Part III ended with the financial infrastructure supporting the organizations that move among Palestine activism, surveillance, labor, climate, antiwar campaigns, and data centers. Many of these groups aren’t temporary protest organizations. They have professional staff, national coalitions, fiscal sponsors and philanthropic support that allow them to remain active as individual campaigns come and go.
Following that money upstream reveals several financial systems operating alongside one another. Major American foundations finance long-term organizing capacity, donor-advised funds and fiscal sponsors move money through additional institutional layers, and federal terrorism-financing cases document separate networks tied to Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The trail reaches back decades.
I’m on a mission as a “history activist” to document Jewish history before it’s rewritten, distorted, or erased. Equally, I’m on a mission to uncover the truth. Every paid subscription helps fund the research behind these essays and enables me to continue this work full-time. For $75 a year (just 21¢ a day), you’re doing more than supporting a writer. You’re helping preserve the Jewish story.
In November 2008, a federal jury convicted the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its leaders of providing material support to Hamas. The Justice Department said the defendants provided approximately $12.4 million in support through organizations operating in the Palestinian territories.
The prosecution also exposed a broader American network. According to the Justice Department, the Muslim Brotherhood created a Palestine Committee in the United States to support Hamas, with Holy Land Foundation serving as its principal fundraising arm. Federal evidence described an infrastructure that included fundraising, organizations, conferences, publications, political advocacy, and relationships among activists operating in the United States.
The structure presented in the case looked something like this:
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
↓
U.S. PALESTINE COMMITTEE
↓
ORGANIZATIONS + FUNDRAISING + ADVOCACY
↓
HOLY LAND FOUNDATION
↓
HAMAS-LINKED INSTITUTIONS
↓
FEDERAL PROSECUTION
↓
2008 CONVICTIONS
The Fifth Circuit upheld the convictions and sentences in 2011. The appellate record described surveillance, searches, financial evidence and relationships connecting defendants with Hamas figures and organizations receiving Holy Land Foundation money.
That case established one historical layer of American Palestine-support infrastructure tied through federal evidence to Hamas financing and Muslim Brotherhood organizing. The organizations operating today developed later through newer charitable, political and activist structures.
Palestine organizing in the United States continued through charitable organizations, political groups, campus networks and activist projects. American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) became one of the most prominent, operating its charitable activities through AJP Educational Foundation and describing its work as educating and mobilizing Muslim Americans and allies around Palestine.
Its founder and national chairman, Hatem Bazian, has spent decades building Palestine-oriented academic and activist institutions. AMP has also supported campus activism involving Students for Justice in Palestine and Muslim Student Associations, extending the movement into universities across the country.
A separate 501(c)(4), AJP Action, expanded the political side of that infrastructure. AJP Action says it was created to build upon years of Capitol Hill advocacy by adding lobbying and political activity outside the limitations of the charitable structure.
The result was a movement operating through several institutional lanes:
AJP EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION
↓
AMERICAN MUSLIMS FOR PALESTINE
↓
EDUCATION + GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING
alongside:
AJP ACTION
↓
LOBBYING + POLITICAL ADVOCACY
Campus organizing added another layer.
Students for Justice in Palestine created organizing hubs at universities across the country, giving national organizations a place to provide political education, campaign support and activist training. The Palestinian Youth Movement describes doing exactly that, reporting more than 20 trainings and workshops for SJP chapters as well as support for national skill-share retreats and conferences.
PYM’s Michigan chapter helped organize the first Midwest SJP conference in Dearborn in 2019, while other chapters developed student workshops and organizing materials around subjects including surveillance. The result was a network capable of moving people, political frameworks and organizing tactics between individual campuses and national movements.
PYM also built relationships outside traditional Palestine activism. Its Indigenous youth delegation to Palestine framed Palestinian and Indigenous struggles around land, water, environmental destruction and settler colonialism, placing Palestine inside some of the same political frameworks later found in climate and infrastructure campaigns.
The financial structure supporting some of that organizing adds another layer to the network.
An activist project doesn’t need its own independent 501(c)(3) to receive tax-deductible donations. An established nonprofit can serve as its fiscal sponsor, receiving grants and donations while providing payroll, tax reporting and other administrative services.
That arrangement makes financial tracing more complicated because the organization appearing publicly in a campaign can be different from the legal entity appearing in IRS records. The Palestinian Youth Movement provides a clear example: its fundraising materials instructed supporters making tax-deductible donations to send them through WESPAC Foundation, including checks made payable to WESPAC with PYM identified in the memo line.
A 2026 federal court opinion also discussed the WESPAC-PYM relationship while declining to treat the organizations as alter egos for jurisdictional purposes. The donation arrangement itself appeared in the record.
The financial route can therefore look like this:
DONOR
↓
WESPAC FOUNDATION
↓
PALESTINIAN YOUTH MOVEMENT
↓
ORGANIZING + CAMPAIGNS
Some tax records make the route even clearer.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.