Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service claims that the major non-Governmental charity World Vision has funneled millions of dollars to the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza, dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the massacre of Jews.

This raises questions not only about World Vision but about the competence of successive Australian governments which have lavishly supported it and which are charged with overseeing the spending of public money. Further, with terrorism so internationalised, Hamas and associated bodies can be seen as a threat to Australia as well as to Israel.

On 16 June Shin Bet  arrested  Mohammed Elo Halbil, director of World Vision’s Gaza branch, as he was headed back to Gaza from Israel. According to Shin Bet, he made a detailed confession.

The Australian Government has suspended its generous grants to World Vision in the wake of the Shin Bet reports, indicating that it takes them seriously. However, it had been warned for at least four years that World Vision money was going to Hamas and apparently did nothing. What was the Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv doing about it? Investigating would have been a legitimate diplomatic function.

World Vision has defended El Halbil, and claims that: “Based on the information available to us at this time, we have no reason to believe that the allegations are true. We will carefully review any evidence presented to us and will take appropriate actions based on that evidence.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade now says the matter is “deeply troubling.” It is indeed. And one of the deeply troubling aspects is why DFAT apparently knows nothing about it. Allowing for the fact that the evidence comes from Israeli sources, there is at a prima facie case for the investigation both of World Vision and of why DFAT and Australian security apparently did nothing in the face of years of repeated warnings.

El Halbil was the manager of World Vision’s activities in the Gaza Strip. “In that capacity he controlled the budget, equipment and humanitarian aid packages worth tens of millions of dollars,” the Shin Bet said.

It alleges that, according to his own confession, he diverted approximately “60 percent of World Vision’s annual budget for the Gaza Strip to Hamas” which amounted to approximately $7.2 million every year, and which totaled about $A66million.

That’s enough to buy a lot of rockets for bombarding Israeli hospitals and kindergartens, brainwashing a lot of Palestinian children into killers, and supporting those terrorists killed on “martyrdom operations” and their families.

The Israeli civil rights center Shurat HaDin has warned for the past four years that funds provided to Gaza by World Vision were being utilized for terrorism,

In 2012, Shurat HaDin notified the Australian government that its aid money administrated by World Vision was being transferred to front charities of Palestinian terror groups in Gaza. Both the Australian government and WV apparently rejected Shurat HaDin’s warning.

In 2015, Shurat HaDin again told the Australian government that WV was operating as an active arm of terror groups. WV chief executive in Australia, Tim Costello, vehemently denied the charges and claimed that WV had “no interest in supporting terrorism.”

The arrest and apparent detailed confession of el-Halbil have given credence to Shurat HaDin’s warnings. Shurat HaDin President Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said recently, “for years we have been warning that WV is funding Palestinian terror groups in Gaza. WV has repeatedly denied our charges and refused to seriously investigate where its funds are going. They assured us that the organizations they fund had been vetted and were not engaged in terrorism. Who knows how many of Hamas’s missiles and stabbing attacks were funded by WV after they were put on notice that they were financing Palestinian terror? The assistance to Gaza by foreign aid organizations is directly responsible for the murder of scores of Jews in Israel.”

Charges submitted against El Halbil by the Southern District Prosecution in Beer Sheva District Court described him as a Hamas activist who had used his high position in World Vision to divert millions of dollars to the military arm of Hamas, financing, among other things, the digging of terror tunnels.

The money, according to the indictment, was taken out of funds and resources that had been given by well-meaning people for humanitarian assistance to Gaza. The indictment includes 12 counts of security violations of passing information to the enemy, membership in a terror organization, funding terrorism, participating in an unlawful association, and contact with foreign agents.

The indictment describes El Halbil as having a master’s degree in engineering. It says that he has been a member of Hamas since 1995, and in 2004 he joined the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas. In 2005 he was hired by World Vision’s Gaza branch. This gave him a permit to enter Israel. He is alleged to have exploited his visits to Israel to locate and mark, via GPS, sites near the Erez Crossing that potentially could be used as egress points for Hamas attack tunnels.

According to El Halbil’s confession, the humanitarian aid was given almost exclusively to Hamas terrorists and their families. Non-Hamas members almost never received any benefit from the aid, despite their relative level of need. Every month, Elo Halbil distributed thousands of packages of food, basic commodities and medical supplies to Hamas terrorists and their families, intended to go to the needy.

It was further alleged that while working for WV, El Halbil transferred to Hamas’s possession thousands of tons of iron rods, digging equipment and plastic hoses, originally intended for agricultural use but used by the Hamas to build tunnels and military hard points such as the “Palestine” military base which was built in 2015 entirely from British aid money.

El Halbil also provided plastic sheets bearing the WV emblem to cover the openings of tunnels, so they looked like agricultural hothouses.

Israeli sources are not the only ones critical of World Vision. In a 2014 report the organizations NGO Monitor and UN Watch reported: “[there is] little doubt as to World Vision’s willingness to negotiate and coordinate with armed groups. This raises questions as to whether the group would prevent components of its aid from being misappropriated by terrorist organisations, if it felt that taking a stand would jeopardize the organization’s ability to continue its operations in a given area.”

Hamas is reported to be strengthening ties with the abominable ISIS and ISIS fighters wounded in action in Sinai have been smuggled into Gaza via Hamas’s tunnels for treatment.

If it is correct that both World Vision in Australia and the Australian Government have been pouring money into a group associated with what are among the worst and most atrocious terrorist organizations in the world, they are culpable in having allowed this situation to develop.

An investigation is needed a good deal more impartial and thorough that the bland denials and defences of El Halbil which have been forthcoming from World Vision so far. Costello has said every cent of WV money sent to Gaza is accounted for. He and Shim Bet cannot both be right and it is a matter of urgent public importance to establish whose version of events is the correct one. If World Vision is “clean” that is as important to establish as it would be to establish that it was tainted with innocent blood.

Since this article was written El Halabi has denied the allegations against him through his lawyer and World Vision have released the following statement stating their position on El Halal’s arrest: http://www.worldvision.org.uk/news-and-views/latest-news/2016-news/august/statement-kevin-jenkins-gaza/