THE HEARING AND SIGHT FOUNDATION FOR DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNITY REHABILITATION
مؤسسة السمع والبصر للتنمية والتأهيل المجتمعي
The Hearing and Sight Foundation for Development and Community Rehabilitation is a Qatari NGO charity. It states that its charitable projects in Gaza support the needy, the poor, widows and orphans, especially the parents of cochlear-planted children, many of whom can not afford rehabilitation fees, transportation and other expenses. This is not completely true and misrepresents what the charity presently does in Gaza.
The charity covertly supports and rewards the families of martyred Palestinian terror operatives, affiliates and combatants. Receiving aid is not dependent on a family’s financial situation, the predicate for receiving aid is the family’s affiliation with a Gaza terror organization.
In 2015, Samer Mahan, chairman of the charity’s board, said his organization is charitable, not profitable, and is trying to provide aid and relief to bereaved Gaza families, noting that they [the charity] were created to serve deaf children, and today they appear to be sponsoring orphans in the sector [Gaza] with cash assistance. The orphans he is referring to are the children of martyred terror operatives, combatants and affiliates. It should be noted that the charity sponsors much more than the orphans of deceased terror operatives. Most of the children receiving funds are not orphans, they still have mothers who care for them.
Islamic law does not allow adoption, taking someone else’s child as your own. The closest thing to adoption that is is allowed is legal foster care known as “kafala” (كَفَالَة). Kafala is the Islamic legal institution analogous to guardianship and it is used instead of adoption. The Qatari charity is the legal guardian of the 240 children who appeared on their website’s kafala photo gallery, the sons and daughters of martyred Gaza terror operatives. The photo gallery consisted of twenty pages, twelve children per page. Below, a partial screen grab of a page:
MARTYRED TERROR OPERATIVES ON THIS WEBSITE WHOSE FAMILIES RECEIVE QATARI CHARITY MONEY, GOODS AND SERVICES
There are 18 martyred terror operatives on this website whose children and families are being rewarded by the Qatari charity, they are listed below. Clicking on a name will open a page relating to that individual, read the narrative, text and photos, then scroll down to the charity’s logo to view a description of the charity, its “kafala” program and photographs of the terror organization affiliate’s children in the charity’s guardianship (kafala) program.