FIX EXCLUSIVES
Terror financier pushes anti-Israel propaganda on college campuses
An organization that was recently added to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s terror financier list due to its affiliation with Hamas has partnered with several Ivy League schools to push anti-Israel propaganda.
Since its founding in 1991, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association has operated as a sham charity. It is “responsible for funding Hamas’s Military Wing under the pretense of conducting humanitarian work, both internationally and in Gaza,” according to a June Treasury Department news release.
The organization “purports to represent the interests of Palestinian prisoners,” but has long been affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group involved in the October 7, 2023, attacks against Israel, the news release states.
In recent years, Addameer has advanced its anti-Israel propaganda through partnerships on American college campuses, including Harvard, Yale, and Cornell, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
The Free Beacon detailed Addameer’s involvement in several meetings with anti-Israel groups on campuses, including Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, Columbia Law School, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and the Arab American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois Chicago.
The organization has worked with colleges “to push unverified allegations against Israel,” the outlet reported.
In collaboration with Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, for example, Addameer wrote and submitted a joint report to the U.N. accusing Israel of apartheid crimes.
The organization also collaborated with Yale Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic to send the U.N. another letter demanding Israel release Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were members of the PFLP. Addameer conducted similar efforts with Cornell Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic.
Additional schools, including the University of Chicago via its Student Justice for Palestine and Organization of Black Students, as well as Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, have hosted events featuring members of the terrorist financier.
The Fix reached out to Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, Columbia, and Cornell via email this month for comment on their involvement with Addameer, but received no response.
A national security expert told The Fix that universities should carefully vet non-profits before forming partnerships, as they invite foreign influence onto campus.
“Universities should pay close attention to the founders, funders, and board members of international nonprofits before choosing to partner with them,” Natalie Ecanow, a research analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Fix.
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“For nonprofits based in jurisdictions with known terror activity, universities should proceed with an extra level of caution,” she said.
FDD is a nonpartisan research institute that identifies “illicit activities” to reduce or eliminate “threats posed by adversaries and enemies of the United States and other free nations,” according to its website.
Ecanow also said some groups that universities partner with may have “individuals on their roster who, at the very least, operate in the same orbit as designated terrorists and terrorist groups.”
“Universities that partner with organizations like Addameer should understand that they risk associating with groups that are more susceptible to government scrutiny and could be designated down the line,” she said.
Further, schools that form these partnerships subject themselves to increased scrutiny for betraying their own values, she said.
Ecanow also told The Fix that the issue goes beyond university partnerships, as “student groups often bring terror-linked or adjacent nonprofits to campus.”
Emphasizing the danger in these partnerships, Ecanow said, “partnering with international nonprofits can invite foreign influence onto campus.”
This concern extends to other groups with questionable ties.
The Qatar Foundation, masquerading as a benign nonprofit, “pumps billions of dollars into universities.” However, the organization’s founding leadership includes Qatari royals — the same royal family that sponsors Hamas, Ecanow said.
Addameer and the Qatar Foundation are two of several similar organizations that the Trump administration has recently targeted in a wider effort to crack down on sham charities linked to terrorist groups.
The Treasury Department also listed the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity in its June news release.
The pro-Hamas group “serves as an international fundraiser” for the PFLP. It has also helped organize protests on U.S. college campuses, NBC News reported.
Organizations like Addameer and Samidoun “masquerade as charitable actors that claim to provide humanitarian support to those in need, yet in reality divert funds for much-needed assistance to support terrorist groups,” Treasury Department spokesperson Bradley Smith stated in an October news release.
However, Palestine Legal called Addameer’s terror designation “the latest in a long list of politicized attacks by the Trump administration against activists and organizations that work to promote civil and human rights.”
“These designations are part and parcel of the U.S. government’s wholehearted complicity in Israel’s escalating genocide in Gaza and throughout Palestine, and are aimed at undermining civil society attempts to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinians,” the legal advocacy group wrote in a June news release.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Anti-Israel protest in Sakhnin, Israel; wideweb/Shutterstock
