Shurat HaDin calls on Tillerson to cut funding for US aid agency financing terror

By JNS.org

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

(JNS.org) The Israeli legal nongovernmental organization Shurat HaDin is calling on U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to terminate government funding to the U.S. relief agency, American Near-East Refugee Aid (ANERA), after an investigation by Shurat HaDin found ANERA was “actively assisting” terrorist organizations.

According to the probe, funds transferred to ANERA, including from American charities, the United Nations Development Program and the Christian charity World Vision, are “used to support Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) kindergartens that actively indoctrinate children in hatred and killing of Israeli civilians, as well as other PIJ and Hamas organizations, thus enabling them to finance terrorist activity, which is forbidden by US law.” The former head of World Vision recently plead not guilty to charges it funded the terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad which operate out of the Gaza Strip.

Shurat HaDin founder Nitsana Darshan-Leitner has called on the State Department to enforce U.S. law which prohibits the transfer of funds or resources to terrorist organizations through their affiliated charities.

“Under the guise of an organization that works on behalf of refugees and the needy, an American relief agency has become a partner to terror organizations,” Darshan-Leitner said. “In recognition of the U.S. Administration and the new wind blowing from the White House and the State Department, I hope and believe that federal funding for ANERA will be suspended, as long as it continues to finance terrorism. This is how we have come to see the terror infrastructure rebuilt in Gaza.”