A watchdog group has called on the U.S. State Department to reveal who in the Biden administration approved a $1 million grant program to delegitimize Israel.
A Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) by the America First Legal Foundation (AFLF) has asked for information about who is behind the program to be disclosed, along with who approved the grants and the names of groups applying for the funding, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The program – which was blasted by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) as a “disgrace” – sought to distribute closet o $1 million to organizations to investigate allegations of human rights abuses in Israel, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza.
The State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) project was criticized for serving to delegitimize Israel, and furthering the BDS movement, while claiming to “strengthen accountability and human rights in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza.”
The freedom of information request asked for all State Department records and internal communications involving the program.
The groups who receive the funding will be tasked with investigating alleged abuses inside Israel, Judea and Samaria and Gaza, and to document these allegations.
This would include the “documentation of legal or security sector violations and housing, land, and property rights” while also “[understanding and accessing] the forums and processes available to take meaningful action in pursuing truth, accountability, and memorialization; and/or provide psychosocial support to survivors of atrocities.”
"This debacle shows, yet again, that the people setting Middle East policy for the Biden administration simply hate Israel," Cruz told the Free Beacon. "They genuinely believe that Israel is like apartheid South Africa and that Israeli Jews should be boycotted. When they think of human rights abuses, they don't think Russia or China or Cuba, and they certainly don't think Iran; instead, their smears are reserved and hyper-focused on the world's only Jewish state."
According to the news outlet, the FOIA asked for all documents related to the program in order to identify the State Department officials who created the program and focused it on delegitimizing Israel.
The watchdog also wants to find out which groups have applied for the grant and to discover which Biden administration officials are in charge of selecting the groups.
"Public and non-public information indicates the Biden administration is taking extensive steps to provide material support for the Palestinian Authority and for Palestinian terrorism, working closely with non-governmental organizations and others building infrastructure, propaganda, and kinetic capabilities for use against Jews and Israelis," the FOIA states.