Hamas’ recruiting school has raised $2 million from U.S. taxpayers

Between 2009 and 2023, taxpayers in the United States paid the cost of more than a dozen grants to the West Bank-based An-Najah National University, according to funding documents reviewed by the federal government Washington investigationR. The college reportedly serves as a recruiting center for students from terrorist groups, including Hamas, whose student wing secured a majority of seats on An-Najah’s council last year.

The awards for An-Najah, which come almost entirely from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, are a glimpse into the way the U.S. has long implemented taxpayer-funded programs abroad that are linked to terrorism promote organizations. For many members of Congress and national security experts, it is high time for administration officials to reevaluate the federal handout system to ensure that the U.S. is not funding violent groups that target Israel and other U.S. allies.

“Not a single taxpayer penny should go to a university or organization that supports terrorism, and it is no secret that An-Najah National University is known for producing members of Hamas and other terrorist groups,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn ( R-TN). The Washington Examiner – He added that the US “must take immediate action to stop all funding of An-Najah National University” and other Hamas-affiliated schools.

“Greenhouse for Martyrs”

An-Najah was founded in 1977 and is located in Nablus in the West Bank, a city about 30 miles north of Jerusalem. According to multiple reports, Hamas’ student wing at the university won student council elections months before Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 last year.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the student council is “known for its advocacy of anti-Israel violence and the recruitment of Palestinian students into terrorist groups.” Hamas officials have described An-Najah as a “hothouse for martyrs.”

Earlier this year, Israeli security forces arrested nine Hamas-affiliated students in a raid in An-Najah over alleged plans to carry out terrorist attacks Times of Israel reported.

And in 2011, Israeli forces arrested 11 students in An-Najah for “transferring money and organizing rallies in support of Hamas, in addition to sedition campaigns under the supervision and direction of senior Hamas officials,” an Israeli military leader said in an investigation reported by the investigation Jerusalem Post.

“Some of the most notorious Hamas terrorists held senior positions in the An-Najah faction, including Qais Adwan, a former leader of the Islamic Bloc and head of the An-Najah Student Council, who was also the leader of the Qassam Brigades in the northern West Bank said a 2007 report by Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute think tank.

“Academic boots on site”

Still, An-Najah received U.S. funds through a combination of State Department, USAID, and Interior Department grand prizes, as well as sub-prizes Washington Examiner found.

In 2023, the State Department funneled nearly $300,000 to An-Najah, and in 2021, a major award of $16 million to the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Aspen Institute, records show. The Aspen Institute announced last April that An-Najah, along with Arizona State University, would receive funding “to discuss a range of climate change issues and strategies to address them in the design and implementation of new buildings.”

The Aspen Institute did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Arizona State University said it does not endorse all of An-Najah’s activities “because ASU is not aware of all of An-Najah’s or any other university’s activities.”

“ASU has many university partners,” the ASU spokesperson said. “Since 2023, ASU has had an architectural design collaboration with An-Najah National University.”

Additionally, between 2016 and 2018, the State Department sent approximately $342,000 directly to An-Najah to address “the mismatch between the skills of Palestinian university graduates and the needs of the private sector,” federal records show.

The State Department partnered with An-Najah on an online course initiative in 2024, the school said in March.

The State Department’s other grants to An-Najah were for sanitation and waste initiatives, American symposiums and touted library donations, according to financial disclosures. Meanwhile, USAID grants to the school from 2013 to 2015 totaled $1.2 million and were routed through America-Mideast Educational and Training Services in Washington, D.C., according to records.

The nonprofit group, also known as Amideast, hosted an English-language conference with An-Najah in 2023. According to Amideast, Amideast and An-Najah have collaborated on other projects in recent years, such as a USAID-affiliated education program with the Open Society Foundations, a progressive grant-making network funded by Democratic mega-donor George Soros.

Amideast did not respond to a request for comment.

For Iftah Burman, a geopolitical expert at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, investing in Palestinian universities only makes sense if funding can be regulated and “on-the-ground academic operations” benefit U.S. interests

“Otherwise, this funding will simply free up additional budget resources that can be redirected to supporting extremist student foundations that promote Islamist ideology in a separatist Arab world,” Burman said. “If October 7 taught us anything, it is that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, if left unchecked, will do everything they can to radicalize the hearts and minds of young people – especially in universities.”

After the October 7 Hamas attack, long-standing U.S. funding flows to the Palestinian territories came under scrutiny and in some cases were halted due to Hamas ties. Members of Congress have raised concerns about U.S. funding of Al-Quds Open University, a Gaza-based school that compared the Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on Oct. 7 to “righteous martyrs.” In addition, lawmakers have launched investigations into the Biden-Harris administration over its funding of a separate Gaza-based group accused of, for example, “collaborating” and “supporting” terrorists.

“Peak of arrogance”

In any case, An-Najah should be prevented from receiving U.S. funding, according to Gerald Steinberg, a politics professor at Bar-Ilhan who runs the monitoring group NGO Monitor.

His organization found that An-Najah hosted an event in 2018 where course instructors and students were behind terrorist attacks. One of the students present was Wael Hijazi Abu Shahadem, who was reportedly involved in planning a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 2002 that killed six people. Yasser Abu Bakr, one of the instructors, was responsible for a terrorist attack in 2002 that killed a nine-month-old baby. Israel Hayom reported.

NGO Monitor also noted that Yousef Abdel-Haq, identified in a 2014 Al Jazeera report as a professor at An-Najah, was also described by Arab news sources as the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Abdel-Haq was previously a board member of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which saw one of its recent fundraising efforts for the Gaza Strip cut by payment processors over a month Washington Examiner Report on his ties to the terrorist group PFLP.

The UAWC, an Israeli-designated terrorist group, was identified as the “agricultural arm” of the PFLP in a 1993 report prepared for USAID by Middle East expert Glenn Robinson. An-Najah and the UAWC have a long history of working together on climate-related initiatives, including with a Palestinian coalition that included many PFLP-affiliated members.

“Any institution that contributes to terrorism and incitement should automatically be blocked from receiving taxpayer funds,” said Steinberg, the president of NGO Monitor Washington Examiner.

Victoria Coates, the former White House deputy national security adviser for Middle East and North African affairs from 2019 to 2020, said she was unaware of federal funding for An-Najah. For Coates, support needs to be cut – and that should have happened years ago.

“This happened without any political control from the Trump administration,” said Coates, now a member of the Heritage Foundation Washington Examiner. “We need to pass a ban on this type of spending. It is the height of arrogance for the United States to believe that it can effectively funnel funds through such an institution in Hamas-controlled territory.”

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“The desire to contribute to Palestinian higher education is understandable and laudable,” Coates added, “but we do not have the expertise or granularity to do so.”

The State Department, USAID and Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.