Swallwell meets with Hamas-linked charities

Swallwell meets with Hamas-linked charities

House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., CA), who was the subject of a Chinese spy targeting operation during his early days in Congress, has met two times in the past nine months with a Hamas-linked charity that provides hundreds of millions of dollars annually to influence U.S. universities reports The Washington Free Beacon.

Swalwell along with four other House members paid a visit to the Qatar Foundation headquarters in April while on a four-day trip that was hosted by the US-Qatar Business Council, according to an itinerary of the junket. The delegation met with the emir of Qatar, government officials, and Qatar Foundation leaders to talk about business opportunities for Swalwell’s districts. The visit garnered attention when pictures of Swalwell and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.) surfaced featuring the two riding on camels shirtless in the Qatari desert. According to the report, Swalwell also visited Qatar Foundation headquarters with two other Democrats during a visit to Doha, the country’s capital, last October.

Swalwell’s discussions with the terror-linked charity raise other questions about his powerful position on House Intelligence Committee. Republicans demanded Swalwell be removed from his committee assignment last year after evidence of a 2015 affair with an alleged Chinese spy named Christine Fang surfaced. Fang assisted in raising money for Swalwell’s 2014 congressional campaign and allegedly planted an intern in his office.

The Qatar Foundation was established in 1995 by Qatar’s former emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. The foundation claims that its mission is to promote scientific research and educational advancement in the Middle East and across the globe. However, the institution was also the center of controversy recently due to its links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The foundation’s funding of satellite campuses for dozens of American universities has also faced scrutiny alleging that the foundation has infected college campuses to push its political agenda and downplay the Qatari royal family’s close ties to terrorist organizations.

The New York City-based Lawfare Project published a report last year showing that the Qatar Foundation’s “infiltration” of American schools has turned “school teachers into de facto agents of the Qatari government, conveying its political (and anti-Semitic) views to students and the general population without any acknowledgment of the origins of these views.”

The Qatar Foundation is registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent, has numerous links to terror groups as well as clerics who espoused anti-Semitic views. In 2009, they established an academic center named after Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a leading Muslim Brotherhood figure who said that Adolf Hitler “put [Jews] in their place,” in a 2009 speech according to the MEMRI.

Haya al-Nassr, one of the Qatar Foundation’s officials, gave an award to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh featuring a “victory shield” during a ceremony back in 2012 as the terror group barraged southern Israel with rocket attacks in May of that year. Professors at the foundation’s satellite campuses at Georgetown and Northwestern University called Israel an “apartheid” state.

The US-Qatar Business Council paid $19,000 for Swalwell and his wife’s travel, lodging, and meals, according to Congressional disclosures. Business Insider initially reported that Swalwell, Gallego, Reps. Sara Jacobs (D., Calif.), Lou Correa (D., Calif.), and Lisa McClain (R., Mich.) made joined him on the trip.

Back in February, Israel365 News reported that Swalwell referred to God as a woman.