After Crypto, Israel seizes Barclays account linked to Hamas funding

An account at the British bank Barclays linked to fundraising for the Palestinian militant group Hamas has been frozen, according to Israeli police. One of the most significant escalations in the Israel-Palestinian conflict in recent years occurred on Saturday when Hamas launched a surprise strike from Gaza into Israel. In a statement released on Tuesday, the Israeli police revealed that the British police helped to freeze a Barclays bank account connected to Hamas. Hamas released information about the bank account “for the purpose of depositing donation funds,” according to the statement. A representative for Barclays declined to comment on the account’s freeze or attest to the veracity of the information in the police statement. Israel has also frozen cryptocurrency accounts used to solicit donations for Hamas, the statement said. Israel acted quickly in response to reports that Hamas had started a fundraising campaign on social media asking people to deposit bitcoins into their accounts as soon as violence broke out. With the assistance of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, the Israeli Police Cyber Unit and the Ministry of Defense discovered and frozen these cryptocurrency accounts with the intention of diverting the assets to the state coffers. The exact numbers of frozen accounts and the dollar amount of bitcoins confiscated are still unknown. (With inputs from agencies)