AUSTRALIAN taxpayers should not be forced to fund organisations with links to terrorists. This is the case with aid to at least one Palestinian group. It's not against the law, but it's wrong. It's morally and politically objectionable. It ought to stop.
The Australian government aid agency, Ausaid, gives millions of dollars, through the private charity World Vision, to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works in the Gaza Strip. The problem is the UAWC and its personnel have deep links with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The PFLP is a proscribed terrorist organisation under the relevant UN list, Australian legislation and the legislation of numerous other countries. It is one of the central progenitors of modern terrorism.
It was founded by George Habash and combined Arab nationalism with radical Marxist-Leninism. Its fortunes have waxed and waned as more direct Islamism has become dominant.
It pioneered aeroplane hijackings but then in the 1980s focused on assassinating Israeli civilians and moderate Arabs.
UAWC was founded in 1986 as part of the "institutional cluster of the PFLP" as a State Department report in the 1990s described it. The report said: "The PFLP's agricultural extension activities are provided by the UAWC".
The general, pro-Palestinian histories of the UAWC that I could find made no secret of the PFLP connection.
It is true that the UAWC is not a proscribed terrorist organisation; nor are its leaders proscribed individuals. And it seems that it does peaceful civilian work.
A few months ago a group of Israeli lawyers, Shurat HaDin, sent a complaint to Ausaid and World Vision charging that these bodies could be in breach of the law because support for UAWC could be easily construed as indirect support for a terrorist organisation.
I think that overstates the legal case but I think the moral and political case against funding the UAWC is overwhelming.
Ausaid asked World Vision to investigate and World Vision conducted searches of registers of all proscribed organisations, as well as talking directly to UAWC and others on the ground in the Palestinian territories. Ausaid and World Vision then wrote to Shurat HaDin saying there was no evidence they were breaking the law by funding UAWC. Both organisations took the allegations seriously enough to briefly suspend the funding to UAWC.
Shurat HaDin then sent further information which Ausaid, with the assistance of other government agencies, is now evaluating.
In response to my inquiries, World Vision issued a statement saying, in part: "UAWC is a registered NGO with both the Israeli Ministry of Justice and the Palestinian Authority. World Vision is not UAWC's only partner. UAWC has partnered with multiple other government aid programs and United Nations agencies. These partners include UN agencies (such as UNDP), World Bank, and numerous international not-for-profit organisations."
World Vision also says it exercises all reasonable efforts to vet organisations it partners with. Ausaid says that since 2005 it has provided $4.7 million for UAWC through World Vision. I do not accuse either World Vision or Ausaid of bad faith. However, I do not believe Australian taxes should go to support organisations associated with terrorism.
In its dossier, Shurat HaDin points out that "the president of the UAWC board of directors, Bashir al Kheiri, is a well-known and senior member of the PFLP, (one-time) head of the PFLP Political Office in Ramallah, with a long record of arrests and jail time in Israel for terrorist involvement and still actively representing the PFLP as recently as January 2012".
It further says: "The vice-president of the UAWC board of directors, Jamil Muhammad Ismail al-Majdalawi, is also a well-known and senior member of the PFLP . . . and represents the PFLP on the PLO central committee."
It provides information about three other UAWC board members linking them to the PFLP.
In the Palestinian territories, it can be difficult to work effectively on the ground and not rub shoulders with people who have terrorist associations. But the answer is not to co-operate with organisations linked to terrorist outfits that espouse violence and hatred, as does the PFLP. Specific renunciation of such attitudes must be a prerequisite to receiving Australian aid.
It is, in any event, foolish for Australia to be making this effort. The Rudd and Gillard governments have doubled Australian aid to the Palestinian territories, and Palestinians in nearby areas, to $70m annually. There is more than a whiff of this being an effort, hopefully forlorn, to placate the Arab vote in the run-up to our ill-advised effort to secure a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
But it is also an example of the wider malaise in our aid program. The decision to wildly increase the aid program, $5 billion now and set to double in the next few years if the Gillard government keeps its promises, means we cannot spend the money properly, productively or prudently.
I asked Teresa Gambaro, the opposition's development assistance spokeswoman, about the UAWC.
She said: "It would appear that Ausaid is providing funds to World Vision to fund an organisation that has links to a terrorist organisation. For Ausaid to come back and say there is nothing wrong is totally unacceptable. This is a situation where World Vision has partnered with another organisation in a third-party arrangement. It seems evident that there is a total lack of transparency and inadequate reporting requirements on NGOs."
Regarding the aid budget more generally, Gambaro argues: "Australia's aid program is on schedule to be doubled and I am deeply concerned that there is not the capacity even now to make sure this money is appropriately and effectively spent."
For decades we have denied aid to people often on the brink of starvation -- among them North Koreans and Burmese -- because we quite rightly object to their governments. Whatever Australian taxes are for, they are not to support organisations with links to terrorist groups. This is just one example of many of how parts of our aid budget have spun bizarrely out of control and no longer reflect majority Australian values.
