Despite Joe Biden’s quasi-support of Israel’s right to defend itself after the horrific Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th, his administration is still paying hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to an anti-Israel group that is spreading lies about Israel’s defensive war in Gaza.
The name of the group is MENAACTION Inc., and the irony is that their mission is to protect society against disinformation.
Free Beacon has the report:
The Biden administration, in its efforts to fight the spread of disinformation in the Middle East, awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to an anti-Israel nonprofit that has pushed fake news about the Israel-Hamas war.
The State Department gave $573,000 on Oct. 1 to MENAACTION Inc., a Virginia-based nonprofit, to protect “media and society against disinformation” and to train Jordanian journalists how to identify “fake news,” according to federal spending records.
It’s a topic that MENAACTION’s founders know all about. Cofounder Chris Aboukhaled pushed Hamas’s claim that Israel bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. The rocket that struck the hospital was actually fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist group in Gaza. MENAACTION’s other cofounder, Mohammed Abu Dalhoum, who also suggested that Israel was behind the bombing, claimed Israel’s military response to Hamas “isn’t self-defense” and accused Israel of “genocide.” Experts agree that Israel’s targeted retaliatory strikes against Hamas do not constitute genocide.
The grants to a group behind that kind of rhetoric could raise concerns about the administration’s ability to curtail disinformation in the Middle East. It also raises questions about the Biden administration’s funding for both anti-Israel groups and initiatives to fight disinformation. Earlier this year, the White House tapped the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an anti-Israel advocacy group, to serve on its “national strategy to counter anti-Semitism.” The White House scrubbed references to CAIR’s role on the task force this week after the group’s leader said he was “happy to see” Hamas fighters attack Israel.
Details of MENAACTION’s State Department grant are unclear. The agency and MENAACTION did not respond to requests for comment.
The administration’s grants to MENAACTION are part of a broad initiative to stop the spread of disinformation on hot-button political issues. But the cause has stirred controversy, since many of the organizations leading the charge have liberal bias, or have themselves pushed fake news.
This group isn’t the only one getting big money from Joe Biden:
The State Department recently awarded $260,000 to a Palestinian university that hailed Hamas as “righteous martyrs,” and another known as a hotbed of Hamas activity in the Gaza Strip. The Department of Homeland Security awarded millions of dollars to mosques that have called for the annihilation of Jews to mosques as part of a program to protect against terrorist attacks.
It’s no shock that Joe Biden is spending taxpayer money like this on antisemitic groups. So much of his administration is anti-Israel, just like Obama’s administration. This perception that Biden is supporting Israel and their defensive war against Hamas will disappear soon enough, especially when Israel decides to stay in Gaza after Hamas has been eliminated.