07-Dec-16: The alleged failures at World Vision and a toxic ideological background

World Vision's Middle East involvement goes
beyond mere "humanitarianism" and includes
"advocacy" with such far-left Israel-based partners
as "Breaking the Silence" and B'tselem.
Note that the word "terror" appears nowhere in its
brochure [check here]

The terrorism-centered scandal at the multi-billion dollar global Christian charity World Vision ["06-Dec-16: World Vision and terrorism: Hazy accounting is the last thing this scandal needs"] has brought some even larger issues out of the dark.

First, what are the charges against World Vision's chief manager in Gaza, El-Halabi? NPR says they are about the charity's funds being "diverted" to these ends:

Money raised to support injured children in Gaza was diverted to the families of Hamas militants who claimed their children were wounded. Money was paid as salaries to Hamas militants who were falsely registered as World Vision employees. Costs for legitimate projects such as greenhouses were inflated, with the extra money going to Hamas. Fake charities that were actually Hamas fronts received World Vision donations. And entire lists of aid beneficiaries were fictitious, so instead of giving money to needy farmers, the money was handed out to Hamas members. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasim told NPR that the allegations were made by "an enemy entity that has no credibility at all to us," and that "Israel is trying to make fake media wins." Pressed on whether Halaby was a member of Hamas, Qasim declined to comment... ["Israel Accuses World Vision Employee Of Embezzling Millions For Hamas", NPR, August 5, 2016]

A wide-ranging article seeking to put the current allegations, now under scrutiny in an Israeli criminal court, into a broader context has just been published today. In "World Vision’s Decades-Long Hate Campaign Against Israel" that appears online and in the December 2016 issue of The Tower Magazine, Luke Moon, deputy director at the Philos Project ("the network hub for leaders and future leaders who are committed to promoting positive Christian engagement in the Middle East") provides some background we have not seen elsewhere.

He refers to the criminal charges we mentioned yesterday and to the charity's problematic reaction:

World Vision has responded by questioning the charges, claiming that the entire budget for Gaza over the last ten years is just $22.5 million. They also claim to be impartial and neutral on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rejecting any involvement in political activities. While this claim may be true in other conflict zones where World Vision operates, it is not true in regard to Israel. Not only does World Vision have a long history of antagonism toward the Jewish state, it has done more to undermine Christian support for Israel than any other organization... [The Tower, December 2016]

How much should that worry us? A lot, we think, because

World Vision is the largest and most respected Christian humanitarian organization in the world. In homes and churches across the U.S., it is widely known for assisting children and families in need... [The Tower, December 2016]

Moon traces the changes in this important charity's orientation to the entry of a handful of named individuals. One of them, Tom Getman, became director of World Vision's Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza (JWBG) operation in 1997.

World Vision advocates for the
Palestinian Arab argument on the
security barrier issue [Image Source]

Under his leadership, World Vision’s work in the Holy Land became increasingly anti-Israel. It was not uncommon for Getman to travel the world promoting World Vision, as well as the work of Sabeel, one of the most aggressive anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Palestinian Christian organization in the region. Sabeel promotes “Palestinian liberation theology,” which tends to justify Palestinian nationalism as a theological construct by regularly using themes from the New Testament to demonize Israel and Christians that support Israel... Under Getman’s leadership, World Vision also began to drift away from its evangelical roots, even as it began accepting more and more money from the U.S. government and expanded into a global organization... [The Tower, December 2016]

Moon goes on to make the case that World Vision's alleged failure to identify the lethal corruption (our term, not his) in their Gaza office

stems from three sources: Willingness to overlook terrorist atrocities, institutional antagonism toward Israel, and hostility towards Christian Zionism... [Senior management] never seemed to be overly bothered by Palestinian terrorist organizations’ role in the conflict with Israel. Mooneyham’s willingness to compare Israeli soldiers with Nazis, Getman’s friendship with Hezbollah leaders, and Snary’s repetition of Hamas talking points shows the depth of World Vision’s institutional distaste for Israel and the absence of critical voices within its leadership... [The Tower, December 2016]

Those, naturally, are not the factors that an Israeli criminal tribunal is going to examine. But they surely ought to be on the minds of charity-minded people - and certain NGOs and governments and their foreign aid programs (like the UN's World Food Programme, the UK's DFID, the EU, Australia's AusAID, the United States' USAID, Canada's CIDA and the German Humanitarian Assistance office) - before they entrust further donation funds to World Vision's Gaza program.

29-Jun-13: Syria then and now

IDF field hospital on border with Syria,
March 2013 [Image Source: AFP via Yediot Aharonot]

The situation in Syria, with whose government Israel has repeatedly been urged to come to terms and to make painful compromises etc. etc, goes from catastrophic to even worse.

An NPR report today, "As Doctors Leave Syria, Public Health Crisis Looms", by Deborah Amos, says that while the number of people killed in the vicious civil war there

may now be as high as 100,000... another emergency is looming: a public health crisis across the region.

She quotes a study just published by the British medical journal The Lancet. It says

Syria's health care system is near collapse. Outbreaks of disease are on the rise in the country, and refugees sheltered beyond the border are also at great risk... Seventy percent of Syria's medical professionals have fled the country... There has been a dramatic rise in communicable disease... [Quoting local doctors in the field] 7,000 cases of measles in northern Syria in the past few months after a vaccination program was disrupted by war, and the list is growing to include TB, leishmaniasis, typhoid and cholera, which will come up during the summer months... When you consider chronic diseases like diabetes, Type 1 and 2, and cancer... you start to see that more people are dying of disease rather than war... This could lead to a public health crisis for the entire region. By the end of this year, the Syrian refugee population is expected to reach more than 3 million. [NPR]

Naturally none of this means the thugocracy running the country, and certainly not the jihadist rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime, have forgotten their deep hatred for Israelis. A Jerusalem Post report yesterday reminds Israelis of the ramifications:

IDF deploys Iron Dome battery near Haifa | The IDF deployed an Iron Dome anti-rocket battery in the Haifa area early Friday morning, amid heightened tensions in the North stemming from the ongoing Syrian civil war. The IDF Spokesman's Office stated that Iron Dome batteries are redeployed periodically in accordance with appraisals of the security situation. IDF Chief of Staff Lt-Gen. Benny Gantz [said] Thursday, “The region is shaking, from south to north. Syria is hemorrhaging blood, and in Lebanon, the fire has begun to catch the edge of Nasrallah’s robe. In the face of this changing reality, we must be prepared, coordinated and alert, more than ever...” [Jerusalem Post]

Military defenses aside, Israel, has been making a small contribution to addressing the humanitarian disaster unfolding north of the border. The Times of Israel reports tonight that

Over 100 Syrian citizens have been treated in Israel since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war two years ago, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Thursday. According to the report, the Israeli government had downplayed the number of admitted patients, fearing that it would lead to an increase in refugees. Five Syrians remain hospitalized at Ziv besides the injured trio admitted Saturday. Earlier this month, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon confirmed for the first time that Israel is operating a field hospital on the Syrian border. He said the IDF was transferring severely wounded Syrian nationals to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Initial reports of an IDF field hospital in the Golan Heights surfaced in February. “Our policy is to help in humanitarian cases, and to that end we are operating a field hospital along the Syrian border,” Ya’alon told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “In cases where there are badly wounded, we transfer them to Israeli hospitals. We have no intention of opening refugee camps.” The IDF has kept secret the identities of Syrian nationals treated in Israel. [Times of Israel]

To give the monumental Syria implosion some small degree of perspective, a BBC report from three years ago (selected absolutely at random) reflects the memes and themes that seemed so precisely spot on at the time but, with hindsight, were nonsense.

Syria's Bashar al-Assad warns of Middle East conflict | BBC News | 17 June 2010
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said Israel's raid on the Gaza aid flotilla has increased the chances of war in the Middle East. In an interview with the BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, he said Syria was working to prevent a regional war. But he added that there was no chance of a peace deal with the current Israeli administration, which he called a "pyromaniac government". Mr Assad also rejected claims he was arming Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

His calling Israel a "pyromaniac government" is part of a response to reports earlier that year saying "Israel desires peace and to engage in unconditional talks with Syria" [Haaretz, February 4, 2010].

As for those Hezbollah "militants" mentioned by the BBC, the general sense in the news media today, three years on, is that Hezbollah's now-admitted intervention on his side appears to be crucial to Assad's energetic manouevres to stay alive while his nation burns.

15-Oct-10: Is Europe facing a terror attack?

Earlier this month, the US State Department advised Americans living or traveling in Europe to conduct themselves as if terrorists are plotting attacks in Europe. Yesterday (Thursday), its counterterrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin clarified that the terror plot focused on Europe is still enough of a threat for the US to maintain the current advisory. It's a step below a formal warning advising Americans not to visit Europe.

So often when terrorism is under discussion, you hear voices downplaying the dangers (for instance, "Some Muslims, Officials See Terror Alert As Alarmist" on the National Public Radio website this week) and that's certainly the case in this current alert. European and Pakistani officials, for instance, have questioned out loud whether the US is overreacting. TIME Magazine captured the European ambivalence well last week in an opinion piece entitled "Terror Threat: Caught Between Caution and Alarm". The acrobatics described here are impressive:

Given the thickening flurry of terror-related developments around the world — intelligence discoveries, counter-terrorism efforts, rising threat levels — the global public, and people in Europe in particular, could be forgiven for reading them as worrying signs of a looming strike on Western soil. Yet despite the feeling that all this activity is reaching a critical mass, European security officials stress that they have no reason to believe an attack is imminent. And they note that while the general terror threat is indeed relatively high, it is not acute.

Relatively high danger, but not acute. It's not only Europeans who are living in denial about Islamic terror but they certainly contribute a certain distinctive style.

Meanwhile back on Earth, the State Department says its intelligence was gathered from multiple sources over several months and is credible. Some of the plot details come from the interrogation of Ahmed Siddiqui, an Afghan with German citizenship, captured by US forces in Afghanistan during July and the source of some detailed operational information about European jihadist circles. Siddiqui was a cleaner at Hamburg airport and a devout member of the al-Quds mosque in Hamburg several of the 9/11 hijackers gathered prior to their attack.

Concern over the presence of German citizens in Pakistan's tribal areas has gotten some media attention in past weeks. The BBC, relying on German media sources, said last week that several Islamist militants disappeared from their homes in Hamburg in 2009 and were believe to have gone to Pakistan's North Waziristan. A week ago, the German interior ministry revealed that 70 Germans had gotten paramilitary training in Afghanistan and Pakistan... and a third of them had returned home. In August 2010, German police shut down that Hamburg mosque on the basis that it had become a focus for terrorist activity. 
Associated Press today quotes the State Department's people saying "The credibility of the information was what was most striking about this – and the fact that it was so internally consistent... We tried to couch it as carefully as we could [but] we had an obligation – both an ethical one but also a legal one – to warn American tourists that this was a concern."

Tony Blair used to be prime minister of the UK. Today he sees himself having a similar kind of ethical obligation. In a speech that got wide coverage last week, Blair noted that these has been a failure to challenge the ''narrative'' that Islam was oppressed by the West and that this is fuelling extremism around the world. Too many people accept the extremists' analysis, says Blair. For example, that the actions taken by the military forces of western countries in the wake of the 9/11 mass terrorism were directed at countries because they were Muslim

Blair says:

''We should wake up to the absurdity of our surprise at the prevalence of this extremism... Look at the funds it receives. Examine the education systems that succour it. And then measure, over the years, the paucity of our counter-attack in the name of peaceful co-existence. We have been outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised.''

Not only outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised. But also outsmarted.

Ron Ben-Yishai gets scant media attention outside Israel, but he is often on the money. He published some observations a week ago, pointing out that the US warnings are based on concrete intelligence from intelligence agencies in the US, Pakistan, Britain, France, and Germany. He backs up the reports of Afghan jihadists with German passports, and says they are getting plenty of attention from US forces. Let's quantify that:

"Since entering the White House, US President Barack Obama has authorized no less than 122 drone hits against senior al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban leaders hiding out in the tribal regions of the country. This is more than double the number of attacks former President George W. Bush authorized in all eight years of his presidency. Just last month, at least 22 such attacks in Pakistan alone killed dozens of Muslim terrorists. In response... jihadists are now trying to leave Pakistan for a revenge campaign in Europe. The reasoning is clear. There are many American tourists on the continent, whose urban centers and public transportation systems are packed with people, and security measures are relatively lax. The preferred method of attack is shooting attacks and taking hostages. This modus operandi, which was successfully executed last year in Mumbai, India... allows the perpetrators, British and German citizens, to reach their targets unhindered, armed with assault rifles and handguns that can be obtained on the local market and hidden in handbags."

Ben-Yishai says the Pakistani-Germans are partnered with a North African group called "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb". They recently kidnapped several groups of French tourists and professionals from the mining and oil industries; one of the French hostages was murdered in a jihadist execution. Now the terrorist leadership has decided to carry out a mass-casualty attack

"by detonating explosives at central French tourist sites, first and foremost being the Eiffel Tower. This is the reason that French authorities have evacuated the site, a symbol of France's strength, twice in recent weeks... It is likely that this information reached the security establishment in Paris after Italian police arrested a French citizen of Algerian descent in possession of explosive devices about a month ago. It remains unclear whether the Pakistani group and the North African group are coordinating their attacks with one another."

He says al-Qaeda is trying to time the actions of the two groups in order to create the impression of simultaneous, coordinated attacks on different sites in Europe, something which would increase their deterrent effect and grant al-Qaeda new momentum.

Meanwhile, even in France, there are some sane voices capable of observing and then acting. Jean-Louis Bruguière, France's top anti-terrorism official in the recent past, says

"all European nations are paying close attention to movement and planning in the Pakistan border area, because "since 2008, as Islamist networks in Europe have re-focused full attention on the Afghan jihad, we've all seen an increasing flow of Europeans traveling to the region for combat and terror training." ...al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb "has proven its stated strike out at France by kidnapping French citizens in Africa which means we're taking its promises to unleash violence on French soil more seriously than ever."

Thank goodness for that.