According to reports, Tel Aviv’s Magistrate Court has handed down a judgment authorizing the Israeli government to take any cryptocurrency from over 150 digital wallets it has banned for allegedly aiding terrorist organizations. Regional Israeli media outlets reported on December 18 that Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that the court’s December 15 order had already permitted police to recover an additional $33,500 from digital wallets associated with the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas.
Earlier to the court’s decision, Israeli officials were only permitted to collect virtual currencies with direct connections to terrorism, not other monies stored within the same wallets. The authorities took $750,000 from the wallets in December 2021.
Since 2007, Hamas has been the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip in Palestine. Numerous nations and global blocs, such as the United States, European Union, Israel, and the United Kingdom, designate Hamas as a terrorist group.
Hamas started soliciting its followers in January 2019 to contribute donations via Bitcoin (BTC) to circumvent sanctions and monetary alienation. On July 9, 2021, Gantz issued an order permitting security officers to confiscate cryptocurrency accounts allegedly associated with the terrorist faction of Hamas. During that period, authorities reported that the accounts held Tether (USDT), Ether (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), XRP, Binance Coin (BNB), Zcash (ZEC), and Litecoin (LTC), among other cryptocurrencies.
Israeli investigators confiscated 30 cryptocurrency wallets from 12 cryptocurrency exchange accounts connected to Hamas in February. The actual amount of the stolen digital currencies was not made public. It has been demonstrated that cryptography has a very limited part in terrorist organization funding. The blockchain intelligence company Chainalysis concluded in early 2022 that just a tiny fraction of crypto money is being utilized for illegal conduct.
