President Joe Biden’s National Security Council (NSC) hosted the head of Rahma Worldwide, a health nonprofit that has collaborated with Hamas on multiple occasions, the Washington Examiner reported.
The NSC met with Shadi Zaza, Rahma Worldwide’s CEO, and other Syrian-American community leaders on Sept. 11 in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to discuss how the U.S. can best counter the Assad regime in Syria, the Examiner reported. Zaza’s group, however, signed a cooperation agreement with Hamas in August, and Zaza himself was photographed alongside Hamas officials days before the terrorist organization carried out attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“We have spoken at length about our condemnation of Hamas and the horrible atrocities they committed on Oct. 7,” an NSC spokesperson told the Examiner, stressing that they were not aware of Rahma’s links to Hamas. The staffers who allowed an individual “openly supporting a foreign terrorist organization like Hamas to enter the Eisenhower Executive Office Building are either grossly incompetent or fully support Hamas,” an anonymous senior Republican Senate staffer who works on national security issues said to the Examiner.
White House leadership was not at the NSC meeting, which was run by “working-level staffers,” a source familiar told the Examiner.
Rahma signed an agreement with Hamas’ Gaza Health Ministry in August for a blood drive in Gaza, according to Palestinian media reviewed by the Examiner. The organization’s website shows that it has been highly active in Gaza, distributing food, hygienic goods and medical supplies to people in the region.
About a year prior, officials from the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Development were photographed alongside Rahma staffers and Zaza for an aid initiative targeting low-income families in Gaza, the Examiner reported. The meeting with Hamas officials happened at roughly the same time Rahma received approximately $175,000 through a Department of Health and Human Services subgrant to carry out a vaccine program, federal records show.
“That Rahma officials are meeting and partnering with senior Hamas figures in the same week they receive government funding is appalling,” Sam Westrop of the Middle East Forum told the Examiner. “The federal government is subsidizing terror.”
Boys watch smoke billowing during Israeli strikes east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 13, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by AFP)
Rahma, however, denies being linked to terrorism, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that “any suggestion of collaboration with political groups or militant factions is entirely false and misleading.”
“Rahma Worldwide is a strictly humanitarian organization that works in full compliance with international standards of humanitarian aid,” a Rahma official told the DCNF. “Our work in Gaza and elsewhere is focused solely on providing essential services, such as medical aid, food distribution, and support to vulnerable communities.”
The spokesperson stressed that Rahma “must coordinate with local governments and the security apparatus on the ground purely to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches those in need.”
Rahma has history of close proximity to Hamas, with Zaza meeting with Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official at the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development, in 2021, according to a social media post.
If the federal government determines that Rahma is actively working with Hamas, that could spell trouble for its tax-exempt status.
“As such, they not only would be liable in criminal and civil litigation for providing material support to terror and aiding and abetting a foreign terror organization, they would be in violation of IRS 501(c)(3) rules and should have their tax-exempt status revoked,” Zachor Legal Institute attorney Marc Greendorfer told the Examiner.
The White House and the NSC did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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