World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

President Trump and his Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, both claimed that President Trump had “identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas”. I was struck by this curious claim since the US has not been sending money to Hamas and decided to explore whether the claim was true.

It turns out that the US had sent $102 million to the International Medical Corps which had received $68 million to set up two field hospitals in the Gaza Strip. When queried, the organization responded that “No US government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms”. The organization described its role in Gaza as follows:

“Since January 2024, the statement said, the organization “has provided healthcare to more than 383,000 civilians who had no other access to services or treatment, including performing about 11,000 surgeries, with one-third of those categorized as major or moderate procedures. We have assisted in the delivery of some 5,000 babies, about 20% of them via cesarean section. In addition, International Medical Corps has screened 111,000 people for malnutrition, treated 2,767 for acute malnutrition, distributed micronutrient supplements to 36,000 people, and more.” Needless to say, all such activities in Gaza will no longer be funded by the US.”

Further, The Guardian reports that

“As the Guardian reported on Tuesday, a comprehensive report issued in September by the US Agency for International Development (USAid), not a penny of the $60.8m in contraceptive and condom shipments funded by the US in the past year went to Gaza. In fact, the accounting shows, there were no condoms sent to any part of the Middle East, and just one small shipment, $45,680 in oral and injectable contraceptives, was sent to the region, all of it distributed to the government of Jordan.”

Subsequent posts on X indicated that the money was in fact sent to Gaza to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. But the Gaza referenced in that $83 million grant was not the Gaza Strip, but rather a province in Mozambique named Gaza which was developed by the  Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation. The province has a high incidence of AIDS, so it makes sense to send concoms there. There is also a town called Gaza in Iowa–perhaps they received the condoms (one should check out Gaza, Iowa on Google maps–it looks like a lonely place).

Trump and Leavitt told a falsehood. I spent two hours trying to track down whether the assertion was true and used the reports from others who did the same. It was wasted time because there are now millions of Americans who believe that the US sent $50 million of condoms to a terrorist organization. But it was not really wasted because I wrote this post and some Americans now know that Trump lied.