Cut funding to organizations that are empowering Hamas 

As Congress mulls its next moves on big federal spending bills, members of both political parties are refusing to confront an elephant in the room: Billions of taxpayer dollars are being sent to international organizations enabling Hamas terrorism.

With 34 Americans already murdered by Hamas and six more still held hostage in Gaza, it’s time for Washington to withhold contributions to agencies that actively subsidize, enable or defend the evil the world witnessed on Oct. 7.

The U.S. sends billions of dollars to the United Nations every year and hundreds of millions more to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Are we getting our money’s worth? Hamas certainly is. 

Take the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for starters. This organization runs schools in the West Bank and Gaza that explicitly teach kids to hate Jews and of course Israel. Many of its staff members are members of terrorist groups such as Hamas. Its facilities are used by Hamas to launch attacks and build terror tunnels. Employees stand accused of celebrating Oct. 7 and even holding some of Hamas’s Israeli hostages in their homes.

UNRWA does not submit the names of its staff, contractors or beneficiaries to the U.S. for counterterrorism vetting. And so, despite funding UNRWA with over $1 billion under the Biden administration, there is no accountability in terms of who has access to that money. 

These aren’t shocking revelations — they go back many years. This is what led the Trump administration to cut off all funding to UNRWA in 2018. The Biden administration, however, subsequently reopened the spigot. And with roughly 40 percent of UNRWA’s budget focused on Gaza, that’s $400 million of U.S. funding to an organization that employs Hamas members and whose employees are credibly believed to have participated in its crimes against humanity.

Absent an outright prohibition in an appropriations law, Congress may greenlight hundreds of millions more this year, both in the regular budget and the president’s requested emergency supplemental.

The same goes for the International Committee of the Red Cross, to which the U.S. will send another $600-700 million this year as if on autopilot. This, while the Red Cross refuses to pressure Hamas to allow medical visits to the hostages it kidnapped, and after an apparent cover-up of Hamas’s use of hospitals as both terror base camps and holding centers for hostages. 

It gets worse. While the Red Cross won’t visit Jewish hostages held in Gaza, its staff does visit Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails to sign them up for the Palestinian Authority’s “pay to slay" program — a policy that gives government benefits to the families of those who commit terrorist attacks against Israel. Taxpayer dollars have no place promoting terrorism, yet that’s exactly what the Red Cross does.

Congress could at least withhold a certain percentage of Red Cross funds until its conduct improves — but again, that would require an amendment to the appropriations law. 

The list goes on. More than $100 million will flow to the World Health Organization despite its materials showing up in Gaza hospital areas where Hamas held hostages, its inability to condemn Hamas for anything (Oct. 7, the use of human shields, the abuse of hospitals, holding hostages, and more) and its executive board’s decision to condemn Israel in an emergency session instead. 

Another $10 million will go to UN Women, an organization which, to this day, cannot bring itself to condemn Hamas for the mass rape committed against Jews on Oct. 7. Washington will throw in another $3.5 million for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which has turned its social media accounts into a daily cudgel for beating Israel. 

Will anyone care about the $5 billion or more that will flow to the World Food Program, even though its leadership parroted Hamas propaganda? It has been demanding an immediate Israeli ceasefire, while saying nothing about Hamas surrendering, giving up hostages or calling on Egypt to open its border and admit displaced refugees. 

Except for UNRWA, all of these organizations operate across the globe — not just in Gaza or other Palestinian-administered territories. In some cases, they do important humanitarian work. But if the U.S. is to be their largest donor, shouldn’t taxpayer contributions come with conditions that prohibit support to U.S.-designated terrorist organizations?

Part of the core problem here, of course, is that neither the UN nor the Red Cross officially recognizes Hamas as a terrorist group. Nor do they put that label on Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

That’s a fundamental challenge that inevitably leads to the U.S. indirectly funding terrorism through the UN. It’s also the logical starting point for congressional legislation. 

For agencies that refuse to recognize Hamas and other groups as terrorist organizations, U.S. funding should be cut or withheld. We owe nothing less to the victims of Oct. 7 and the hostages who remain in captivity.  

Bonnie Glick was the deputy administrator of the US Agency for International Development from 2019-2020. Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former Senate aide and National Security Council official.