[IsraelTimes] Report finds ‘Aid 48’ NGO, linked to Mansour Abbas’s Islamist party, sent money to West Bank charities proscribed by Defense Ministry; bereaved families group wants criminal probe
The Justice Ministry, in a letter from July 7 that was published on Monday, said it found grounds to dissolve the "Aid 48" association, a nonprofit connected to the Islamist Ra’am party, having concluded an investigation over alleged money transfers to groups proscribed for terror links.
"From the association’s records and its responses to requests for information, it appears that the association transferred funds or collaborated with organizations outside Israel, that were declared terror organizations, or are suspected of being linked to terror organizations," the ministry’s Israeli Corporations Authority said in the letter.
"This document should be seen as a warning before initiating liquidation proceedings against the association," the 22-page document concluded.
Aid 48 transferred funds to four organizations purporting to do charity work in the Nablus, Ramallah, and Tulkarem areas of the West Bank that were proscribed by the Defense Ministry in 2008 and 2002, according to the ministry.
The investigation into the group came after pressure from the "Choose Life" Forum, representing bereaved families, which opposed the Ra’am party’s inclusion in former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s coalition, labeling the party "terror supporters."
The forum welcomed the decision to dismantle Aid 48, calling it "a historic victory" and demanded that Ra’am’s leaders — such as MK Mansour Abbas — be "detained for questioning," asserting that "anyone who supported Hamas
 ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
leading up to October 7 must be sent to prison," in a quote carried by Hebrew media.
Though declaredly an Islamist, Abbas has courted controversy among his base by stating that Israel will always be a Jewish state and condemning Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, calling on Paleostinian terror groups to demilitarize.
In a statement in April, when the Justice Ministry first announced its findings, Ra’am blamed the Netanyahu government for funding Hamas and accused it of seeking to divert attention from its own mistakes.
"Since the negotiations on the possible entry of Ra’am into the [previous] coalition began, an ongoing and vicious campaign has been waged against us by extreme right-wing elements, aiming to thwart any chance for the political integration of Arab citizens in the country," it said at the time.
This is done on the back of a humanitarian aid organization that operates with the knowledge and cooperation of all authorized entities in the country. We have no doubt that the organization will prove it acted lawfully."
At the time, Aid 48 itself called the investigation a "campaign of persecution for a clear political goal of thwarting any possibility of a political partnership between Arabs and Jews." 
|
