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House committee asks IRS to revoke tax-exempt status of anti-Israel groups that backed college protests

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) wrote to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel to share his panel’s findings on the “illegal activities” committed by the organizations, which had no discernible charitable purpose.

The law-breaking included the promotion of civil disobedience and in some cases may have involved fiscal sponsorship of foreign terror groups.

Two of the nonprofits — Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation (WESPAC) and the People’s Forum — were New York-based, while the other seven were headquartered in Virginia, Texas and California.

“American taxpayers are rightfully outraged by what has transpired on American college campuses this past year, and they are even more disgusted to learn their tax dollars have subsidized the groups organizing this illegal activity at home and potentially terrorist organizations overseas,” Smith told The Post in a statement.

“Tax-exempt status is a privilege, not a right, and in exchange, organizations must operate for stated exempt purposes,” the chairman said.

WESPAC was a fiscal sponsor of the most prominent groups backing anti-Israel protests and pro-terror tent encampments on US university and college campuses last spring, including National Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetime, US Palestinian Community Network and the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Those demonstrations led to “harassment and assault of Jewish students, trespassing, and property vandalism,” as well as “numerous arrests,” Smith’s letter on WESPAC notes.

Lawyers representing both American and Israeli victims of the Oct. 7 massacre sued National Students for Justice in Palestine last May for providing “material support” for terrorists through its “pro-Hamas propaganda.”

Nerdeen Kiwani, the leader of Within Our Lifetime, was one of 34 people arrested during a June protest that broke into the Brooklyn Museum and saw participants spray-paint antisemitic messages on the museum director’s home.

In addition to the other fiscal sponsors, the WESPAC network of anti-Israel groups have incited multiple riots, resulting in hundreds of arrests.

The Ways and Means panel warned the IRS earlier this year about The People’s Forum, whose funder Neville Roy Singham currently backs a network of pro-Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, the People’s Forum held a hateful rally in Times Square the day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel where swastikas were displayed and shouts of “f–k the Jews” were heard.

Manolo De Los Santos, who founded Midtown-based People’s Forum, has been denounced for delivering antisemitic speeches peddling “Nazi rhetoric,” in the words of South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), and calling for the eradication of Israel.

Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, the People’s Forum held a hateful rally in Times Square the day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel where swastikas were displayed and shouts of “f–k the Jews” were heard.

“When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel, when the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism in our lifetime,” De Los Santos said to cheers during a January speech.

De Los Santos was arrested at another anti-Israel encampment at Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology in May.

Other messaging efforts by the group that month led to the occupation of Hamilton Hall on Columbia University’s campus, an effort that The People’s Forum promised would “recreate the violent protests of ‘the summer of 2020.’”

Neither WESPAC nor The People’s Forum immediately responded to a request for comment.

Liberal billionaire George Soros backed many of the anti-Israel tent cities nationwide through third-party, grant-making groups including the Tides Foundation, which the Ways and Means panel included in its list.

Jewish Voice for Peace, which also made the list, was another major supporter of anti-Israel demonstrations nationwide over the past year.

Five more groups on the list — including United Hands Relief, Inc., Alliance for Global Justice, Islamic Relief USA, Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation and American Muslims for Palestine — have been flagged for potential ties to terror groups.

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