GOP lawmakers call on Stripe to cut ties with terrorist-tied fundraiser: ‘Helping Hamas’

EXCLUSIVE — The financial services company Stripe is under fire from Republican senators and House members for allowing a fundraiser benefiting an Israeli-designated terrorist group to accept credit card donations.

Legal experts have raised concerns Stripe could be providing “material support” to terrorism after a November Washington Examiner report revealed the company was allowing its services to be used by the Spanish Bizilur Association for Cooperation and Development of Peoples for its “#StopGazaStarvation Gaza Relief Campaign” with the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which Israel identified in 2021 as an “arm” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terror faction. Now GOP lawmakers are calling on Stripe to sever ties with the fundraiser and stand with Israel on the heels of Hamas killing more than 1,200 people in connection to its Oct. 7 attack against the Jewish state.

PALESTINIAN TERRORISM-TIED FUNDRAISER RESUMES TAKING CREDIT CARDS THANKS TO SOFTWARE GIANT STRIPE

“Big Tech companies are not exempt from the laws prohibiting supporting terrorism,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said. “Stripe should immediately stop processing credit cards for any group linked to Palestinian terrorism.”

Sen. Marco Rubio told the Washington Examiner: “Any company with ties to terror organizations in Gaza should realize they are funding the murder and kidnapping of innocent civilians and immediately sever those ties.”

(AP Photo/Nathan Howard)

Meanwhile, the House, the Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, and Ways and Means committees are eyeing investigations into Stripe and other payment processors that could be boosting terror, according to three sources familiar with the discussions. The Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack against Israel has placed heightened pressure on companies not to associate, even indirectly, with Hamas or other terror factions.

The West Bank-based Union of Agricultural Work Committees is the “agricultural organization” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group, according to a 1993 U.S. Agency for International Development report prepared by Middle East expert Glenn Robinson. In 2018, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express barred UAWC from using their services over its PFLP ties, according to the Israeli watchdog group NGO Monitor, which says UAWC has also been identified as a PFLP “affiliate” by the Palestinian Fatah organization.

One year later, in 2019, UAWC staffers Samer Arbid and Abdul Razeq Farraj were charged for their involvement in both a West Bank-based PFLP terror cell and a roadside bombing that killed Israeli teenager Rina Shnerb, according to multiple reports. UAWC’s former president of the board of trustees was Bashir al Khairi, an ex-political bureau leader for the PFLP, which took part in the Oct. 7 attack.

Donations to the Gaza fundraiser “will be sent directly to Palestine, where UAWC is made up of a network of more than 50 local peasant committees in both Gaza and the West Bank,” Bizilur, which says it opposes “neoliberal, imperialist and heteropatriarchal” systems, disclosed on its website recently. A Spanish company called Laboral Kuxta also appears to be letting Bizilur accept wire transfers through a bank account, records show.

Stripe should “follow PayPal in quickly dropping this account,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Washington Examiner. PayPal notably closed Bizilur’s Gaza fundraising account after Zachor Legal Institute, a pro-Israel watchdog group, warned the company in November that it could have been unlawfully “aiding and abetting” terror, documents show.

“The web of support for groups pushing militant antisemitism is startlingly large, and it is incumbent on private organizations to forcefully reject any association with such evil,” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY), another lawmaker who supports Stripe jumping ship from the fundraiser, said in a statement.

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) told the Washington Examiner: “I’m extremely concerned by the degree in which terrorist activities are being funded under our nose. I not only condemn it, but I think we have to look at solutions to combat it aggressively.”

The House Ways and Means Committee, on which Murphy serves, held a hearing in November on foreign terrorist financing through U.S. charities. Zachor Legal Institute sent a memo that month to the panel, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee raised concerns over terrorist factions “exploiting” loopholes to gain access to American funds.

The November hearing featured testimony from Jonathan Schanzer, a senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. Schanzer asserted Hamas has long “abused the U.S. financial system to send millions of dollars overseas.”

“It is my strong belief that organizations that promote, encourage, or turn a blind eye to hate speech, incitement to violence, and intimidation have no place on Capitol Hill or on university campuses,” Schanzer, an ex-Treasury Department terror financing analyst, said. “Relevant intelligence and law enforcement agencies have the resources to learn more about this network of Hamas supporters.”

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The UAWC and Bizilur fundraiser website accuses Israel of “genocide” and an “ethnic cleansing campaign in West Bank.” The UAWC calls itself “an independent agricultural developmental organization, politically neutral as per its by-laws, policies, vision, mission and practices.”

The Israeli-designated terrorist group “was established by the PFLP,” which controls it, and “makes its assets available” to the faction, according to a 2012 report by the Israel Law Center watchdog organization. In 2022, the Dutch government determined it would no longer allow any grants to flow to UAWC over “ties at the individual level between UAWC staff and board members and the PFLP” after suspending funding due to Raziq Farraj and Arbeed’s arrest, the Times of Israel reported.

The UAWC has received tens of millions of dollars in grants in recent years from the European Union and the United Nations, as well as Norway, France, Italy, Canada, and other countries, according to data compiled by NGO Monitor. On Oct. 11, four days after the Hamas-led terrorist attack, the UAWC released a statement lamenting the deaths of “martyrs” in Gaza working on behalf of Hamas, archived records show.

On Monday, a UAWC staffer said the Israeli-designated terrorist group was “moving” the Gaza fundraiser to “Google Pay and Apple Pay,” not specifying more than that. Apple did not return a request for comment.

Google Pay spokeswoman Liz Schulten told the Washington Examiner that Google Pay “has no records of an integration” with the fundraiser, noting, “Google Pay is not a payment processor; we are a facilitator.”

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Stripe did not return a request for comment.

“Anyone who is knowingly helping Hamas is aiding terrorists who have committed unspeakable acts against innocent civilians,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), another House Foreign Affairs Committee member, said. “There’s no way around that.”