Lawmaker calls for IRS to revoke tax-exempt status of People Media Project over alleged Hamas tie

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Ohio, recently sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requesting that the IRS revoke the People Media Group’s tax-exempt status due to potential affiliations with terrorism.

A journalist reporting for The People Media Project reportedly had potential ties to Hamas, causing The People Media Group’s tax-exempt status as a charitable organization to come into question, according to a news release from The Ways and Means Committee.

The People Media Group, also known as The Palestine Chronicle, had employed a journalist who was not actually a real journalist, according to Smith’s letter to the IRS. The letter details how Abdallah Aljamal, a "journalist" working for The Palestine Chronicle in Gaza, was reported to be a terrorist who has affiliations to the terrorist militant organization Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, more frequently known as Hamas.

Smith’s letter also mentions that Aljamal was reported to have “worked as a spokesman” for a labor industry that was run by Hamas. It was later reported that Aljamal was found to be “holding several Israelis hostage in his home in central Gaza.”

“It was recently reported that a 'journalist' for The Palestine Chronicle, located in the Gaza strip, was not really a journalist at all," the letter said. "Rather, he was a terrorist, and he actively held Israeli civilians as hostages in his home.”

According to Smith’s letter, the Israel Defense Forces (also known as the IDF) rescued the hostages from his house in Gaza.

“Although the IDF was able to rescue several hostages who were held by Hamas since the October 7, 2023 attacks, this important development suggests that The Palestine Chronicle, which later put out a statement describing Aljamal as 'one of its contributors' in Gaza, is at the very least complicit in supporting Hamas, and at worst a full-fledged financier of terrorism in the Middle East.”

Smith demands in his letter that the IRS must consider revoking the People Media Project’s tax-exempt status. Smith claims that the People Media Project was not being used “exclusively for its charitable purpose,” and cites the situation with Aljamal reportedly being a Hamas supporter. Smith also mentions times in the past where the IRS has revoked other charitable organizations tax exemption due to their supporting terrorist organizations.

The IDF claims that Ajamal was a Hamas terrorist, according to a recent post on X, formerly known as Twitter: “'Journalist' Abdallah Aljamal was a Hamas terrorist holding Almog, Andrey and Shlomi hostage in his family’s home in Nuseirat. No press vest can make him innocent of the crimes he has committed.”