The Office of Palestinian Affairs is under fire for calling on Israel to halt its operations days after the Hamas evil attack.
Just hours after Hamas ‘ terror attack in the country that left 1,200 dead, the State Department’s Office of Palestinian Affairs ( OPA ), which was under the control of Congress, is calling for Israel to stand down and refrain from “retaliatory attacks.
A clause in the trillion-dollar spending package that was approved by President Joe Biden last month aims to restrict the common communication produced by the Office of Palestinian Affairs, a political body established by the Obama administration in 2022 and independent of the country’s president’s office, is included in the package‘s trillion-dollar spending package. When the political department was created,  , reviewers accused , the State Department of trying to undermine the Trump administration’s acknowledgment of Jerusalem as Israel’s entire investment.
The oversight , determine requires Secretary of State Antony Blinken to issue a report to Congress every 90 days on the Palestinian Affairs Office’s funding expenses, including its social media activity, “public politics programs”, and other activities administered by the company.
The Palestinian Affairs Office drew , outrage , in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel when it issued a tweet calling on Israel to stand down from any retaliatory strikes. We demand that all parties refrain from retaliation and violence. Terror and violence solve nothing”, the office wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Following a string of criticism from Republican lawmakers and pro-Israel advocates who claimed the Biden administration was abandoning Israel as it faced the worst terror attack in its history, the message was removed.
The State Department informed the Washington , Free Beacon at the time that the missive had been deleted because it “was not approved and does not represent U.S. policy.”
Sen. Ted Cruz ( R., Texas ), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated that lawmakers will be closely monitoring the office as the Biden administration presses Israel to end its long-running support for the Jewish state.
” I have called for every person who was responsible for writing and approving the OPA tweet to be fired,” Cruz told the Free Beacon.” That will have to wait for an administration that is n’t stacked with activists who hate Israel,” Cruz said. ” In the meantime, Republicans will have to keep expanding oversight over the Biden administration’s insanity”.
Cruz called for Israel to stand down in the opening minutes of October 7, while Hamas terrorists were carrying out large-scale atrocities against more than a thousand people, including dozens of Americans, according to Cruz.
A State Department spokesman confirmed to the Free Beacon that the oversight measure will follow the law when it was questioned about it.
” The Department of State and its offices, including OPA, fully comply with all legislative requirements enacted by Congress”, the spokesman said.
The Palestinian Affairs Office is in charge of distributing tax-funded projects to regional partners.
In October of last year, following Hamas’s attack, the , Free Beacon reported that the office awarded$ 160, 000 to a Palestinian university known to support Hamas and that praised the group’s militants as “martyrs”. The grant, issued to Al- Quds University, provided funding through 2024 to “disadvantaged students” and Palestinian entrepreneurs.
In May of last year, the Palestinian Affairs Office , administered , a$ 100, 000 taxpayer- funded grant program for Palestinian groups that “promote diversity, equity, inclusion”. Since the program was broadcast at a time when Palestinian terrorists were firing rockets at Israel, former U.S. officials called it” tone deaf.”
The State Department defended the funding initiative, saying that “our Office of Palestinian Affairs is focused on engagement with and outreach to Palestinians, including through cultural affairs grants.” Investing in people-to-people ties and civil society is a crucial component of diplomatic outreach and efforts to promote peace, and it is even more crucial in times of heightened tensions.
The Palestinian Affairs Office is just one cog in the State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs ( NEA ) Bureau, according to a senior congressional aide who works on State Department oversight issues.
The source, who was not authorized to speak on record, claimed that the Biden administration” stacked NEA with vicious career activists who make The Squad look pro-Israel.” They finance Hamas-pro-Israel organizations like UNRWA, and use their public platforms to spread Hamas-pro-Israel propaganda. Republicans defunded UNRWA, and they will continue to monitor what they are spreading widely, and if necessary, they will defund those organizations as well.
