You Won’t Believe These Charities are Supporting Extremists

The Hot Zone With Chuck Holton, September 5, 2024

The Hot Zone With Chuck Holton, September 5, 2024

“I think it’s very important that, if you’re going to give to a charity, that you give to something that you know. Give to your church. Give to a local charity, where you know what they’re doing with the money.”

CHUCK HOLTON: Chuck Holton here, coming to you from the airport lounge in Newark, New Jersey. I just have a little bit, before I have to go catch my plane.

I’ve been doing some research. […] Follow the money. If you follow the money, you’ll find out things that will blow your mind.

Especially if you start to follow your own money, and see where your own money goes, and what it goes to support.

I was so disgusted by what I found when I was researching the video I did the other night, about how U.S. taxpayer dollars are going to support militancy and extremism in almost all of the enemies of Israel.

[1:03]

So, we’re giving $3.6 billion a year to Israel, to help them fight this war. But we’re also giving money to all the people they’re fighting. Essentially ensuring that we will have nonstop war, forever, over there.

Because when you’re funding both sides, there’s no reason for either side to quit fighting. That would kill the golden goose. […]

I was so disgusted by that. If you want to watch that one, you can […] get up to speed.

But going down that rabbit hole has made it worse, for me.

Because now I’m completely blown away by the ridiculous […] ways that we choose to give our money, that ends up supporting extremism — and we don’t even know it!

I’ll explain what got me started on this in a minute. […]

[3:00]

So let’s talk about some of the ways I have found that charities and NGOs have been shown to have links to extremist organizations.

I’m trying to avoid using the word “terrorist” because if I use that too much, in one of these videos, it gets demonetized. So I’m just going to use “militants” or “extremists,” but you’ll know what I’m talking about.

[3:30]

As I went searching for charities that have possible, or proven, links to these extremist organizations, virtually every single one that I found was linked in some way to the Palestinian cause.

This is pretty amazing.

I have, in the past, followed the money and found very strong links from U.S. taxpayer money going to — or U.S. charity money, just individuals giving money to charities — going to environmental extremist organizations. These are the guys who go out and set housing developments on fire, that are under construction. Or chain themselves to trees, or spike trees so that they’ll harm loggers that come to cut down the trees.

[4:23]

I’ve found very strong, provable links between charities like the Sierra Club and these violent extremist organizations that have to do with environmentalism.

I also found ways that these extremist organizations were able to write themselves grants from the U.S. government and get U.S. taxpayer money given to them under these things called “environmental justice” grants.

This is pervasive, throughout our society and throughout our government. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are other charities, that have to do with other causes — that we probably should not be supporting — who have figured out ways to game the system and are taking advantage of American goodwill to support causes that Americans definitely would not want to support, by and large.

[5:30]

Americans are the most charitable people group on planet earth. Bar none. By an order of magnitude. Especially American Christian conservatives give more money, volunteer more time, even give more blood than any other group of people on planet earth.

That has been proven. There’s a very good book about it, called Who Really Cares? And it was written by a Stanford professor who set out to prove that Democrats care more about the poor and the needy than conservatives do.

And he ended up proving exactly the opposite.

And proved it so convincingly that he, himself, became a conservative because of that. It’s a very good book, I highly recommend you read it.

[6:24]

Let’s talk about some of the ways that different charities are using money that is supposed to go to help children, for example, and using it to actually support extremist activity that is highly threatening to our allies, especially in Israel.

Here’s five, just off the top of my list, here.

The Defence for Children International is an organization … they work in various countries but specifically their arm called the DCIP, the Defence for Children International Palestine, has been accused of being operated for the benefit of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine. PFLP. Which is a known terror organization.

[7:28]

They’re raising money ostensibly to “defend the children,” and if you look on their website, there are all these poor children. And they are giving the money to the people who are making those children have to live in the environment they live in.

How about this one — Union of Agricultural Work Committees. That doesn’t sound too bad. Actually it sounds very communist to me. […] They say they provide agricultural services to the Palestinians. Well, no, they just give their money to the PFLP.

Because of that, they themselves, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, has been designated as a [terrorist] organization by the Israeli government. Because of its connections there.

[8:21]

There’s another one, called Al-Haq. Which is a human rights organization that is also a designated [terrorist] entity, by Israel. And more allegations of facilitating PFLP activities and employing individuals with ties to other groups like Hamas.

Addameer is an Islamic advocacy group, specifically focusing on advocating for prisoners, but they have also been implicated in recruiting for various militant and extremist organizations inside the West Bank, Gaza, places like that.

[9:12]

And one other one — and again, they use women and children as their weapons. The Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, UPWC. Again, linked to the PFLP, Hamas, accused of providing funding to those groups, and employing individuals from those groups.

Those are just five that I found in a quick search, just looking for groups that have connections. […]

Now, all of these groups have one thing in common — they are very highly left-leaning politically. They’re all kind of lumped in with groups that are pushing for socialism, communism.

One of the things you’ll find, no matter where you go in the world, is that any time you get around socialists, they’re going to be involved in really shady things like this. Socialism is about imposing lowest-common-denominator mediocrity on the world.

[10:35]

And they don’t believe in doing it through the democratic process. Especially in the United States. They believe in achieving it through force, and through coercion, and through underhanded dealings. You can go read their own literature. Rules for Radicals, things like that, and you’ll see.

They want to weaponize the goodwill of people against them.

And this is how they do it. They use women, they use children: “oh, help the children, give to the Defence for Children International!” Well, guess what? The Defence for Children International is actually funding Hamas, and PFLP, and PIJ, and those guys.

[11:29]

All of them are very, very far left-wing. This is why you see the hard left in the United States supporting Palestinian organizations. These guys are all birds of a feather.

The reason why every time I go to a protest, you don’t just see, if it’s a pro-Palestinian protest, you don’t just see people there protesting for Palestine! You see them protesting for LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, anti-gun, feminism, socialism, straight up. Because all of these groups are connected. All very highly left-wing affiliated groups.

Now, this is where it starts to get interesting.

[12:22]

These five groups I just gave you are being funded not just by donations from individuals — which you can’t really say much about. If somebody wants to give their money to a group like that, I don’t necessarily think we should stop them.

But obviously many people who give to those things give out of the generosity of their hearts, because they want to help the children. And they don’t realize that that money is actually being siphoned off and given to these extremist organizations.

[12:53]

But, on top of the individual donations they get, these [organizations] get millions of dollars given to them by UN bodies, including bodies like UNICEF.

You’ve probably heard about UNICEF, right? I remember, when I was in the military, we used to be encouraged very strongly to give to UNICEF: The United Nations’ International Children’s Emergency Fund.

Well, that sounds like a good thing to give to. […]

How many of you, when you gave to them, had no idea that the UN at the beginning of UNICEF, was for the United Nations? […]

When I was a surgeon in the Army, and I was being encouraged to give money to UNICEF every month, I didn’t realize UNICEF was part of the United Nations. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to give to them, if I did.

[14:08]

So, you go to their official website, and it’s UNICEF: It’s got a picture on the front of a poor girl, and smiling children. “Choose children over politics,” that’s their motto. “Help children now,” it says. […]

UNICEF gets — oh my. I didn’t realize it was so much. UNICEF’s budget from 2022 to 2025 is $31.9 billion. Almost thirty-two BILLION dollars! About ten billion dollars a year, given to them, by people like you! And me!

[15:36]

This is absolutely mind boggling. Because when you start looking at how UNICEF spends its money — guess what? Some of it goes to Defence for Children International in Palestine! That group I was just telling you about.

Not only that, UNESCO, their human rights fund, gives money to DCIP.

The United Nations organizations — UNICEF, UNESCO, these sound like good things we should be helping, we should be giving to them.

And now we’re finding that they are giving our money, the money that was donated to them — and the money that gets given to them by the U.S. taxpayer, because it’s a public-private partnership, they get both — some of that money, at least, is going to support extremist organizations!

[16:44]

Now, there’s also a joint funding mechanism, called the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat, which gets contributions from Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland. And they’ve provided substantial funding to DCIP, and have supported other NGOs like that with similar missions.

You wonder why Norway, for example, decided to recognize Palestine as a state? Well, they’ve been giving money to these organizations for a long time.

They’re much further to the left than the average conservative American would be.

Norway, Finland, countries like that, they’re WAY farther down the road toward outright socialism than we are in the United States. And a lot of people in the United States, on the left, cite countries like Norway, Finland, Denmark, and say we need to be more like them. Sweden. […]

No, maybe we don’t need to be more like them.

[17:56]

They also support the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement. If you’re not familiar with that, BDS is a worldwide movement to try to get everybody to stop buying anything from Israel, and to sanction Israel. To basically just choke them off economically.

And there are a lot of companies in the U.S. that are part of the BDS movement. There are a lot of colleges that have joined the BDS movement. And there’s been also some pushback on that.

[18:36]

I was there in Israel when the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, came to Jerusalem and signed a treaty with Israel to forbid his state, Maryland, from employing anything that had to do with the BDS movement, and to strengthen their economic ties with Israel. So there are others who are going against that.

Guess who else supports some of these charities that are funding extremist organizations? The European Union is giving them money. Various other European governments are giving them money. Sweden, Spain, countries like that.

[19:18]

They’re often allocated to projects that are supposed to protect children’s rights and address humanitarian needs. But as we’ve seen in spades, in Gaza, those organizations that are ostensibly there to provide humanitarian support end up getting co-opted by Hamas. And Hamas steals the aid that is brought in for the people, then sells it to the people, and uses the money to support their operations.

[19:48]

And they’ve been doing that for a long, long time.

There are other NGOs like this, that have been implicated, with ties to — this is just five that I found in a quick search. But the Bisan Center for Research and Development, some of the larger Muslim charities in the world are — let me see if I have a list of those.

Islamic Relief USA, one of the major Muslim-American charities, which is focused on issues like homelessness, poverty and hunger, apparently — and supporting Hamas.

[20:40]

The Zakat Foundation of America — these are Muslim charities specifically. Muslim Aid U.S.A. A lot of these are very specifically raising money, and then giving that money to countries and causes that we would absolutely be one hundred percent against, here in the United States.

But they’re raising money in the United States!

And so, whenever you hear this, “Help the children, help the children!” Well, you need to do a bit more research than that. And really drill down on this stuff to figure out if you’re giving money to support something you disagree with.

[21:29]

Going back to when I was in the military, just to tell you my story. When you’re in the military, they come through every year and they push this thing called the Combined Federal Campaign on folks in the military. So, every military member is encouraged to donate to the Combined Federal Campaign.

They take the money right out of your paycheck, it comes out before you see your pay. Super easy. And they say this is a great way to give to charity. There are over 4,000 charities you can choose from.

You can imagine, you’re a 19, 20-year-old kid, and you’re in the military.

Here’s how it works. In theory, this is not obligatory at all. It’s not compulsory. It’s something that they offer to you, that if you’d like to give to charity, make it easy on yourself, have it taken out of your paycheck.

And you can give to any of these 4,000 charities that you deem fit.

In practice, it doesn’t really work that way. Because what happens is, the battalion commander says, in a meeting with all the company commanders: Alright, look. This will look good on your performance report if you have a high rate of participation in the CFC.

[23:00]

And so the company commanders go back to their platoon commanders and they say: You had better get all of your people giving to the CFC!

The platoon commanders then go to the squad leaders and the platoon sergeants, and say: I want every man in the platoon signed up for the CFC, and this better happen, it’s coming straight from the top.

This is how it works in the military.

[23:29]

Something that starts out as a suggestion, at the battalion or regimental level, ends up being an absolute, iron-clad, compulsory, mandatory thing when it gets down to the privates, at the bottom.

That’s just how it works.

I’m sure that the regimental commander did not mean it to be compulsory. He just, when he suggested he’d really like to see a high rate of participation in this, by the time it gets down to the Joes on the front lines: Man, you’re gonna do this.

Hooah!

[24:11]

You’d better make it happen.

And so we did. […]

And you have 4,000 choices. You don’t know which one to choose. And they give you a list. […] They listed them from the most popular to the least popular.

Well, guess what was at the very top?

The most popular one was UNICEF! Give to the children!

And so you go, ok, fine, whatever, twenty bucks a month? Just check that off! Give to the children? That sounds good, I can feel good about that, one less thing I have to worry about.

And so everybody does it. And that money is going from the Combined Federal Campaign, they’re giving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars every year. […]

[25:38]

Military personnel last year gave $70.1 million to the Combined Federal Campaign.

Now, not all of that money is going to UNICEF. And not all of UNICEF’s money is going to support extremism. But some portion of it is.

But here’s the thing that really makes me upset about that. If you go look at those lists of these Muslim charities, the biggest Muslim charities out there are Islamic Relief USA and Zakat Foundation of America. Both of those are on the list! You can give to those if you want.

Guess what’s not on the CFC list?

Samaritan’s Purse. CBN’s Operation Blessing. Not there!

They’re not on that list, because apparently they don’t qualify.

[26:40]

So, if you want to give to Samaritan’s Purse, Billy Graham’s association, you can’t do that through CFC.

But you can give to Islamic Relief USA, which, part of its money is definitely going to support extremism!

Now, if that doesn’t make your head explode, I don’t know what will.

We can continue down this rabbit hole and find more, and more, and more.

[27:11]

And this one of the reasons why I think it’s very important that, if you’re going to give to a charity, that you give to something that you know. Give to your church. Give to a local charity, where you know what they’re doing with the money.

This is why I think people love to help people through The Hot Zone. Because if I’m somewhere and I find a single mother that just lost her home, and I do and interview with her, and you say: I want to help that woman!

You can donate money to The Hot Zone, and I’ll go give her the money, and show you what we did with it!

And that way you can have a direct impact. You’re not funding some CEO’s $900 million a year salary, or anything like that. You’re giving directly, through the magic of the internet, to people who need it most.

[28:17]

There are websites out there, like Charity Navigator, that will help you figure out what the overhead is. Because some of these charities have massive overhead. Some of them spend almost all their money — almost all the money you give to them, they put out to try to raise more money.

So — one of the reasons I don’t belong to the American Legion, for example, is that the American Legion spends an unbelievable percentage of the donations it gets just raising more donations. Sending out mailers, spamming the heck out of everybody.

If I’m giving money to this organization, I don’t want you spending my money sending me mailers trying to get more money!

I want you spending my money on things that actually help people. […]

[29:16]

One of the reasons I like Operation Blessing, for example, is because if you look on Charity Navigator, they have one of the lowest overheads of any charity out there. It’s like 0.7 percent.

Whereas the U.S. government, their overhead is about 40 percent. Meaning for every dollar they bring in, in taxes, only 60 cents of it actually gets out to any program. […]

###