Funding HAMAS Terror Through Palestinian Universities — Even from Central Ohio!!

The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday:

U.S. government officials authorized giving nearly $1 million in foreign aid to a Palestinian university with links to the terrorist group Hamas, despite vetting the school eight times for ties to terrorism, according to a government audit.

[ . . . ]

Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) asked USAID’s inspector general to conduct the audits after a Washington Times report detailed some of the aid payments to Islamic University earlier this year. He said in an interview Tuesday that the failure to detect terrorist ties at the school suggested “either incompetence or a complete breakdown of the vetting system as run by the State Department.”

That Palestinian university mentioned would be the Islamic University of Gaza, an institution founded and controlled by the terrorist group, HAMAS. As Matthew Levitt describes in his book, HAMAS: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale Univ. Press), the Islamic University of Gaza has been the central institution in the HAMAS terror infrastructure. A 2006 Baltimore Sun article quotes HAMAS lawmaker and professor Jameela El Shanty regarding the Islamic University of Gaza: “HAMAS built this institution. The university presents the philosophy of HAMAS.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Lantos exoriated USAID officials earlier this year for their funding of IUG in violation of US law:

Providing U.S. assistance to a terrorist-controlled university in Gaza was out of the question and, in fact, violates U.S. law. This outrageous support for terrorism must and will end.

That would be the same HAMAS-controlled Islamic University of Gaza that the Dublin, OH-based Arab Student Aid International has poured millions into over the past decade. As I reported back in September (“Ohio-based Saudi ‘Charity’ Supporting HAMAS Terror University”), Arab Student Aid International admits providing more than $5 million in direct cash contributions to three terror-operated Palestinian universities, including IUG.

And that would be the same Arab Student Aid International that funded the US education of several HAMAS leaders, as reported last year by the Washington Post (“Distance Learning: HAMAS’ US Education”).

Funding HAMAS from right here in Central Ohio? Say it isn’t so!