World Vision asked to stop funding NGO

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World Vision Australia has until Monday to stop funding a Palestinian NGO that is allegedly linked to a terror group…otherwise Shurat Hadin, the Israel Law Centre, will launch legal proceedings in an Australian court.

Akiva Hamilton

That’s the ultimatum issued by Akiva Hamilton, a Sydney-born solicitor for Shurat HaDin, who wrote last Sunday to World Vision Australia’s chief executive, Tim Costello, ordering the Christian charity to stop funding the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) by October 15 or face a law suit in the Federal Court for breaching the Charter of the United Nations Act, which prohibits funding a proscribed organisation.
Shurat HaDin claims that World Vision, which has distributed more than $1 million in Gaza from the government’s foreign aid arm AusAID, has been breaching the law because it has funded the UAWC.
Shurat HaDin claims the UAWC “was established by, is controlled by, shares assets with and operated in concert with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine”.
The PFLP is responsible for countless terror attacks against Israel since

The Rev Tim Costello

the 1970s.
But World Vision Australia denies the charges. In a statement AusAID said an investigation it conducted in May concluded there was “no evidence” that Shurat HaDin’s allegations were true.
World Vision and AusAID claim UAWC is also legally registered as an Israeli NGO and that its Jerusalem-based branch is registered with the Israeli Ministry of Justice.
But Hamilton contends that the Israeli-registered organization is called the Committee of Agricultural Work, which he claims in a dossier is a totally different outfit to the UAWC.
The dispute was first aired in February when Shurat HaDin sent its dossier to AusAID. World Vision chief executive Tim Costello wrote to Shurat HaDin again late last month, saying the organisation had “no interest in supporting terrorism”.
“I can assure you that if such evidence [of ties to the PFLP] is forthcoming, we will not hesitate to act swiftly upon it,” Costello wrote.
He did, however, admit that “some remnants of the historical relationship” between UAWC and PFLP remain.
“But to suggest that UAWC is an arm of the PFLP today and somehow controlled by it appears to us a gross over-statement,” he wrote. “We believe that UAWC is a bona fide Palestinian agricultural development entity and … that it operates independently of the PFLP.”
On Monday, World Vision released a statement saying it is “disappointed” that Shurat HaDin is threatening legal action but that its position remains unchanged.
“Many claims have been made linking individuals – asserted to be UAWC board members – to the PFLP and that the UAWC is established and controlled by the PFLP,” the statement said. “These claims are disputed, but ultimately none of these claims are themselves evidence that funding from World Vision is being used to support the PFLP.”