Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are raising tens of millions of dollars through crowdsourcing campaigns disguised as humanitarian efforts as well as traditional, honor-based "hawala" shadow-banking, according to Israeli officials.
War costs a lot of money, and terrorist groups are working hard to raise it wherever they can as they continue to fight the IDF.
According to an article by Israeli economic paper Calcalist, the money they are raising, aside from state sponsors such as Iran, comes increasingly from two sources: crowdfunding on various sites including social media sites like TikTok, and the honor-based money exchange system common throughout the Middle East and southern Asia known as "Hawala."
The man in charge of stopping terror funding at the National Headquarters for Economic Warfare against Terrorism stated in a webinar attended by Calcalist that it's difficult to stop such campaigns and show that the money is headed for terrorism and not actually meant for humanitarian aid.
According to another official speaking at the webinar, Israel has three main ways to shut down crowdfunding efforts known or suspected to be fronts for terrorist groups: appealing to law enforcement to shut down or block the payment means or cards, exposing the true nature of the campaign to hosting sites and financial bodies so they voluntarily shut it down, or proposing that countries take the money themselves and buy what's needed in kind, so that actual humanitarian equipment gets sent rather than fungible cash.
Hawala Shadow Banking, Not Crypto, Is the Big Driver of Terror Funding
Another speaker at the webinar said that a major source of terror funding is a traditional and unofficial, honor-based system of money exchange and remittances used by workers and people around the southern Eastern Hemisphere known as Hawala.
Since terrorists of all kinds prefer cash above all else, especially dollars, cryptocoins and the like are actually of limited value, and the Hawala system that readily makes cash available is far preferable to them.
Unlike fundraising and social media, Calcalist did not mention if there was any way to meaningfully disrupt this method of funding terrorism.
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