You'll recall the case of World Vision's Gaza director Mohammed El-Halabi, seized by the Israelis in 2016 and falsely accused of diverting Australian aid money to Hamas, despite neither the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade nor World Vision Australia finding any evidence for the accusation. (See my 23/3/17 post The Halabi Affair.) (And incidentally, here it is, June 2018, and, search as I may on the Internet, I can find no reference to what has happened to El-Halabi.)
Now, another Australian aid organisation, the ACTU's Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA, has come under attack by the usual suspects for the heinous crime of helping dispossessed and colonised Palestinians.
'Venomous' doesn't begin to describe Murdoch's Daily Telegraph. "TERROR EXCLUSIVE" shrieked its front page yesterday, "Audit into jihadi links to Aussie aid - GAZA DRIP." (That final shriek, btw, gets my nomination for any 'Lamest MSM Pun of the Year' competition currently in contemplation.)
That was followed by this opener from "national political editor," Sharri Markson:
"An urgent investigation is under way after revelations millions of taxpayer dollars are being funnelled to a Palestinian aid organisation in the Middle East that employed a leader of a terrorist group. The Daily Telegraph can today reveal the money web that sees cash move from the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade through a Sydney-based charity to a Palestinian aid organisation which employed the leader of a vicious jihadi group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP has masterminded plane hijackings and suicide bombings, and is on the official terror lists of the US, the European Union and Canada. In total, $21 million of DFAT funding has been given to a charity set up by the unions, Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA, which has funnelled millions through to the Ma'an Development Centre - whose project co-ordinator in Gaza was the recently killed PFLP leader Ahmed Abdullah Al Adine. He was hailed a martyr at his funeral, which was guarded by at least a dozen PFLP terrorists. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop last night said a 'full audit of funding' to Union Aid Abroad had been ordered."
Describing the Marxist PFLP* as "a vicious jihadi group" is just the kind of cheap propaganda you'd expect from Markson, once described by former Labor politician, now Murdoch columnist for The Australian, Graham Richardson (in a model of understatement) as someone who can be "irritating and sometimes go too far."
Two things should always be kept in mind whenever Israelis, or their fifth columnists in places like Australia, start banging on about 'Palestinian terrorism'.
The first is that the Palestinians, like all occupied people, have the legal right, in the words of UNGA resolution 37/43 of 1982, to resist occupying forces "by all available means, including armed struggle."
The second is that for Zionists to bleat about 'Palestinian terrorism' is the very height of hypocrisy. Not only did they use terror in their ruthless, armed takeover of British Mandate Palestine, but they have continued using it on a daily basis against defenceless Palestinians and others ever since.
The Israelis have, of course, long been gunning for both APHEDA and World Vision Australia, as this propaganda piece from Jason Edelstein of NGO Monitor, published in Murdoch's Australian in 2012, indicates:
"In a new report, Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Centre) presents 'conclusive evidence' that a Gaza-based organisation supported by two Australian groups is linked to the Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine terror group. The report explains that the Australian Agency for International Development and World Vision Australia are 'providing financial aid and other forms of material support to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, an agency of the proscribed terror organisation the PFLP... As NGO Monitor has shown, APHEDA... engages in activities that fuel the conflict and do not promote humanitarian objectives. APHEDA campaigns for a one-sided and immoral arms embargo that would impair Israeli defence against terror attacks, uses demonising 'apartheid' language, endorses the so-called Palestinian 'right of return' and partners with organisations promoting BDS and 'lawfare' tactics. Its Middle East tours have served as the basis for promoting BDS campaigns in Australia." (No peace in hidden agenda of aid agencies, 30/3/12)
[*For George Habash and the PFLP see my 6/5/18 post Gideon Levy: 'Habash Was Right'.]
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How does a country that repeatedly sends its airforce on bombing raids into conflicts against democratically elected governments, and lends its support to major terrorist groups consistently escape scrutiny worldwide? This is bigger than Palestine and the cause of so many of the major conflicts in the Middle East. It's time this rogue nation was called out for what it is.....but I guess, as the Palestinians know, hope is always eventually dashed.
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