By New York Post (Politics) | Created at 2024-09-24 15:33:01 | Updated at 2024-09-30 07:25:39
5 days ago
A powerful House panel asked the IRS Tuesday to revoke the tax-exempt status of nine nonprofits that sowed “chaos and discord” during anti-Israel protests on college campuses, according to letters exclusively obtained by The Post.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) wrote to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel to share his panel’s findings on the “illegal activities” committed by the organizations, which had no discernible charitable purpose.
The law-breaking included the promotion of civil disobedience and in some cases may have involved fiscal sponsorship of foreign terror groups.
Two of the nonprofits — Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation (WESPAC) and The People’s Forum — were New York-based, while the other seven were headquartered in Virginia, Texas and California.
“American taxpayers are rightfully outraged by what has transpired on American college campuses this past year, and they are even more disgusted to learn their tax dollars have subsidized the groups organizing this illegal activity at home and potentially terrorist organizations overseas,” Smith told The Post in a statement.
“Tax-exempt status is a privilege, not a right, and in exchange, organizations must operate for stated exempt purposes,” the chairman said.
WESPAC was a fiscal sponsor of the most prominent groups backing anti-Israel protests and pro-terror tent encampments on US university and college campuses last spring, including National Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetime, US Palestinian Community Network and the Palestinian Youth Movement.
Those demonstrations led to “harassment and assault of Jewish students, trespassing, and property vandalism,” as well as “numerous arrests,” Smith’s letter on WESPAC notes.
Lawyers representing both American and Israeli victims of the Oct. 7 massacre sued National Students for Justice in Palestine last May for providing “material support” for terrorists through its “pro-Hamas propaganda.”
Nerdeen Kiwani, the leader of Within Our Lifetime, was one of 34 people arrested during a June protest that broke into the Brooklyn Museum and saw participants spray paint antisemitic messages on the museum director’s home.
In addition to the other fiscal sponsors, the WESPAC network of anti-Israel groups have incited multiple riots, resulting in hundreds of arrests.
The Ways and Means panel warned the IRS earlier this year about The People’s Forum, whose funder Neville Roy Singham currently backs a network of pro-Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, the People’s Forum held a hateful rally in Times Square the day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel where swastikas were displayed and shouts of “f–k the Jews” were heard.
Manolo De Los Santos, who founded Midtown-based People’s Forum, has been denounced for delivering antisemitic speeches peddling “Nazi rhetoric,” in the words of South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), and calling for the eradication of Israel.
“When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel, when the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism in our lifetime,” De Los Santos said to cheers during a January speech.
De Los Santos was arrested at another anti-Israel encampment at Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology in May.
Other messaging efforts by the group that month led to the occupation of Hamilton Hall on Columbia University’s campus, an effort that The People’s Forum promised would “recreate the violent protests of ‘the summer of 2020.’”
Neither WESPAC nor The People’s Forum immediately responded to a request for comment.
Liberal billionaire George Soros backed many of the anti-Israel tent cities nationwide through third-party, grant-making groups including the Tides Foundation, which the Ways and Means panel included in its list.
Jewish Voice for Peace, which also made the list, was another major supporter of anti-Israel demonstrations nationwide over the past year.
Five more groups on the list — including United Hands Relief, Inc., Alliance for Global Justice, Islamic Relief USA, Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation and American Muslims for Palestine — have been flagged for potential ties to terror groups.
The treasurer of United Hands Relief, Hatem Fariz, was previously convicted of providing material support to Palestine Islamic Jihad, a terror group in Gaza, and had unusual financial activity reported in 2022.
More than $15 million of United Hands Relief’s revenue went toward foreign grants that year, compared with just $145,000 in grants to US-based groups. One of the foreign groups it supports is the Gaza-based Generosity Without Limit Association, which is tied to the Popular Resistance Committees, a terror group in the Palestinian territory.
Islamic Relief USA contributes tens of millions of dollars to Islamic Relief Worldwide, with whom the State Department has cut ties over concerns about antisemitism in its leadership. Islamic Relief Worldwide also works with Hamas proxies in Gaza.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is similarly probing American Muslims for Palestine and their fiscal sponsor, Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, for potential financial links to Hamas.
The Alliance for Global Justice also previously sponsored the Israeli-designated terrorist group Samidoun.
“The Ways and Means Committee will continue putting pressure on the Biden-Harris Administration until it stands up to the pro-Hamas wing of the Democrat Party and puts a stop to this antisemitic and anti-American behavior once and for all,” Smith vowed.
The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Alliance for Global Justice, Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Islamic Relief USA, United Hands Relief and the Tides Foundation also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
