be released, spent time in prison during the 1980s and 1990s, the Free Beacon reported.
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Farwana’s father, Awni Farwana, was an original leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, says the terrorist group on its website.
The State Department has been reached out to for comment.
