Another Zionist Attack on Australian Aid to Palestinians

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'.]

Asleep at the Wheel

"Israel's success at fragmenting physical and geographical Palestine is matched by its success in having shattered the social, political and economic strata as well... during 'Operation Defensive Shield' in the spring of 2002, IDF soldiers were responsible for destroying the records of civic institutions and NGOs throughout the West Bank city of Ramallah, very often the central location for these offices. Ransacking soldiers left furniture and appliances wrecked beyond repair. Food, drink, mud, urine, faeces, and trash covered the floors, and graffiti was scrawled across the walls. After removing computer hard drives (which were transported to Israel) soldiers smashed up the computers and printers rendering them permanently unusable. They spilled out the contents of the filing cabinets, burned or shredded documents and papers leaving them strewn across the floors or scattered in the streets. Soldiers also burned, shredded, and sometimes shot at personal photographs, posters and pictures on the walls. In addition to the destruction of these offices, IDF soldiers vandalized radio and TV stations, banks, schools, hospitals, medical clinics, and cultural centers. Many soldiers broke or shot bullets through office windows, destroyed office, medical and school supplies, trashed the lavatories, and broke down the doors to the buildings." The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle, Ramzy Baroud, 2006 pp 5-6

"Have you seen the [Palestinian] Ministry of Culture, the inside of that?
- I've seen the pictures that [the Palestinians have] shown all over the place.
You've seen the shit - excuse me using the word - all over the place, the broken photocopiers, the files pulled out - what military objective is there in that sort of rampage?
- I don't want to be the one who consistently says that all [the Palestinians] do is lie. But I have problems with a lot of the pictures that I've seen...I just say that we have a code of ethics which is very different from anything else I've heard anywhere else." (Exchange between Debbie Whitmont of the ABC's Four Corners and Colonel Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the wake of Israel's 2002 Operation Defensive Shield in the occupied West Bank.)

One such trashed organization in Ramallah was the independent, non-partisan Palestinian NGO Ma'an Development Center. Eleven years of records, data and teaching manuals were destoyed, in addition to equipment to the value of $40,000. The Ma'an Development Center, with a focus on health and aged care, literacy, vocational education and so on, was one of 3 projects in the occupied Palestinian territories funded by the ACTU's Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA. To my knowledge, no mainstream Australian media outlet reported the attack.

Incredibly, the Ma'an Development Center (still funded by APHEDA) has again been trashed by the IDF. According to a 3/4/08 press release, posted on APHEDA's website, the Center's doors were blown open at 2 o'clock in the morning, causing major damage to its offices. Many other public, private, and NGO institutions in Ramallah received similar treatment at the same time. No mainstream Australian media outlet bothered to report the attack.

Another APHEDA-funded Palestinian institution, El Wafa Medical Rehabilitation Hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip, also came under attack, by Israeli tanks. According to a 16/4/08 press release, in addition to its buildings, the cable of the hospital's only generator was damaged, endangering the lives of paralyzed and comatose patients. No mainstream Australian media outlet bothered to report the attack.