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.

06-Dec-16: World Vision and terrorism: Hazy accounting is the last thing this scandal needs

The man in charge of World Vision's Gaza operations inside an
Israeli criminal court [Image Source]

The trial of a top-level World Vision manager got underway in an Israeli criminal court in Beer Sheva a few days ago. Fresh revelations disclosed today in an Australian newspaper (and below) suggest the credibility of the global Christian charity is going to be as much on trial as the man himself.

Mohammad El Halabi, who held a leadership role in World Vision's Gaza office, is charged with

funnelling tens of millions of dollars to Hamas... [He's] alleged to have led a double life as a senior figure in the Islamist organisation and used his position “to divert the humanitarian organisation’s funds and resources from the needy to benefit of Hamas’s terrorist and military activities”. According to the allegations from Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, the money given by British donors was used to build a military base, dig military tunnels and pay salaries in Hamas’s military wing. Other donations were allegedly transferred to buy weapons for Hamas in the Sinai during the period that Mohamed Morsi was president of Egypt. The announcement of Halabi’s arrest followed a raid on World Vision’s office [in August 2016]... [H]e was indicted on a number of charges, including funding terrorism. ["Israel accuses World Vision's Gaza director of diverting cash to Hamas", The Guardian, August 4, 2016]

It amounts to an appalling set of suspicions: Christian charity in service of the murder and maiming of Jews? We pulled together a lot of the background to this deeply worrying scandal in an earlier post: "14-Aug-16: Who actually cares that foreign aid is diverted from needy Gazans to terror? Not who most people think".

Today, an investigative journalist at The Australian, Anthony Klan, drills down into some of the evidence, and in particular the unusual accounting deployed by World Vision's record keepers:

World Vision’s Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza charity operations — of which Australians are among the biggest funders — have spent millions of dollars on programs such as “keeping children safe ­online” and “home gardens”, ­internal accounts show.
World Vision is under scrutiny following allegations by Israeli authorities that its Gaza head, ­Mohammad El Halabi, funnelled $US43 million to Hamas, a proscribed terror group since 2010. The sum was about 60 per cent of World Vision funding to Gaza.
Investigations by The Australian show the poor transparency of World Vision’s operations in the region, with the agency ­appearing to publish no breakdowns of where or how funds are spent. For the year to September 2015, World Vision Australia reported $4.786m “disbursed” to “Jerusalem/West Bank/Gaza” without any further information.
The Australian has now ­obtained, through the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, a document filed by World Vision Israel with a local charity regulator, containing curious entries for expenditures, including “drawing a smile on children” and “South Gaza transformed families”.
The document sheds light on World Vision’s otherwise secretive disbursements in the region. ­Israel’s Registrar of Non-Profits wrangled with World Vision for ­almost two years to obtain it. Only in recent months — after the Israeli regulator on June 26 threatened World Vision Israel with “dissolution” — was the document provided.
World Vision Australia has been unable to provide The Australian with breakdowns of spending in the region. But the 56-page World Vision Israel document filed with the Israeli Register of Non-Profits shows cash flows ­associated with the group. The document is not properly labelled, but appears to be a banking or cashflow statement from December 2012. Entries include “more enjoyable learning” alongside the figure 196,138.14, understood to be Israeli shekels, each worth 35c, amounting to $68,648.
Other entries include “transformed relationships”, 416,871 ($145,905); “drawing a smile on children”, 104,926 ($36,724); ­“special gifts reserve”, 495,352 ($173,387); “South Gaza empowered children”, 408,443 ($142,955); and “South Gaza transformed families”, 106,327 ($37,214). Citing the ongoing trial of Mr Halabi, a World Vision spokeswoman declined to comment on the accounts, other than to say they would be subject to a wider audit the group had commissioned. Mr Halabi’s trial began last week in an Israeli court, however no pleas were entered and it has been adjourned until January 12... ["World Vision hazy on how it spent Gaza cash", The Australian, December 6, 2016"]

Four months ago when the explosive charges emerged, there was a flurry of World Vision activity via the media plainly aimed at blunting the Israeli claims and pooh-poohing the credibility of the Shin Bet. This for instance from an Amira Hass piece in Haaretz:

The indictment against Halabi describes a sophisticated, far-sighted scheme involving the planting of a person within the organization, with the aim of misappropriating funds and materials, and passing them on to the military wing of Hamas. To accomplish this, Halabi would have had to overcome World Vision's meticulous and centralized system of allocating money and equipment, contracting suppliers and the regular oversight of accountants. He also would have had to evade the main office of his organization, in East Jerusalem. Workers at other aid organizations are familiar with this well-organized system, and therefore they have cast doubt on the Shin Bet's statements... ["Israel's Allegations Against World Vision: Credible Charges or Political Ploy?", Haaretz, August 9, 2016]

We don't claim to know more than Hass or the editors at Haaretz, and we certainly know less than what World Vision's management team know. But if the filing at the Registrar of Not-for-Profits in Jerusalem is to be believed, a charity that allocates large outlays to such expese categories as “Drawing a smile on children” and “Special gifts reserve” and then claims to be meticulous and well-organized has some serious credibility issues.

And perhaps also some major shortcomings when it comes to the responsibility, maturity and probity required when you run a global enterprise that raises many hundreds of millions of dollars annually from trusting donors and you keep telling them this is going to help do good in the world.

They want El Halabi free again: Protestors outside
 UNESCO headquarters in Gaza City, October 16, 2016
[Image Source: APA]

The trial has some way to go. But it's notable that several major donor states have frozen further payments into World Vision's Gaza activities pending resolution. They are Great Britain, Australia, Austria and Germany (according to DeutschlandFunk, November 30, 2016). The effect on World Vision's work in field must be devastating [see "World Vision fires 120 in Gaza as Israel freezes funds over Hamas accusations", Times of Israel, September 9, 2016].

But then there's the matter of just how surprised World Vision's serious and responsible management must have been when the scandal broke. The same investigative reporter at The Australian noted a week ago that

Allegations that World Vision Gaza head Mohammad El ­Halabi funnelled millions of dollars to the Hamas terror group were raised with the charity last year but dismissed after an internal investigation... World Vision has described the allegations against Mr Hal­abi as “very explosive” but said it has “no reason” to believe the claims were accurate...  The case is particularly relevant locally because, as ­revealed by The Australian yesterday, the Australian government has been the single biggest donor to World Vision’s operations in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza since Mr Halabi became the charity’s Gaza head... ["World Vision charity dismissed Hamas funds link", The Australian, November 29, 2016]

According to a feisty unfriendly-to-Israel report in Foreign Policy ["Israel Declares War on Gaza’s NGOs", September 20, 2016]

World Vision had already investigated Halabi in 2015, after one of its accountants, who had recently been fired, accused him of stealing money and working with Hamas. The charity brought in an outside investigator to review its books; the audit turned up nothing suspicious.

An audit that turned up nothing suspicious? In a failed-state place like Gaza? With millions of free-floating dollars involved? Alright, everyone has to be treated as innocent until proven otherwise. But given the life-and-death nature of what this scandal is really about, shouldn't some sharp questions be asked in the wake of a finding like that? NGO Monitor, whose work we think is exemplary, thought so, and does that sort of drilling down well. They asked -

Which World Vision framework led the investigation [the one mentioned by both Foreign Policy and The Australian] and to which bodies or departments did the investigator report? Did investigators contact Israeli authorities concerning these allegations, or request assistance in the investigation? [NGO Monitor]

Naturally, NGO Monitor raises numerous additional concerns ["Questions for World Vision", NGO Monitor, November 01, 2016] and articulates them soberly and without melodrama. We wish World Vision had addressed them, but so far, no. Notably, some pertain to World Vision's accounting practices and diligence. Others touch on the only-too-obvious political and ideological agenda that appears to underpin World Vision's often-valuable work in this part of the world.

Friends in Australia tell us there is a real desire by the Jewish community specifically, and Australians in general, to see the dark cloud removed from over World Vision's head and for irresponsible allegations to be avoided. We can understand them and bear in mind there are certainly places and times where World Vision does valuable work.

But there's another way of viewing this, and that is that a charity of World Vision's scale ["active in more than 90 countries with a total revenue including grants, product and foreign donations of $2.79 billion", according to Wikipedia] ought to have been doing somersaults in the air to avoid even the slightest taint of scandal, let alone permit itself to be accusedm as it now is, of failing to prevent tens of millions of dollars from being siphoned out of its operations and applied to funding jihadist terror warfare against innocents.

Failures of management, if that's what has happened here, don't come more expensive than that.

24-Oct-16: Gazan rocket and tunnel attacks on Israelis: Monday update

The vast investment of manpower and cash being made by
Hamas in tunnels is often concealed by media reporting that emphasizes
how cows and goats are moved around via those tunnels. In reality, as this image
shows, they exist to serve an attack-focused terror strategy [Image Source: BBC]

The annual High Holydays season - including Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah - has just ended with sundown. The traditional greeting exchanged by observant Jews tonight is "Have a healthy winter!" We extend that to all our readers.

At least some of the challenges of the year ahead are not so hard to divine. From this morning (Monday) and Times of Israel:

Sirens warning of an impending rocket attack blared early Monday morning in communities in the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council in southern Israel. The projectile reportedly landed inside the Gaza Strip. The Code Red alarm sounded just before 7:00 a.m. on Monday. The IDF said in a statement shortly thereafter that they didn’t identify any rocket impacts in Israeli territory...

Yet another Gazan "fell short" rocket (there's a long history of those, though the fact they fall onto Arab heads is rarely remarked) with no indication of the Arab-on-Arab damage that almost certainly followed in the tightly-packed Gaza Strip.

Reuters reported this morning ["Israeli aircraft strikes Gaza after militants fire rocket - military"] not on the rocket attack but on Israel firing back at Hamas targets:

No casualties were reported following the air strike, Gaza residents said. The rocket fired towards southern Israel set off sirens after tracking systems monitored the launch but it landed inside the Gaza Strip, a military statement said. Small jihadist cells in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Islamist group Hamas, sometimes launch rockets into Israel.
Hamas has observed a de facto ceasefire with Israel since 2014, when 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis were killed in a war. But Israel says it holds the groups responsible for all rocket launches from the territory. [Reuters, today]

Responsibility for another Arab-on-Israeli rocket attack earlier this month ["05-Oct-16: A Gazan rocket crashes into a residential street in southern Israel"] was claimed by one of the non-Hamas terror organizations operating under the aegis of Hamas:

The Islamic State-affiliated Ahfad al-Sahaba-Aknaf Bayt al-Maqdis terrorist group took responsibility for that attack. In a statement, the group said the attack on Sderot was a response to Hamas arresting several members of the organization...  A Hamas official said [today] the group told Israel it would not allow other terrorist groups within Gaza to further inflame the situation, according to Israel Radio... [Times of Israel today]

The Turkish news agency Anadolu inadvertently insults its Hamas friends with a brief news report today that includes this whopper:

Though Hamas fighters rarely launch the rockets, Israel strikes their locations in response, arguing the Palestinian group is responsible for controlling other armed groups because it governs the coastal enclave. In July and August of 2014, Israel waged a weeks-long military offensive against the Gaza Strip with the ostensible aim of staunching rocket fire from the coastal enclave. [Anadolu Agency, today]

A pity the editors at Anadolu pretend to be unaware of the intense rocket war - which Amnesty (of all people) called "war crimes" - waged by Hamas against Israelis in 2014, and since:

Rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militant groups during last summer's conflict in Gaza amounted to war crimes, Amnesty International says. Militants displayed a "flagrant disregard" for the lives of civilians during the 50-day war, a report found. Six civilians in Israel and 13 Palestinians are believed to have been killed as a result of such attacks. Hamas, which dominates Gaza, said Amnesty's report contained many inaccuracies and false allegations... According to UN data, more than 4,800 rockets and 1,700 mortars were fired from Gaza towards Israel between 8 July and 26 August. Around 224 projectiles are believed to have struck Israeli residential areas... ["Amnesty: Hamas rocket attacks amounted to war crimes", BBC, March 26, 2015]

How seriously should Hamas declaring its opposition to inflame the situation (see that Times of Israel reprt above) be taken? Not very. Here's another dimension of current Hamas realities:

A Hamas operative died while working in a tunnel in the Gaza Strip Monday, the second death reported in recent days in the Palestinian terror group’s ranks. Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, announced that Ameir Jaber Abu Tuaima, 22, died during construction of a tunnel beneath the Palestinian coastal enclave. The announcement posted on the group’s website didn’t mention the cause of death, merely stating the Tuaima died in an “accident” near the southern city of Khan Younis. It wasn’t clear whether Tuaima died in a tunnel collapse, as another member of Hamas did on Saturday. The collapse on Saturday was the latest in a series of cave-ins to claim Palestinian lives. Over a dozen Palestinians, most of them reportedly members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, have been killed in collapses since the beginning of the year. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA identified the man killed over the weekend as Anas Abu Lashin, 22, and said he was a member of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He was reportedly working in a tunnel in the al-Maghazi area in central Gaza when it caved in. The Brigades in a statement said Abu Lashin was killed “during preparation” of a tunnel, but did not provide further details. The [Hamas] Islamist terror movement which controls the coastal enclave has a network of tunnels in the territory, both for smuggling and attack purposes. It was not clear which type of tunnel Abu Lashin was killed in. ["Second Hamas man dies in tunnel ‘accident’ since Saturday", Times of Israel, October 24, 2016]

Ma'an News Agency says the Hamas person killed in the tunnel today was

...a member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement... According to a statement released by the Brigades, one of their fighters died during a “mission” when the tunnel collapsed on him. The statement identified the fighter as Amir Jaber Abu Tuima from the town of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.

On a mission. Right.

Just two days ago, Yediot/Ynet published an interview with one of the IDF's key people in the war against those Gazan attack tunnels ["The colonel's tunnel war", Ynet, October 22, 2016]. Some points lifted from the article:

• [Hamas are] "investing thousands of man hours into this. It's taking over a large portion of the Gaza Strip's economy, and pulling Gaza downward—literally. They've developed a high level of expertise in the field over the past 20 years. That takes almost every resource that has entered the strip from its residents: Wood, concrete, tools. It leads to high taxes on residents, who are already greatly suffering... We've been investing great resources to locate them, particularly over the past year. We are becoming smarter on the topic of tunnels every day, due to the friction. We manage to understand the idea, and identify the weakpoints and find solutions. That's the most I can say."
• The State of Israel is investing NIS 2.5 billion in what's called the "Barrier project," meant to block Hamas tunnels. It includes an underground wall that goes dozens of meters deep into the earth, a smart fence along the border, and advanced means of detection. 
• "The project is meant to be a pretty decisive answer, and will change the situation when it comes to all types of threats, especially the tunnel threat. It will ensure security at a very high level. This is a complex system, which handles threats above and below ground, watches the enemy's possible actions, and responds as needed. However, I cannot say that the barrier we're building will provide 100 percent protection, because there is no 100 percent."

All those news photos [Google] showing goats, cows, brides, fast-food and cigarettes being conveyed via those Hamas tunnels essentially conceal from news-consumer minds the reality that Hamas' tunnel empire is a capital-intensive and highly dangerous way of attacking Israelis. The people at World Vision probably know this better today than they did in the past.

21-Oct-16: If a mass-casualty, Arab-on-Israeli plot is thwarted in time, is it still terrorism?

The targeted wedding hall, as it appears on its website

People who have experienced terrorism the hardest way - personally, like us - tend to pay more attention than most others to acts of terror that don't get all the way to fruition. Also: to the way the news reporting industry tends to focus serious attention on stories where there is actual human blood resulting from terror attacks and incomparably less attention where blood is absent and the terrorists are thwarted before their evil plans make the transition from potential to hideous reality.

Unless you follow the Israeli news-reporting media closely, it's unlikely you will know that a mass-murder plot, energetically pursued by a gang of Palestinian Arab terrorists, failed to happen recently. That's because - other than in parts of the Israeli news channels - there has been almost no news-report attention paid to it. Not enough blood.

Yesterday (Thursday), indictments were filed against several Palestinian Arabs in the same Be'er Sheva district court where the ongoing legal process against a senior World Vision manager is underway. (Other than the charge that terrorism was the goal in both prosecutions, the two seem to be unrelated.)

The allegations against the accused men are that they formed themselves into a terrorist ring, and planned to launch a mass-casualty attack at a strategic Israeli target, with an emphasis on the greatest possible number of Israeli casualties.

As has been the case with most terror assaults on Israelis in the past, the targets, while certainly strategic, were rarely military. Or guarded. Or connected to the government or to the police or to figures of authority. For instance, from a quick random selection:

• An armed assault on a rickety old passenger bus traveling from Tel Aviv to Eilat in Israel's south on March 17, 1954 - the Scorpion Pass killings in which 11 unarmed travelers were shot to death at point blank range;
• A murderous attack on a synagogue in Kfar Chabad filled with children, in April 1956 (three children and a youth worker were killed, many others injured); 
• Two civilian hikers climbing the rocky desert path to the ancient site of Masada on April 27, 1959  - shot and killed by Arabs;
• From their vantage point on the Old City ramparts, armed soldiers of the Jordanian army took pot-shots at civilian Israelis on the streets of the impoverished Jerusalem neighborhood of Musrara on May 31, 1965, killing two civilians at very close range - one of them a 14 year-old schoolgirl, Yaffa Binyamin, and wounding four others.

All these, from a much longer list, are from the pre-1967 period. So the nonsense about Palestinian Arab terror being a response to "occupation" need not unduly trouble us.

In the years since, Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks have been directed at civilian aircraft and their passengers; airports; athletes at the Olympics; guests attending a Bar Mitzvah celebration; guests standing outside a Bar Mitzvah celebration; people strolling in city squares; school buses and the children on-board; pizzerias and their young customers; movie theatres and their patrons; restaurants and their diners; passenger buses and the commuters on board; a discotheque and the people lined up outside before coming in; houses of worship; schools and their school-children; hotels; students in a university cafeteria; bombs placed to exploded inside cafes, outside cafes and on and on.

The notion of strategic targets has a wide and varied meaning in the context of Arab-on-Israeli terror. Here's what Israel National News has reported on this latest chapter in the chronicles of that generations-long savagery.

It has been cleared for publication that a terror ring that had been planning a mass terror attack at an event hall in southern Israel has been arrested... Mahmoud Yusef Hassin Abu Taha of Khan Yunis in Gaza, who was arrested last month for trying to pass into Israel, revealed upon investigation that he stood at the head of an Islamic Jihad-affiliated organization in the Gaza Strip that had planned to carry out a number of attacks... Mahmoud had been drafted by Wael Sufyan Abu Taha, a senior operative of Islamic Jihad living in Gaza, who instructed Mahmoud to set up a terror infrastructure for carrying out attacks. Mahmoud didn’t hesitate, and drafted three more. One of them, a Gaza resident who had been residing in Israel illegally, was employed at the event hall for which the terror attack was planned... [F]or the purposes of preparing the attack, the terror group leader and employee of the hall undertook an initial check of the scene of the planned attack, according to which they were able to consolidate and ensure that a maximum number of people were murdered in the attack...

And the second part of the plan:

The ring had also been planning to capture and murder a soldier so as to use his body as a bargaining chip... Abu Taha planned an attack whereby a soldier would be captured and murdered - and his body used as a bargaining chip. To this end, he received thousands of shekels to rent an Israeli apartment - to where the soldier would be lured and murdered - to bury his body in the area and to transfer his belongings to Gaza - for the purposes of bargaining with Israel.

And this detail:

[T]hey planned to throw grenades into a crowd of dancers celebrating at the... events hall and to use weapons they would hide in trash cans ahead of the attack before fleeing the scene. They also considered detonating pipe bombs concealed under the dining tables.

Israel-based i24news names the other allegedly-terror-minded members of the busted cell:

55-year-old Shafiq Ahmad Hamad Abu Taha, who resided in Israeli illegally, 39-year-old Ahmed Tisir Abdulrahman Abu Taha from Gaza, who also resided in Israel illegally, and 40-year-old Hani Masood Nasir Abu Amra, originally from Deir al-Balah in Gaza, who lived in Israeli with temporary resident status through marriage by way of the "family reunification" law.

The four indicted Abu Taha terror-gang members make an appearance
in Beer Sheva District Court yesterday [Image Source]

Four members' names make clear they are related as members of the notorious Abu Taha clan. Some of the highlights of their activities are mentioned in this article ("Five Killed and Seven Injured in Armed Clan Clashes in Khan Yunis") from 2006.

A report in Haaretz says the one non-Abu Taha in the list, the one whose marriage gave him residency rights, has been living in Tel Sheva, a neighbourhood of Beer Sheva. (We wrote a personal note about it here.) That report goes on to make an astute observation that

The Shin Bet said the affair shows the way terrorist groups exploit entry permits into Israel, which are granted for humanitarian and economic reasons; as well as the danger of the terrorists' use of Palestinians who are residing in Israel illegally.

Things might have changed by the time you look, but when we searched Google for news stories that mention the men charged with terrorism yesterday, the only reports we could see [here] are Israeli or serve a specifically-Jewish readership. Knowing, as Israelis, that there are men, and surely women too, out there conspiring daily to attack our wedding halls and public and private places and to kill as many of us as they can, while the mainstream news-reporting industry politely turns away, is deeply disturbing.

You sometimes hear people dismiss outrage over jihadism and Islamist via the idiotic aphorism "One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter." A much more meaningful observation might be: "One person's terrorist is another's non-story." That reflects the threat much more accurately.

Apathy, distance and agenda-driven journalistic reporting mean that not enough people are willing to look and see what terror is, and what its practitioners seek to do. That enlarges the danger to all of us.

15-Sep-16: Justice, peace, terror, truth - and the World Council of Churches

Like the WCC, these German activists , in their own distinctive way, stood
for "democratic, non-violent actions for justice 
and peace" in the'Thirties [Image Source]

We pay more attention in our blog to what the World Council of Churches says and does than many other bloggers. (Click for our earlier WCC posts.)

This is absolutely not because we subscribe to their dogma. By dogma, of course, we don't mean theology. Actually, theology appears to be one of the least distinctive aspects of the WCC. We mean their political viewpoints as espoused for decades by the WCC's leadership. (From experience, we know those viewpoints are rarely shared by their church-going members.) Politics far more than religion in the conventional sense is what serves as the raison d'etre of the World Council of Churches

We pay them attention because of our annoyance at the mild halo effect that unjustifiably accompanies a religious-sounding global alliance's frequent pronouncements. As we have noted here in the past, the WCC (with annual income in 2014 of 29.4 million Swiss Francs, about USD $30 million) is not just any religious-sounding alliance but 

a roof body that purports to speak for the world's major protestant churches. Here's where they list their members. In Australia, they include the Anglican, Churches of Christ and Uniting Church in Australia. In the UK, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Church in Wales, the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church of Wales and others. In the United States, they include the Quakers, the United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and many others. That's a lot of worshipers. Do they know how their religious faith is being exploited by a small coterie of self-perpetuating, Geneva-based bureaucrats? ["17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?"]

And

the broadest and most inclusive among the many organized expressions of the modern ecumenical movement, a movement whose goal is Christian unity... breaking down barriers between people, seeking justice and peace ["About us: What is the World Council of Churches?", on the WCC website]

The WCC's Geneva-based secretary-general [Image Source]

(If you're not sure whether they presume to speak on behalf of your house of worship, we posted the names and websites of all the WCC member churches at the time in this blog post: "23-May-14: On the dignity of murderers and their victims: An appeal to Christian friends".)    

In a public call datelined September 15, 2016 (today), the WCC bureaucracy has just launched once more into a full-throated assault on Israel and Israelis, calling in the name of Christianity for more terror, more "Kauft-nicht-bei-Juden"-style boycotts of Jewish businesses and more disregard for justice and the rights of Jews and Israelis. 

Some direct-quote World Council of Churches excerpts:

1. They... called for the US to end what they described as a "wave of legislative efforts" to penalise the use of non-violent economic measures to influence policy in Israel, noting that churches have used such strategies to "advance the rights of people and further the cause of justice both domestically and internationally for many years"...
2. [They] noted that the unresolved conflict in Israel and Palestine is "primarily about justice, and until the requirement of justice is met, peace cannot be established"...
3. "Too often the structural and permanent violence against a whole people is ignored. But keeping an entire population under occupation and even in a closed area, such as Gaza, in prison-like conditions is a grave and unsustainable situation. 
4. We are also well aware that Israel is the occupying force and has commanding power over the people of Palestine and, thus, bears special responsibility for taking the initiative."
5. They called for an end to the "occupation and to settlements on occupied land, with all its grave and deteriorating dimensions for the Palestinian people, but also for Israel and the whole region beyond".
6. "We ask for full respect and protection of human rights defenders, for the rights to tell the truth, to express concern, and to take democratic, non-violent actions for justice and peace... 
7. "We are deeply concerned by Israeli legislative and other measures to curtail the work of Palestinian and Israeli development and human rights organisations, as well as the lack of transparency concerning investigations into international humanitarian (including faith-based) organisations in the Gaza Strip and the possible negative consequences to delivering critically needed aid to this besieged area."

That's a lot of euphemisms and irresponsible double-talk.

1. When they advocate "non-violent economic measures", they mean the bigotry-rich program of boycotts, divestment and sanctions or BDS, in which the World Council of Churches takes a lead advocacy role. It's an aggressive campaign initiated by a cluster of Palestinian Arab groups 11 years ago that "disincentivizes the Palestinian leadership from negotiating with Israel at present, is antisemitic [and] promotes the delegitimization of Israel" [Wikipedia]
2. Don't expect the conflict "in Israel and Palestine" (a narrow way of looking at the state of war declared by the Arab states in 1948 and in large measure still continuing) to get resolved or the terrorism conducted by the two Palestinian "states" to end so long as "the requirement of justice" for the Arabs, not for the Israelis, not for the Roths, continues to be unmet. In other words, the Arabs alone are the side to whom injustice is being served. Resolving this doesn't depend on them.
3. Gaza is prison-like, suffering "structural and permanent violence". Those tens of thousands of Hamas rockets fired at Israeli homes? The enforcement of Arab poverty by an Islamist leadership residing luxuriously in Qatar and Dubai? The ongoing misappropriation of foreign aid to ensure endless Gazan misery? All totally absent - as if they never existed. If there is a wicked person in this Bible lesson, the WCC leaders know he's not an Arab.
4. Only the Israelis as "the occupying force", the "commanding power", have the responsibility to do something peaceful. In the pseudo-redemptive theology of the WCC's preachers, the Palestinian Arabs get a permanent free pass. Though not Christians, the insiders in the two Palestinian Arab regimes understand this parable to mean: "Don't change, don't cease fire, don't consider being flexible. Just keep going while we provide protection". 
5. This exceedingly strange thing - "occupation" - is said to be not only at the heart of the Arab/Israel conflict but also the "grave and deteriorating" state of "the region beyond". Serious-minded Christians might be thinking of today's Iraq, Libya, Syria and Lebanon. Like us, are they wondering what the Christian leadership in its Geneva office complex, witness to the rapid and violent end of two thousand years of Christian life at the hands of Islamists, along with savagery on a scale that challenges the worst nightmares, are smoking?
6. Rights, justice, peace. Are both sides entitled to these? The answer is obvious.
7. This refers to Israel's recently-announced arrest and prosecution of a Hamas agent inside World Vision, and reports that additional charities active in the Palestinian Arab domains have been similarly penetrated and pillaged. The WCC has said not one word about the allegations of massive abuse of Christian charity by the bigoted, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish Islamist forces. Nor about the Gazan housing construction budgets misappropriated to the construction of attack tunnels and rockets and mortars.

We believe in dialogue. We know a person cannot be completely well-informed without hearing the opposing side's case. In April 2014, when the World Council of Churches came out with an earlier public call that involved actual praying for the freedom and dignity of Palestinian Arab prisoners, almost all of them were and are behind bars because of the anti-Jewish terrorism in which they engaged, we blogged these two posts: "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?" and "22-Apr-14: Attention World Council of Churches: Will you now follow your own advice and speak up for the Arabs tortured and imprisoned by the PA?"

Right after that, we sent a letter to the then (and still) WCC secretary general, Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, on April 24, 2014. We were ignored. So we sent the same again, along with copies to a number of WCC insiders, a few days later. Still ignored. Then we had a tiny flurry of exchanges with the WCC's Director of Communications. He seemed willing to engage, but then changed tacks complete. Here's the full text of his letter to us dated June 5, 2014:

Dear Mr. Roth, Yes, I believe we would have nothing further to say.  Best wishes to you and your family. Mark Beach, WCC Director of Communication

The context and additional detail are in our post: "6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches". Here's how we summed it up: 

So take it from this non-Christian, non-Moslem couple: there's something seriously wrong with a major global-facing church roof-body that wishes freedom, justice and dignity for convicted murderers but rolls down the shutters when a family devastated by the actions of those very murderers engages them in serious, albeit critical, discussion.

We are in the midst of the Jewish season for thinking hard about sin and about the truly redemptive value of forgiveness and repentance. In that spirit, here'a a repeat of a World Council of Churches thought we expressed here in the past

We'll sign off with a word to the WCC management team sitting there in Geneva: it's never too late to do sincere repentance and to come back and openly discuss these very serious life-and-death issues - even with people as marginal as we are to your mission. ["11-Jun-14: Where does this strategic deafness and moral blindness at World Council of Churches lead?"]

And this epilogue:

We know from experience that the world has many, many Christian believers whose abhorrence of terrorism, rejection of cries for the murder of innocent children, and belief in the central role of justice and morality in 21st century life differ hugely from the messages being advanced by the WCC. We don't share their theological outlook but we feel we have a great deal of common ground with their humanity. But finding common ground with church leaders for whom calls to prayer and "acts of solidarity" that "restore" to the convicted, unrepentant murderers of innocent children "their freedom with justice and dignity” - that truly feels like mission impossible. ["6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches"] 

UPDATE Sunday September 18, 2016: Please check out "Five Things You Need to Know About World Council of Churches" by Dexter Van Zile. Brief and highly recommended.

14-Aug-16: Who actually cares that foreign aid is diverted from needy Gazans to terror? Not who most people think

A Hamas/Gaza tunnel under construction, October 2013 [Image Source]

Audit firms, governments and Christian aid groups are sorting out their post-exposé strategies following the arrests of several Palestinian Arabs on charges of illegally and surreptitiously siphoning vast sums into Palestinian Arab terror.

But strangely those who are most identified with doing humanitarian good for the Palestinian Arabs don't appear to be in the front lines of those expressing deep concern at the harm such diversions have caused. And that's an understatement.

One of the most visible signs of where the cash goes (that's present tense - no one believes the scandal has been stopped) is the tunnels of Gaza. The latest news from there - just this month and just from Palestinian Arab sources indicates this vast engineering project is not going smoothly:

• August 6, 2016: "The al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, has reported that one of its fighters was killed, Saturday, when a tunnel collapsed on him, in the Gaza Strip. In a statement, al-Qassam said the fighter has been identified as Khaled Methqal al-Hoor, 23... According to the al-Qassam Brigades, ten of its fighters have been killed in several tunnel accidents in several parts of the Gaza Strip, since the beginning of this year." [IMEMC, a Palestinian media source which "combines Palestinian journalists’ deep understanding of the context, history, and the socio-political environment with International journalists’ skills in non-partisan reporting."]
• August 10, 2016: "Eight Palestinians were injured when a tunnel collapsed in the al-Shujayya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, local sources told Ma’an. They were taken to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to be treated for light to moderate injuries, according to Gaza Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra. The incident came after three Palestinians died over recent weeks in tunnel collapse accidents in the Gaza Strip. On Saturday, a member of Hamas' military wing the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades was killed, and in mid-July, two members of the Islamic Jihad were killed in separate incidents..." [Ma'an News Agency, based in Bethlehem]
• August 14, 2016: "...A member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, was killed by an electric shock on Saturday while working inside a tunnel in the besieged Gaza Strip. The military wing released a statement confirming the death of Muhammad Shlouf from the city of Gaza... The Hamas movement which governs the blockaded Palestinian territory has been allegedly reconstructing a vast tunnel network intended to be used for carrying out attacks on Israeli military targets and civilians, swathes of which were destroyed during the war... The Institute for Palestine Studies reported in 2012 that Hamas authorities had counted 160 deaths inside the tunnels since the Israeli blockade began in 2007, and in August 2014, al-Jazeera reported that figure to be as high as 400." [IMEMC]

Setting aside the appalling matter of lives thrown away (many of them, probably hundreds, are children) in the cause of expanding the terrorist infrastructure and earning Hamas tunnel-traffic royalties from smuggled cigarettes to benefit Hamas insiders, there's a colossal amount of tunnel building going on in Gaza.

This is one of the Middle East's most ambitious current undertakings, ignoring the mind-blowingly, astronomically-expensive preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar about which we wrote here: "11-Jul-13: Football and barefaced hypocrisy". And in a world where there are no free lunches, someone's paying for it. Paying for the construction and materials, that is. Essential safety equipment is evidently still looking for a donor.

This is infrastructure investment on a truly serious scale. So, in hideous terms, is the pay-off:

"A Hamas operative who was captured in June after illegally crossing into Israel revealed that the terrorist group’s fighters can travel underground throughout the entirety of Gaza." [The Tower, August 11, 2016]

This is Gaza too: the Al-Mashtal Hotel as it looked some years
ago [Image Source: Reuters]

An important piece this weekend in the Wall Street Journal by one of its editorial writers, David Feith, reaffirms the depressing point ["Your Tax Dollars Fund Palestinian Terror", August 11, 2016] that none of this could happen but for the willful blindness of governments, foremost among them the United States.

It's a weighty charge if true. The WSJ analysis is driven mainly by recent events here in Israel where sensational criminal prosecutions have recently been brought against Palestinian Arab individuals alleging they succeeded in diverting aid money into the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations. Many millions of dollars are involved.

Sounding an ambitious note, Feith addresses the scandal we have long called here the PA's Rewards for Terror Scheme:

This revelation should spur a broader reassessment of American aid to the Palestinian government... [since] the Palestinian government has used U.S. and other foreign taxpayers’ money to pay generous rewards to the families of terrorists. The deadlier the crime, the larger the prize, up to about $3,100 a month, or several times the average salary of a worker in Palestine’s non-terrorist economy... No U.S. official can plead ignorance. Palestinian law has sanctioned these payments since at least 2004, specifying how much money is earned depending on the circumstances of the attacker and the body count. [WSJ, August 11, 2016] 

Should spur a broader reassessment. But almost certainly will not.

This happens while the Hamas regime in Gaza, along with its humanitarian-aid-industry co-conspirators and principally UNRWA ["Gaza Emergency"], continues to make the case that the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza are undergoing prolonged suffering from a lack of housing reconstruction. Yes, there's a connection. Cash, cement and goodwill have been pouring into Gaza yet those houses remain piles of rubble. UNRWA's most recent Gaza Situation Report, dated August 12, 2016, like all those before it, makes approximately zero references to the malevolent hand of Hamas in repurposing humanitarian aid into terrorist resources. (Repurposing in this context means stealing.)

The reassessment of foreign aid programs and charitable subventions ought to, but almost surely will not, be affected the factors disclosed in those recent Israeli revelations.

Israel has discovered that Mohammed El-Halabi, currently employed as director of the Gaza branch of World Vision, is actually a major figure in the terrorist/military arm of Hamas... World Vision is an international NGO, one of the largest charitable and humanitarian aid organizations in the world, which operates in more than 100 countries. It receives support primarily from the UN and from Western governments...  El-Halabi has been taking advantage of his position to divert the humanitarian organization’s funds and resources from the needy to benefit Hamas’ terrorist and military activities... More than half of World Vision’s resources in the Gaza Strip – originating in aid money from Western states such as the United States, England and Australia – were transferred to Hamas to strengthen its terrorist arm... During the investigation, El-Halabi revealed that he has been a Hamas member since his youth and had undergone organizational and military training in the early 2000s. In 2005, Hamas dispatched El-Halabi to infiltrate World Vision. El-Halabi related that Hamas believed that he had a good chance of infiltrating the humanitarian aid organization because his father works for the UN and he himself had worked in UNDP... Over the years, El-Halabi advanced in the charity’s hierarchy until he was appointed director of the Gaza branch. In this capacity, he controlled the budget, equipment and aid packages which amounted to tens of millions of dollars... [Foreign Ministry of Israel Backgrounder, August 4, 2016]

El-Halabi's methods were not the most sophisticated. But then neither do the checks and balances of World Vision and others among the world's humanitarian aid giants appear to be.

To divert the funds, the Shin Bet said el-Halabi initiated fictitious projects meant to help farmers, the disabled and fishermen. He would falsely list Hamas operatives as workers on those projects and write up inflated receipts, according to the Shin Bet. Companies hired to carry out certain projects under fictitious tenders were “made aware” that 60 percent of the project’s funds were destined for Hamas, the Shin Bet statement said, adding that some of World Vision’s budget was used to pay the salaries of Hamas operatives. The Shin Bet also said el-Halabi would transfer to Hamas materials such as steel, digging equipment and pipes that were meant for World Vision agricultural assistance. Thousands of packages with food and medical aid received monthly would allegedly be diverted to Hamas operatives and their families rather than reach Gazan civilians. Beyond arms purchases and tunnel digging, the funds also helped build military bases, including one constructed in 2015 built entirely from British aid money, according to the Shin Bet. The security agency also said that since his arrest, el-Halabi divulged intelligence about employees working for United Nations agencies and other aid groups who were also assisting Hamas, without elaborating. [Associated Press, August 4, 2016] 

Little publicized (for some reason), the el-Halabi indictment included a paragraph devoted to suspected malfeasance at another humanitarian aid agency active in Gaza:

An official from Save the Children was also allegedly turned to Hamas, according to Halabi’s charge sheet. [Times of Israel, August 11, 2016]

There quickly followed further Israeli charges said to implicate the United Nations via its UNDP arm:

Israeli authorities have announced charges against a Palestinian employee of a United Nations agency, accusing the Gaza resident of providing "material assistance" to Hamas. According to a statement released on Tuesday by the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), or Shin Bet, 38-year-old engineer Waheed Borsh was arrested on July 16 and charged in a Beersheva court on Tuesday. The indictment accused the UN Development Programme (UNDP) staffer Borsh of abusing his position to renovate Hamas members' homes, having been recruited by "a senior member of the Hamas terrorist organisation to redirect his work for UNDP to serve Hamas' military interests". The ISA claimed that Borsh had confessed to the charges, and admitted that "other Palestinians who work for aid organisations are also working for Hamas". According to the ISA, the case exemplifies "how Hamas exploits the resources of international aid organisations at the expense of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip"... In a statement, UNDP said it was "greatly concerned" by the Israeli allegation that Borsh had "complied with a request from a senior Hamas individual to transport 300 tonnes of rubble from a UNDP rubble removal project site to a Hamas-run location at the Northern Gaza Hamas-operated port". UNDP added that it will be "conducting a thorough internal review of the processes and circumstances surrounding the allegation". [Aljazeera, August 09, 2016]

It's good to know of the "great concern" and the "thorough internal review" now said to be on the way. The problem is that allegations of these kinds have been made by Israel for years, and no response ever occurred.

Matters are considerably worse, as we view them, when you consider that the diverted and abused funds are charitable and/or characterized as foreign aid, making a reasonable person think the trustees of the cash would have bent over backwards to defend their probity.

But that reasonable person would be wrong. Nothing - for all practical purposes - has happened until now, even though the consequences are huge.

That's expressed well in a statement published last week by Robert Piper, an Australian development aid coordinator for the UN who, since May 2015, has been the Jerusalem-based Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and the Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, with the rank of UN Assistant Secretary General. He said:

Israel’s accusations against el-Halabi “raise serious concerns for humanitarian organizations working in Gaza.” “Redirecting relief away from its intended beneficiaries would be a profound betrayal of the trust put in a senior manager by his employer and by the organization’s donors,” Piper said. “Everyone would pay a high price for such acts – beneficiaries and the wider aid effort alike. If proven by a due legal process, these actions deserve unreserved condemnation; Gaza’s demoralized and vulnerable citizens deserve so much better.” ["World Vision: ‘Huge gap’ in Israeli terror funding allegations", Times of Israel, August 08, 2016]

Unfortunately there have been few signs from the aid agencies themselves that they acknowledge the problems (other than the problem of facing accusations from the unloved government of Israel) and in particular that their internal checks are lacking. At the UNDP, they are now saying they have

zero tolerance for wrongdoing in all of its programmes and projects [The Guardian, August 9, 2016]

so look elsewhere for solutions, they seem to say. This is bold and brave of them considering that two years ago, an internal UN audit report found serious short-comings including

• Their Gaza operation should have been using an electronic funds transfer system with local banks that would have allowed the UNDP program to “be notified electronically when any bank transactions take place,”  including, as the report delicately puts it, “transactions not made by UNDP.” But it didn't use it. Why? Good question.
• Core procurement  processes for ordering up “significant” civil construction activities that were supposed to be handled strictly by staffers - were not. Outsiders somehow got into the process. Why? Anyone's guess. The auditors called this a “critical” lapse and demanded “prompt action... to ensure that UNDP is not exposed to high risks. Failure to take action could result in major negative consequences for UNDP.” We will watch to see whether this fault gets mentioned in future media reports. 
• "The office’s internal financial tracking system — a UNDP-wide system known as Atlas — was improperly recording at least $8 million worth of civil construction spending at far less than its full value, a practice that UNDP auditors noted could keep the activity under the radar of higher-level U.N. officials who must approve purchase orders above defined cost threshold levels."
• Expenditures and receipts were not adequately tracked in the financial system. For instance, a sampling of 41 payment vouchers showed 12 purchase orders had no receipts recorded. “This practice,” the report noted, “increases the risk of paying for goods that are not delivered.” [Fox News, August 11, 2014]

At World Vision, senior management

has cast doubt on Israel's accusations, saying they seemed implausible... [NPR, August 9, 2016]

And at Hamas, they amazingly

denied that Halabi was a member... [as well as] denied the allegations. A spokesperson, Sami Abu Zurhi, called the accusations “false and baseless”, saying they were designed to allow Israel to strengthen its “siege” of Gaza... [The Guardian, August 9, 2016]

Prof. Gerald Steinberg, an authority on transparency and the lack thereof in funding across borders (and president of the esteemed NGO Monitor, a research institute based here in Jerusalem) had some points to make on this in a powerful op ed in the Wall Street Journal three days ago:

World Vision leaders such as Tim Costello of the charity’s Australian branch, which provided a significant portion of World Vision JWG’s 2014 budget of more than $20 million, took refuge in distant accounting firms. “We have PricewaterhouseCoopers that audit us each year,” Mr. Costello said. But Mr. Costello and his peers at other aid groups should be aware that no international auditing firm can independently track funds in terror enclaves. In Gaza, there are no receipts for the numerous cash transactions that were conducted via World Vision. Even if there were, how would the auditors verify their authenticity? Indeed, the audit claim wasn’t enough to convince the Australian government, which immediately froze the $5.7 million annual budget granted to World Vision. Germany soon followed suit. The broader problem is that due diligence for humanitarian aid in war and terror zones requires the allocation of significant resources and a professional staff capable of detaching itself from the pressures and sympathies of the local environment. World Vision, like most aid groups operating in Gaza, clearly failed in this respect... Mr. Halabi’s arrest should be cautionary moment for other international aid organizations with operations in Gaza such as Care, Christian Aid, Oxfam and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The need to deal realistically with operations in a terror-controlled zone like Gaza, and the costs of failing to perform due diligence, should be apparent. World Vision’s auditing claims notwithstanding, cash payments in Gaza are a direct path to corruption and diversion to terror. They should be ended immediately... ["The Palestinian Charity Trap", WSJ, August 11, 2016]

The charges of malfeasance have not stopped coming. We know, for instance, from an AFP report, that

Aid workers privately admit to feeling pressure from Hamas, with the powerful group seeking to influence how projects are organized. In a few rare cases NGOs have seen their offices temporary closed by Hamas... ["Foreign aid workers fear the impact of Hamas allegations", AFP/Saudi Gazette, August 11, 2016]

That 2014 Fox News report [online here] we just mentioned also implicates the highly problematic UNRWA (the UN's pseudo refugee agency whose existence is predicated on a never-ending "Palestinian refugee problem") about which we have written often and with passion). Turns out

the main purpose of the UNDP program, based in Jerusalem and like all U.N. activities operating under diplomatic immunity from any national authorities, was to provide funding and support for what the document chastely calls “another U.N. entity” that coordinates the world organization’s activity in Gaza. That “entity” is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which has been accused for years... of allowing Hamas to divert humanitarian supplies to its own military purposes. UNWRA has some 13,000 employees in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of them local Palestinians... [Fox News, August 11, 2014]

The problems at UNRWA, unique but hardly new, stem from factors outlined in sharp terms two years ago in the Wall Street Journal (again). That piece shows how the multi-billion-dollar agency agency is unusual, and unusually unaccountable compared with other UN operations, by reason of at least these three factors:

1. All other refugees world-wide fall under the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Only the Palestinians have their own dedicated U.N. refugee agency, offering special access to the perquisites of the U.N. logo, stage and fundraising. 
2. Almost all other U.N. agencies report to an executive board, allowing at least some chance of functional oversight. Unrwa reports directly to the entire 193-member General Assembly, where responsibility is broadly dispersed and easily avoided. According to a paper in 2010 by the agency's own chief of legal affairs, Lance Bartholomeusz, UNRWA enjoys the added flexibility of having no clearly defined mission: "its mandate is not conveniently stated in one place and must be derived from all other relevant resolutions and requests."
3. Thus unencumbered, UNRWA has ensured its own survival by transforming itself into the patron of Palestinian grievance, conferring refugee status down the generations... ["The U.N. Handmaiden of Hamas", Claudia Rosett in the Wall Street Journal, August 07, 2014]

Israel's concern for the well-being of the Gazans, suffering for years already under the jackboot of a kleptocratic Fatah regime and then, for the past nine years, under the ruthless Islamists of Hamas, may not be top of its list of concerns. But it's undoubtedly a concern. Whether out of altruism or self-interest, there are few voices in Israel calling for an enlargement of Gaza's undoubted plight.

Here's an instance of the sort of Israeli voice Israelis are hearing even if the Arabs aren't. Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai is Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Unit, better known as COGAT. It's a hybrid civilian/military body with a mission

to promote and implement the policy of the Israeli Government in civilian matters, to facilitate humanitarian issues and economic and infrastructure projects in Judea and Samaria and in the Gaza Strip. In addition, the unit leads the coordination and liaison with the Palestinian Authority and with the Palestinian population the West Bank and the Gaza Strip... [fuller description here].

Mordechai, speaking in Arabic in the wake of el-Halabi's confession to the charges of subverting World Vision funding into the pockets of Hamas. addressed the Palestinian Arabs:

Hamas stole this money and passed it to its military wing to build bases, provide salary bonuses and dig the tunnels of death that have brought destruction upon you and the Gaza Strip... Hamas is burying you and your hope of living a normal life. [Associated Press, August 4, 2016]

We can't know what impact this speech had ordinary people in Gaza, or even whether they know it happened. (Freedom of information is currently scarcer in Gaza than Olympic-size pools.) But if a mission, which Israel plainly has undertaken, to produce greater benefits to ordinary Gazans from more efficient delivery of foreign aid and from less siphoning off into the maw of the terrorists, were genuinely shared by the humanitarian aid industry, there's little doubt that the benefits would be widespread and meaningful.

Israelis have always understood that the Palestinian Arabs need to have something to lose in order to be motivated to make the compromises from which peace is fashioned. Hamas and Fatah understand that too; hence the decades-long efforts to give their people literally nothing to lose from the conflict continuing.

But let's acknowledge that if that kind of sea change were to happen, it would likely lead to a rapid, substantial and irreversible cut in the headcount of certain high-profile, billion-dollar aid agencies.

And most of us know what sort of response that will trigger.

UPDATE August 17, 2016: For additional context, friends have suggested we re-post here a remarkable Tweet by the New York Times Jerusalem correspondent. We're glad to do that. Diaa Hadid and her editors seem to feel that what news consumers are missing is some self-justification by the man accused of embezzling World Vision - a disturbingly odd moral judgment but perhaps in tune with the ethos of today's journalism as practiced by the New York Times and others following in its path:

The man Israel accuses of diverting @WorldVision funds to Hamas lost 7 relatives in 2014 war, incl pregnant cousin https://t.co/sPOnhkfpHd

— Diaa Hadid ضياء حديد (@diaahadid) August 4, 2016

If it's no longer posted on Twitter (here), we have archived it here. We asked (via repeated Twitter posts) both the New York Times people and Ms Hadid to explain how these claims bear on the extremely serious charges against the World Vision man. No answer.

---

[Our thanks once again to Malgorzata Koraszewska for having translated this article into Polish. It now appears in that language on the Listy z naszego sadu site.]

http://www.listyznaszegosadu.pl/notatki/kogo-rzeczywiscie-obchodzi-gdzie-trafia-pomoc-zagraniczna