Seeking money, Hamas turns to allies skilled in ‘financial jihad’ | EUROtoday
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Within days, a torrent of money started pouring into accounts set as much as assist Gazans, a lot of it from folks moved by photographs of victims of Israeli airstrikes and genuinely wanting to assist. But additionally answering the decision had been teams with years of expertise in delivering exactly the form of jihad Hamas’s chief envisioned.
Across the Middle East and Europe, the Gaza battle re-energized outdated fundraising networks with ties to militant Islamist teams and causes, together with teams accused of elevating cash prior to now for al-Qaeda and the Taliban in addition to Hamas’s army wing, present and former U.S. counterterrorism officers say.
The teams helped raised tens of millions of {dollars} virtually in a single day, utilizing crowdfunding campaigns on social media that had been constructed round pictures and movies depicting the struggling of Gazan civilians. Some of the cash was in the end deposited in Hamas-controlled accounts utilizing a variety of strategies, together with cryptocurrency and casual cash-transfer networks utilized in Middle Eastern international locations for hundreds of years, the officers stated.
Among these backing Hamas crowdfunding campaigns, officers stated, are teams resembling Kuwait’s Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, which has been accused by each the United Nations and U.S. authorities of elevating cash for al-Qaeda; in addition to Europe-based charities with ties to the Union of Good, an umbrella group that U.S. officers say was created by Hamas leaders and supporters to facilitate the switch of cash to the group. Both teams have denied supporting or advocating terrorism. Hamas’s founding constitution requires the destruction of Israel, and the group is considered a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.
While the important thing fundraisers have been energetic in some instances for many years, their ways have been perfected lately because the teams discovered to mix the huge attain of platforms such Facebook and X, previously often known as Twitter, with the emotional energy of a global tragedy. Militant Islamist teams and their supporters embraced the usage of crowdfunding on social media after the beginning of the Arab Spring uprisings, significantly in Syria. Some used the method to solicit cash within the aftermath of final yr’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
“There is a legitimate, tremendous need in Gaza right now, and it’s very easy for someone to put up a website with a photo of an injured baby,” stated Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department counterterrorism official now on the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a suppose tank. “This is a real opportunity if you’re a Hamas fundraiser.”
It is tough to acquire exact figures for the sum of money that Hamas has generated by crowdfunding efforts within the months because the battle started. Israeli authorities officers in interviews put the overall at about $200 million, a sum they acknowledge contains cash raised by legit charities in search of to assist the tens of millions of Gazans in dire want of meals, medication and shelter.
Israeli officers say Hamas makes use of a number of the cash to pay the salaries of its fighters and to finance the group’s political and affect operations overseas. In the longer term, they are saying, surviving Hamas leaders may use the funds to replenish the group’s stockpile of rockets and different weapons.
U.S., European and Middle Eastern officers all assess that crowdfunding has grow to be a very vital income for Hamas because the battle started with the Oct. 7 terrorist assault on Israel. Since the beginning of the Israeli floor offensive, Hamas, the governing authority for the Gaza Strip, has been largely unable to gather taxes and costs from Gazans, its greatest single revenue generator.
Travel bans for Gazans and banking restrictions imposed by the United States and different Western governments have made it tough for Hamas to gather monetary assist from Iran and different international backers, or to money in on its estimated $500 million funding portfolio — a considerable useful resource on paper that has supplied solely minimal sensible profit for the group in the course of the present disaster, because the portfolio consists primarily of property that may’t be rapidly transformed to money, resembling mines, farms and actual property, former U.S. officers stated.
Instead, Hamas has been compelled to rely more and more on crowdfunding efforts, with substantial help from allies and longtime supporters of Islamist causes, present and former U.S. officers stated.
One instance is a Kuwait-based initiative that was launched Oct. 9 — two days after the terrorist assault and effectively earlier than Israel’s floor offensive started. A crowdfunding operation that referred to as itself the “Mobilization for Palestine Campaign” appeared on-line, soliciting donations for “affected families” in Gaza. It supplied donors a number of choices, together with cost by ApplePay, Visa and Mastercard.
The marketing campaign generated $8.3 million in contributions in simply the primary three days, in keeping with a evaluate by Kharon, a Los Angeles-based non-public intelligence firm.
Among the listed sponsors of the marketing campaign was the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society. The group, additionally primarily based in Kuwait, was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2008 for allegedly offering monetary assist to al-Qaeda and different terrorist teams. The United Nations in 2011 equally accused the group’s Pakistan and Afghanistan branches of aiding al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and couriering cash and messages to al-Qaeda members in Pakistan. In 2013, the group participated in a Kuwaiti-led marketing campaign to boost cash for rockets and different weapons for 12,000 Islamist militants combating on the insurgent facet in Syria’s civil struggle.
“This one got our attention because of the organizations involved that were able to raise $8 million in less than a week,” stated Mark Nakhla, a former Treasury sanctions official who now leads investigations of illicit monetary networks for Kharon. “This is ongoing, and new campaigns are emerging on a weekly basis.”
Emails and voice messages requesting remark from Society officers weren’t returned. In earlier statements, the group has rejected accusations that its fundraising benefited violent extremists. “The society strongly denies any connection to terrorist acts, or factions that use them, be it Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda or any other,” the group stated in a 2001 assertion.
The Biden administration is elevating issues with Western governments over related fundraising by European teams with alleged ties to militant Islam. The Treasury Department in November expanded its sanctions record to incorporate Humani’Terre, a French nonprofit that runs crowdfunding campaigns on social media in assist of Gaza. Treasury paperwork assert that Humani’Terre is in truth a rebranded model of one other charity: the Paris-based Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians, or CBSP by its French initials. The two organizations share the identical handle and phone quantity.
The CBSP has been beneath U.S. sanctions since 2003 over allegations that its serves as a main fundraising arm of Hamas, though the group has vigorously denied supporting terrorist teams or sending cash to Hamas’s militant wing. Treasury paperwork saying the sanctions accused CBSP leaders of gathering “large amounts of money from mosques and Islamic centers, which it then transfers to sub-organizations of Hamas.”
A press release posted on-line by Humani’Terre asserts that the group’s principal web site has been disabled by unnamed outsiders, however says it continues to boost funds for Gaza reduction. An individual who answered the cellphone on the Humani’Terre workplace stated the group wouldn’t remark to journalists. An e-mail message requesting an interview was not returned. CBSP has repeatedly contested claims that it has supported terrorism, together with in profitable civil defamation instances towards French organizations that accused the group of knowingly supporting terrorist teams or offering cash to households of suicide bombers. A CBSP spokesman, in a 2010 interview with French journalists, stated the sanctions had been the product of a U.S. mind-set after the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults that regarded “each humanitarian organization serving the Palestinians as a terrorist movement.”
Since Oct. 7, prime Treasury officers have made repeated visits to European and Middle Eastern capitals to coordinate efforts to halt fundraising for Hamas whereas permitting cash to stream to legit reduction organizations which are serving to alleviate struggling in Gaza. Much of the diplomacy has centered on Turkey, whose authorities has traditionally supported Hamas and allowed the group to arrange entrance firms and pro-Hamas charities, a number of of which at the moment are beneath U.S. sanctions.
A Treasury official described the exchanges with Turkish officers as “tough conversations,” however stated the Biden administration is succeeding in blocking Hamas’s means to entry international financial institution accounts. International banking firms are typically cautious of doing enterprise with teams which are on the U.S. blacklist, and “we are pushing them to do a better job” at detecting and halting flows of money to Hamas, stated the official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate politically delicate deliberations with international governments and worldwide banks.
In the final two years, the Treasury Department has imposed sanctions towards greater than 40 firms and people with alleged hyperlinks to Hamas’s monetary networks and international investments. Since Oct. 7, U.S. officers have additionally met with enterprise executives to encourage harder measures to stop Hamas from utilizing American banking networks and credit-card and cost companies firms. The marketing campaign to starve Hamas financially has been so aggressive that, in latest weeks, the Biden administration has taken steps to make sure that legit reduction organizations can proceed to entry cash to do work in Gaza, the official stated.
“We are trying to be proscriptive in going after illegal charities while letting legitimate ones bring in aid,” the Treasury official stated.
Yet, as present and former officers acknowledge, Hamas has discovered intelligent methods to get at a number of the money its supporters increase overseas. These embrace a mixture of trendy ways and different strategies that date again to the late Middle Ages.
Hamas is an skilled person of cryptocurrency and has continuously accepted transfers of digital funds — often bitcoin — from abroad accounts to digital “wallets” managed by the group. Treasury data since 2020 establish greater than 300 transactions involving transfers of cryptocurrency to Hamas accounts for “potential terrorist financing purposes.”
Such transactions sometimes contain comparatively modest sums, present and former officers stated. Treasury counterterrorism investigators, in a probe spanning a number of years, tracked a lot of small transfers involving a single Gaza-based enterprise referred to as Buy Cash, an organization providing digital foreign money change and cash switch companies to Palestinians. Some of the cash that landed within the Buy Cash digital pockets seems to have been presents or loans to Hamas from people with hyperlinks to different terrorist teams, Treasury officers stated. For instance, a switch of $2,000 in 2019 was initiated by a recognized al-Qaeda affiliate in Turkey. Another switch in 2017 concerned an account beforehand linked to the Islamic State, the officers stated. Treasury officers imposed sanctions on Buy Cash on Oct. 18. Efforts to achieve the enterprise by e-mail for remark weren’t profitable.
Larger sums meant for Hamas are moved by foreign money exchanges in Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, as effectively by the Hawala system, a casual banking community native to South Asia and the Middle East, present and former officers say. Hawalas typically cost solely small transaction charges — some Muslims view curiosity funds as haram, or forbidden — they usually depend on a form of Islamic honor code to switch giant sums of cash, together with between events separated by nice distances and worldwide boundaries. The transactions are all however invisible to conventional banking programs in addition to legislation enforcement businesses.
Since the 2000s, the change networks stay among the many greatest obstacles to stemming the stream of donated cash to terrorist teams, stated Levitt, the previous Treasury counterterrorism official. Hamas, like al-Qaeda, has grow to be significantly adept at utilizing the system, and thus concealing a lot of its fundraising exercise from the skin world.
“There are lots of ways,” Levitt stated, “but for the big money, this is how it gets in.”
As a sign of the networks’ significance, the Israeli authorities promoted with nice fanfare latest profitable operations to kill two Hamas officers with deep ties to the group’s fundraising efforts, together with casual exchanges. One was Hamas financier Subhi Ferwana, an official linked to Hamas’s foreign money change community who was killed, together with an unknown variety of civilians, in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza in mid-December. Another was Saleh Arouri, the deputy Hamas chief killed in an Israeli strike on a Beirut suburb final week.
Arouri was described by Israeli officers as a principal planner of the Oct. 7 assaults. He had additionally been beneath U.S. sanctions since 2015 as a “key financier and financial facilitator” for the group’s army cells.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/12/al-qaeda-hamas-gaza-money-cash/