By: Adam Andrzejewski
As Israel fights a war against the terrorist group Hamas, the Biden administration has funded $100,000 for 200 adolescent Palestinian girls and young women to participate in weekly running and wellness sessions.
Federal funding records show that the U.S. Department of State awarded the funding in September for a roughly two-year initiative to Free to Run, a Connecticut-based nonprofit seeking “to increase the opportunities for women and girls to engage in public life, using sport as a tool of empowerment and education,” the Washington Examiner reported.
According to federal records, the program is being administered in the West Bank.
Lawmakers have protested the U.S. giving federal funding to Gaza and the West Bank after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attacks against Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and took more hostage, especially worrying that aid could end up in the hands of terrorists.
Free to Run founder and president Stephanie Case is chief of the refugee protection division for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, an agency that deals with Palestinian aid. For years, lawmakers and national security experts have scrutinized the group for sharing ties with Hamas and employing teachers who have celebrated terrorism against Jews, including after the Oct. 7 attack, The Washington Examiner reported.
The $100,000 from the State Department sent to Free to Run is not its first federal handout.
Last September, the State Department pledged $50,400 to the organization “to make powerful advances in the leadership skills through adventure sports (primarily running)” for 100 displaced young women in Iraq, according to federal spending records. And in April 2019, Trump's State Department awarded the charity $77,300 “to empower & educate 100 females between the ages of 15-25 in 2 regions and across 4 communities,” records show.
Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open The Books, said the latest Free to Run grant shows that Congress must go line-by-line and stop the government's “frivolous and stupid spending.”
“I'm signed up for my 10th Chicago Marathon and certainly understand the benefits of running,” Andrzejewski, an avid outdoorsman, told the Washington Examiner. “However, there's no public purpose for this six-figure grant being underwritten by the American taxpayer with every dime borrowed against our national debt.”
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