A St. Louis, Missouri, mother said the Girl Scouts organization threatened her with legal action after her troop sold bracelets to help Palestinian children.
Nawal Abuhamdeh said her daughter’s troop decided to make bracelets and donate the money rather than participate in the annual cookie sale. Abuhamdeh, who is Palestinian, has led her troop’s cookie fundraising event since 2019. But because of the Israel-Hamas war, she said the troop did not have the “energy to be able to sell cookies to a community, especially in a time of crisis.”
“We were debating whether we had the energy to put into a cookie season as we were grieving,” she said in a phone interview. “And not only that but also our community was grieving.”
The eight-member troop, which includes girls from Indian, Pakistani, Somalin, Palestinian, Syrian and Jordanian backgrounds, led the project, Abuhamdeh said. They held meetings about what material to use and where beads should be placed.
The girls decided to sell beaded bracelets for $5 and clay designs for $10 and donate the money to Palestine Children Relief Fund.
The troop set up a pre-order form to gauge interest from the community. After receiving more than 100 pre-orders, the troop posted about the bracelets on social media.
Almost immediately, Abuhamdeh said she received an email from Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri telling her to remove anything that associated Girl Scouts with the bracelets.
“It felt very cold and just full of reprimand and demand,” Abuhamdeh said. “Demanding that I remove Girl Scout’s logo … disassociate ourselves from the organization and just continue this on our own personal time, deeming it as political and partisan, claiming that they have to be inclusive to all members and that they should be neutral on all sides.”
Abuhamdeh said she sent an email back explaining why the girls wanted to do the fundraiser and asked how it was different from Girl Scout fundraisers for Ukraine. The organization responded by threatening to…
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