U.S. foreign aid programs have disbursed more than $100 million to terror-linked entities since 2007, according to a multi-year report released by the Middle East Forum (MEF) earlier this month. The lion’s share (at least $152.9 million) came through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), although the U.S. State Department was also responsible for $11.6 million. The report comes as the Trump administration has sustained mounting criticism for its efforts to reform America’s troubled foreign aid programs.

ANERA

Of the organizations featured in MEF’s report, the most donations went to American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA). Since 2007, ANERA had received $102.2 million in grants from USAID and another $7.0 million from the State Department, according to the MEF report. Most recently, USAID granted ANERA $12.5 million in 2024.

Yet ANERA, which operates in Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon, has provided financial support to Hamas-adjacent organizations for years.

In 2007, just after Hamas’s bloody takeover of Gaza, The Washington Times reported that ANERA was “building a high-tech facility” for the Islamic University of Gaza, which was “known as a Hamas bastion” as early as 1996, according to then-Rep. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The USAID Inspector General found multiple failures in USAID’s administration of this award to ANERA:

• “Subawardees Were Not Always Vetted”;
• “Antiterrorism Certifications Were Not Always Obtained”;
• “Required Clauses Were Not Always Included in Awards and Subawards.”

Israel Defense Forces struck the Islamic University of Gaza in June 2024 after Hamas fighters used it as a base of resistance.

In 2022, USAID itself reported that ANERA had built an “educational and community center in Gaza” for the Unlimited Friends Association (UFA). The UFA runs an “Orphan Sponsorship Program” that provides financial support to “the families of martyrs and prisoners,” including children of those killed while resisting “the ongoing slaughter against the Palestinian people.”

In other words, the UFA runs a pension fund for the dependents of terrorists, and the school they ran was probably connected to Hamas’s underground tunnel network. The UFA doesn’t even conceal its genocidal predilections. In April 2021, UFA Director Jomaa Khadoura posted to social media a prayer for Allah to “cleanse Al-Aqsa [the temple mount] from the impurity of the Jews.”

In summary, ANERA has, with U.S. foreign aid, built infrastructure for Hamas and its allies — the very “schools” that indoctrinate Gaza’s children against Israel and where terrorists hide. Those interested in ANERA’s other suspicious activity, including anti-Semitic statements by prominent staff, can read the full MEF report here.

Bayader

Also concerning for its activities in Gaza is the Bayader Association for Environment and Development, which has received $900,000 from USAID from 2016 to 2024.

The MEF report described Bayader playing an auxiliary role to Hamas’s terror activities — not directly participating in violence, but facilitating it through close cooperation. In a 2021 annual report, Bayader described “‘coordination’ and ‘meetings’ with Hamas’s Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Works, Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Agriculture,” MEF described. And “in March 2023, Hamas’s Ministry of Public Works broadcast its support for Bayader’s efforts to build public infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”

In February 2023, Bayader co-organized an event with Islamic Relief (see below) that featured senior Hamas officials. “At the ceremony,” MEF reports, “Bayader staff embraced senior Hamas officials, including Abdul Salam Haniyeh, the son of the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh,” the Hamas political leader who was assassinated last August in Tehran.

While Bayader collaborates with Hamas, it also collaborates with USAID, whose officials even visited Bayader offices. In 2015, Bayader gave an award to Jonathan Kamin, who “served as Deputy Mission Director of the USAID Mission to the West Bank and Gaza” from 2013 to 2017. Kamin now serves as acting deputy assistant administrator for the Africa bureau, responsible for the Sudan portfolio.

It’s possible that Bayader only collaborates with both Hamas and USAID when their agendas align. But, if that is ever the case, it would indicate that USAID’s agenda is out of step with the rest of the U.S. government, which views Hamas as terrorist hostiles. If Bayader collaborates with both Hamas and USAID when their agendas do not align, then they are forced to choose whose agenda to implement. I submit they are most likely to implement the agenda of the people who will shoot them for not doing so. In either scenario, USAID grants to a Hamas-aligned charity do not serve the interests of the U.S. government.

Islamic Relief

USAID has also given $2.2 million to various branches of Islamic Relief, a massive financial organization that operates offices and affiliates in more than 40 countries. It granted $1.3 million to Islamic Relief Ethiopia in 2016-2018, $700,000 to Islamic Relief Worldwide in 2015-2021, and $200,000 simply to the Islamic Relief Agency in 2014.

Yet Islamic Relief is simply a fundraising arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, as both the German (2019) and Dutch (2021) governments have publicly acknowledged in recent years. On December 30, 2020, the State Department in Trump’s first administration also condemned “the blatant and horrifying anti-Semitism and glorification of violence exhibited at the most senior levels of IRW [Islamic Relief Worldwide].”

Donations collected by Islamic Relief found their way in 2017 to the Islamic Zakat Society (IZS) and in 2015 to the Al-Falah Benevolent Society. Both of these societies are fronts for Hamas and openly oppose Israel. Islamic Relief has also financially supported other radical groups, including Gulf-area branches of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Charitable Society for Social Welfare, founded by al-Qaeda fundraiser Abd al-Majeed al-Zindani, whom the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in 2004.

It can be difficult to imagine how groups with such benevolent-sounding names can be involved with terrorism. But how else could terrorists maintain a secretive global funding apparatus than by disguising their true intentions?

For those who might be skeptical about the ill intentions of Islamic Relief, MEF includes several public quotes from their Gaza branch. “I ask god to paralyze the pillars of the Jews and cut their legs and paralyze their hands,” and, “O Muslim, O servant of Allah, behind me a Jew. Come and kill him.”

Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD)

Another deceptively named organization is Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), which received almost $200,000 from USAID in 2021 and 2023, according to MEF records. MEF links HHRD to “the Pakistani terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba,” which was responsible for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

According to MEF, HHRD has partnered at least 214 times with the Pakistani Al-Khidmat Foundation, which donated six million rupees (approximately $70,000) to Hamas for their “just Jihad.” MEF also documented events displaying signage for HHRD and the UFA (mentioned above) on the same printed banner.

On January 24, 2023, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chaiman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) expressed concern about the HHRD grants in a letter to USAID Administrator Samantha Power. The letter alleges that USAID awarded HHRD $110,000 in 2021 “despite longstanding, detailed allegations that HHRD is connected to designated terrorist organizations, terror financiers, and extremist groups,” which Congress in 2019 asked the State Department to review.

Congressional staff began asking about the HHRD grant in May 2022, McCaul continued, but USAID blew them off until, in November 2022, McCaul publicly demanded an explanation.

“When USAID finally briefed the Committee on January 11, 2023, it was clear that the agency had failed to take any action to investigate the allegations or suspend the award, despite having been provided detailed information by congressional staff months prior,” wrote McCaul. “Shockingly, one of the subject-matter experts in the briefing acknowledged that he had only been made aware of the matter the week before.”

Somehow, after receiving this congressional reproof, USAID awarded even more money to HHRD later that year.

Not only did USAID appear deaf to the warnings of Congress, but they apparently ignored the warnings of their own, internal watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General. “Over the past several years, the OIG has also started to investigate grants to recipients such as Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD),” said MEF. “However, OIG concerns were apparently ignored, with additional grants still being issued.”

Conclusion

In these examples, a recurring theme emerges: whether through deliberate action or inexcusable oversights, USAID has for decades steered millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars toward organizations that either cooperate with terrorists, build infrastructure for them, or indirectly subsidize terrorist activity. Despite external pressure from Congress and internal pressure from their own inspector general, USAID has proven unwilling to seriously reform its vetting or award-granting practices to ensure that its work aligns with U.S. foreign policy.

Many in Washington have expressed alarm at the Trump administration’s drastic moves to reform USAID. But such criticism must be tempered by the recognition that USAID is in need of drastic reform.