International aid in many forms does often not reach the people it’s meant to serve. We reported in 2018 that Gaza was sending remote-controlled condom bombs to set fires in Israel, even near gas stations. These condoms were supplied by international aid groups and included funds from the US Government.
President Donald Trump was recently made aware that there was $50 million more taxpayer money being earmarked to send free condoms to Gaza. Like molotov cocktails, and water pipes turned into rockets, the condoms are used as improvised guerrilla warfare devices to install harm on people, forests and agriculture land in Israel. Special poems are written about this so Israeli children don’t touch balloons, balls and condoms they find on the street.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday defended President Donald Trump’s order to freeze federal funding, claiming that $50 million had been earmarked for the distribution of condoms in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Leavitt briefed reporters that the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the White House Office for Management and Budget (OMB) found “that there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza”.
In 2023 USAID revealed that no condom money was sent to Gaza, however.
The only shipment to the Middle East that year was a $45,680 delivery to Jordan, which was noted as the first condom shipment to the region since 2019. Since news of the condom bombs in 2018, it is likely a government office in the US had the foresight to stop shipments.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) found “that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,” Leavitt told reporters during her first press conference. “That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money.”
The Trump administration has frozen nearly all foreign assistance programs for at least 90 days, in an attempt to understand how the US is funding UN organizations such as the World Health Organization.The US is the largest source of international assistance out of all countries in the world.
Over the years the Israeli public have taught their children to take care when they find balloons or balls, as they may be fitted with explosives. In 2020 the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command on Friday released a poem for children warning them against the dangers of the balloon-borne bombs flown into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip.
Titled “What does the wind bring with it?”, the poem tells children to call an adult and run away if they see a suspicious object.
Related: Gaza condoms for war, not love
“Sometimes, the wind brings with it/dangerous things/which come from over the fence/they are not mine/and they’re not some friend’s,” wrote the poem’s author,Tali Versano-Eisman, the head of the Home Front Command’s child-outreach department.
Are condoms permissible in Islam?
According to Islamqa, it is permissible to use condoms so long as this does not cause any harm and so long as both husband and wife consent to their use, because this is similar to ‘azl (coitus interruptus or “withdrawal”). But it reduces the sensation of pleasure, which is the right of both partners, and reduces the chance of conception, which is also the right of both partners. Neither one of them is allowed to deprive the other of these rights. (Related: read our article on female circumcision in Islam).
