One way the groups stay ahead of authorities is by shifting operations to newer organizations.
By David Isaac, JNS
The Hamas terror organization has managed to increase its fundraising efforts in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom since its terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, according to four reports that the European Leadership Network released this month.
The reports from ELNET, which convenes leaders to foster close relations between Europe and Israel, focus on the activities of Hamas-affiliated fundraising groups in the five countries.
“In all four reports, we have seen increasing levels of operations since Oct. 7,” Daniel Shadmy, an ELNET spokesman, told JNS.
The reports identify some 30 organizations, which operate under “civil fronts,” including nonprofits and lobbying groups, and people affiliated with Hamas who work in Europe.
Hamas’s funding operations are more deeply rooted in the United Kingdom and Germany than in the other countries upon which the report focuses. That makes them “harder to dismantle” in the two countries, according to Shadmy.
Hamas-affiliated groups operate relatively unscathed in Europe, despite European governments and the European Union designating Hamas a terror organization.
One way the groups stay ahead of authorities is by shifting operations to newer organizations, per the ELNET reports.
“One of the key findings of the report is that the Hamas-affiliated network has shut down three older, pan-European organizations, possibly in response to formal designations, and moved their operations to three newer organizations,” Shadmy told JNS.
“The ‘replacement organizations’ were established and are led in whole or in part by the same six individuals who led the initially dissolved groups,” per the reports, which name the six as Adel Abdallah Doghman, Mohammad Hannoun, Majed Al-Zeer, Amin Abou Rashed, Zaher Birawi and Mazen Kahel.
The organizations that make up the “new” circle include the Palestinians in Europe Conference, the European Palestinian Council for Political Relations and the European Palestinians Initiative for National Action.
There is the European failure to enforce penalties on those associated with the terror group, per the reports.
“There is a gap between the sanctions or designations in place and the willingness or operational capability of European governments or the E.U. institutions to enforce them, which leads to this situation,” Shadmy told JNS.
Many of the organizations that ELNET identified are not officially registered, “raising concerns about their transparency, activities and true objectives in Europe,” per the reports.
Some of those activities include lobbying E.U. officials, delivering material support to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, influencing the public via media relations and “legitimizing Hamas-affiliated actors to European policymakers without disclosing their Hamas ties,” the reports state.
ELNET calls on European governments to investigate and shut down the Hamas-affiliated organizations and asks banks and financial institutions to monitor the Hamas-affiliated individuals mentioned in the reports and review their financial activity.
ELNET also hopes that its reports will be a resource for research institutions and think tanks to expose publicly Hamas’s European fundraising.