EXCLUSIVE — President Joe Biden’s White House National Security Council recently hosted the leader of a group with a track record of collaborating in Gaza with Hamas officials, the Washington Examiner confirmed.
The NSC held a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11 with Syrian-American community leaders, including Shadi Zaza, CEO of the Michigan-based organization Rahma Worldwide, according to the NSC and Rahma. Unearthed social media posts and Arabic news sources show Zaza and his group have a history of meeting and partnering with Hamas officials on aid initiatives — including just days before the Palestinian terrorist faction’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel in 2023.
“We have spoken at length about our condemnation of Hamas and the horrible atrocities they committed on Oct. 7,” an NSC spokesperson said.
Speaking to the Washington Examiner, the spokesperson insisted the NSC was not aware of Zaza’s ties to Hamas and that the meeting focused on countering Syria’s Assad regime rather than on Gaza matters.
Still, news of the meeting will likely further incense Republicans in Congress, who have faulted the Biden-Harris administration for, at times, platforming anti-Israel activists who have appeared to sympathize with Hamas and make derogatory comments about Jews. A Syrian-American community leader crafted the September guest list, which was approved by the Secret Service, a source familiar said.
The Secret Service did not return a request for comment.
But the NSC staffers who allowed someone “openly supporting a foreign terrorist organization like Hamas to enter the Eisenhower Executive Office Building are either grossly incompetent or fully support Hamas,” according to a senior GOP Senate aide who works on national security matters.
In August 2024, Rahma Vice President Adib Choiki signed a joint cooperation agreement with Majed Abu Ramadan of Hamas’s Health Ministry for a blood drive in Gaza, according to Palestinian media. It was hardly the first collaboration with Hamas officials.
Just days before Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 terrorist attack, Zaza and other Rahma staffers were pictured in Gaza for another aid initiative for low-income families with officials from the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Development, according to images and Palestinian reports. The meetings came around the same time that the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Health and Human Services granted almost $175,000 to Rahma for a vaccine program, federal spending records show.
Kuwait’s Islamic Heritage Revival Society, a terrorist group sanctioned by the U.S. government for funding al Qaeda, helped back the October 2023 Rahma-tied initiative, social media posts show. Attending one event in Gaza last October for the programming alongside Zaza was Hamas official Sami Barhoum.
The ties between Rahma and Hamas run deeper, according to Sam Westrop, director of the Middle East Forum think tank’s Islamist Watch project. Rahma “appears to be a key component of a Hamas-aligned network in the United States,” according to Westrop.
Rahma insisted in a statement to the Washington Examiner that it has “no affiliation with any political groups or militant factions.”
“Our involvement in Gaza focuses exclusively on humanitarian support while we abide by international standards of aid work, working through recognized channels to ensure the delivery of essential services,” a Rahma official said. “We refute any suggestion of our support for terror-related activities. Our mission is solely to aid the vulnerable and displaced.”
“Dr. Zaza’s visit to the [White House] is confidential,” continued the official for Rahma, a nonprofit group registered with the IRS.
Back in 2021, after signing an aid agreement with Hamas’s Health Ministry, Rahma’s CEO also met with senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad at the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development, according to a Facebook post unearthed by Westrop.
After the Oct. 7 attack, the Hamas official pledged more terrorist attacks “time and again until Israel is annihilated.”
“Everything we do is justified,” the Hamas official said in October of last year.
In a 2023 speech, Zaza disclosed Rahma’s work with Hamas’s “Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, the Ministry of Education, and the General Administration of Zakat” on university funding and other Gaza-based initiatives.
The event where Zaza made those remarks, a luxury hotel in Gaza City, was reported in 2011 to be located “next door” to a Hamas military training camp.
Rahma has also coordinated Palestinian aid efforts with Aid 48, a Turkish Hamas front group, according to Jewish News Syndicate.
“That Rahma officials are meeting and partnering with senior Hamas figures in the same week they receive government funding is appalling,” Westrop said. “The federal government is subsidizing terror.”
A source familiar said the September NSC meeting featured “working level staffers,” not White House leadership.
The HHS did not return a request for comment.
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To Marc Greendorfer, an attorney at the Zachor Legal Institute, Rahma could still open itself up to legal problems even if its collaboration with Hamas officials has been for non-terrorism-related activity.
“As such, they not only would be liable in criminal and civil litigation for providing material support to terror and aiding and abetting a foreign terror organization, they would be in violation of IRS 501(c)(3) rules and should have their tax-exempt status revoked,” Greendorfer said.