World Vision and Hamas

Shalom Kiwi blogs:

The news broke yesterday that the director of the Gaza branch of World Vision, Mohammed El-Halabi, was arrested by the Israeli internal secret service for allegedly diverting tens of millions of dollars of World Vision funds to the terrorist arm of Hamas.

It is reported that during the investigation El-Halabi admitted that he had been a member of Hamas since his youth, had undergone military training and had been commissioned by Hamas to infiltrate World Vision. He also reportedly admitted that his father, Halil El-Halabi, who had served as head of UNWRA’s educational institutions in the Gaza Strip for years, was a member of Hamas and used his position as a UN employee to help the terrorist organization.

El-Halabi allegedly employed a sophisticated and systematic apparatus for transferring 60% of World Vision’s annual budget for Gaza to Hamas – approximately US$7.2 million per year. This included establishing and promoting fictitious humanitarian projects and fake agricultural associations which acted as cover for the transfer of monies to Hamas. It is alleged the funds diverted to Hamas were utilised to finance the digging of terror tunnels, the building of military bases and the purchase of weapons. Some of the money also went to pay the salaries of Hamas terrorists and, in some cases, senior Hamas terrorists took large sums of money for their own personal use. El-Halabi is also charged with regularly transferring equipment that he ordered on behalf of World Vision, supposedly for agricultural aid, to Hamas for construction of military outposts and to dig terror tunnels.

In light of the arrest, Australia announced it was suspending funding to World Vision until the investigation was complete.

I hope the NZ Government does the same. This needs to be fully investigated, which means more than an internal prove by World Vision.