UK probes Hamas-linked and pro-Israel charities

The United Kingdom government body in charge of registered charities last week escalated its investigation of a group allegedly tied to Hamas, and began probing eight pro-Israel groups said to have collected money for Israelis in Judea and Samaria.

The Muslim group being investigated by the Charity Commission is the Al-Khair Foundation, following a complaint filed last month by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), that group said. The pro-Israel groups that have reportedly come under investigation were not named.

The Al-Khair Foundation said in a statement that it was cooperating with the Charity Commission and adheres to “all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.” The Commission began looking into Al-Khair last month and announced a full investigation last week.

Al-Khair also said that it had reported to the Charity Commission before the inquiry’s launch the arrest of a person tied to Al-Khair, Mohammad Yousef Hasna. He’d worked with an organization funded by Al-Khair and was arrested in the United Kingdom in July. U.S. authorities have charged him with conspiring to provide material support to Hamas in Gaza.

In the statement, Al-Khair called the allegations against Hasna “serious” and added that he’d been employed by one of Al-Khair’s “implementing partners involved in delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

UKLFI flagged additional cases that it said tied Al-Khair to Hamas, including that of Adham Abu Salmiya. He was identified as director of marketing and Arab Relations for Al-Khair Foundation’s Turkey branch, according to UKLFI. Historical material found by UKLFI described Abu Salmiya as a “Hamas emergency services spokesman” and detailed his previous work for institutions operating under Hamas in Gaza.

Husam Mansour, who died in 2024, was a former Al-Khair Foundation director whom the IDF had identified as a platoon commander in Hamas’s Internal Security Forces and an operative in its military wing, said UKLFI.

Another case involved the March 2025 slaying of nine people in Gaza, eight of whom Al-Khair said were its workers, denying they were terrorists or connected to Hamas. The IDF identified six of those slain as Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives, including one alleged participant in the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, UKFLI noted.

In a report about the investigations into pro-Israel charities funding activities in Judea and Samaria, The Guardian quoted Stephen Roake, the U.K. Charity Commission’s assistant director of high-risk compliance, as saying that, “Serious allegations have been made about U.K. charities operating in illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine, so our first step is to establish the facts.”

According to The Guardian, the investigations follow the paper’s reporting last year on two U.K. charities that had transferred some £5.7 million ($7.68 million) to the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva high school in Susya in Samaria. The United Kingdom considers Israeli presence in Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan to be illegal.

The Charity Commission has no stated ban on charitable actions relevant to Israelis in those areas, but anti-Israel activists have been pushing for a ban, citing the requirement that the activity of U.K. charities be legal, according to British law.

The Charity Commission may issue warnings for entities it deems non-compliant, remove their trustees, or even freeze bank accounts of inquiry subjects.

© JNS