Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) on Friday formally petitioned the IRS to investigate the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)—a “virulently antisemitic” activist group that released maggots into Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hotel room last year—for potential violations of the U.S. tax code, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Cotton, chair of the Senate Republican Conference, wrote in a letter to acting IRS commissioner Scott Bessent that the PYM has flouted U.S. law by receiving tax-exempt donations through a third-party nonprofit called Honor the Earth.
“PYM receives funding from Honor the Earth, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization,” Cotton wrote. “PYM’s website states, ‘We also accept checks payable to ‘Honor the Earth’’ and says U.S.-based donations are tax deductible. I believe PYM’s activities, particularly its support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas, should prevent it from receiving tax exempt donations.”
The activist group, the senator alleged, “is clearly operating outside of the acceptable scope of activities” permitted under U.S. tax code, “as is Honor the Earth by sending funds to PYM.” Consequently, Cotton contended, the IRS must immediately probe the PYM’s “funding sources for violations.”
The PYM has been under the congressional microscope for more than a year, owing to its role as one of the most prominent organizations spearheading the pro-Hamas movement on college campuses across the country. The group took credit for releasing a horde of maggots and other insects inside the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., during Netanyahu’s July 2024 stay.
The organization posted a video of bugs crawling across a table adorned with U.S. and Israeli flags on Instagram with the caption, “BON APPETIT!! MAGGOTS REPORTEDLY RELEASED ON THE CRIMINAL ZIONIST’S WAR TABLE!”
The stunt led Reps. James Comer (R., Ky.) and Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) to request that Biden administration Treasury secretary Janet Yellen investigate the PYM and 20 other anti-Israel organizations for suspected links to money laundering and terrorism financing, as the Free Beacon first reported.
The lawmakers noted at the time that the group’s primary financial support came from the Westchester Peace Action Committee (WESPAC) Foundation, which bankrolled numerous anti-Israel groups before a number of lawsuits exposed the nonprofit as a chief underwriter of the nationwide campus protest movement.
The PYM—which the Israeli government has accused of maintaining “close ties” with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group—directed its donations through the WESPAC until May 2024, when both groups were named in a lawsuit for blockading Washington, D.C., traffic during an anti-Israel demonstration.
As legal pressure mounted on the WESPAC, the PYM “began soliciting donations via Honor the Earth, an ‘Indigenous-led organization fighting to dismantle settler-colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism,'” according to a report from watchdog group NGO Monitor.
Cotton highlighted this relationship in his letter to the IRS, noting “it is the PYM’s receipt of tax exempt donations that likely violates U.S. law.”
“An organization that supports terrorism, breaks U.S. law, and sows antisemitic discord should not receive any benefits from the American tax system,” Cotton wrote. “I ask you to immediately investigate both PYM and Honor the Earth and to take any actions necessary to remedy this situation.”
Honor the Earth has not been without scrutiny, either. The group’s cofounder, Winona LaDuke, acknowledged in 2021 that an Honor the Earth community organizer named Michael Dahl “probably” had sex with a Native American minor during his time as a camp counselor but that LaDuke was “not to judge,” the Free Beacon reported at the time.
LaDuke ultimately resigned after a judge ordered Honor the Earth to pay $750,000 to a subordinate who alleged Dahl had sexually harassed her and accused the group’s leadership of attempting to cover it up. Honor the Earth then replaced LaDuke as executive director with a woman named Krystal Two Bulls.
Cotton sent a copy of the letter to FBI director Kash Patel, who could authorize a parallel investigation into the PYM’s “public statements in support of terrorist groups, and activities and support for anti-Israel protests in America.”
In addition to maintaining alleged ties to the PFLP, the PYM is also closely aligned with Students for Justice in Palestine, the campus organization with student leaders across the country who harass their Jewish classmates and call for “intifada” against Jews and Americans writ large.
The PYM has also organized “events with the U.S. designated terrorist entity Samidoun,” a front for the PFLP, Cotton wrote in his letter.
The organization issued a statement two days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror spree in which its leadership praised the violence.
“On October 7th, Gaza broke free,” the PYM’s statement read. “Palestinians in Gaza crossed the illegitimate border fence and reentered 1948 lands for the first time in many of our lifetimes. Since that time, we have witnessed resistance efforts and protests spread to all of historic Palestine, including the West Bank … We have a right to resist on our own land. May the memory of our martyrs continue to guide us on the steadfast path to liberation.”
The senator separately petitioned the IRS in August to investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations for violations of its tax-exempt status, citing the group’s “ties to terrorist organizations, including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood” and its leader’s celebration of the Oct. 7 massacres.
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