Reported by SHARRI MARKSON
Australians have been donating tens of thousands of dollars to an aid organisation in Gaza that’s been accused of funnelling the money to a hardline Islamic terrorist group.
Sky News can reveal the charity founded by the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni is sending money to a Gaza-based health organisation that is accused of being affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, known as the PFLP.
The PFLP, responsible for hijacking planes, assassinations and suicide bombings, is a designated terrorist organisation in the United States, the European Union and Canada, while Australia has the group on its consolidated list of organisations subject to financial sanctions.
NGO Monitor says the links between the PFLP and the aid organisation, the Union of Health Work Committees (UHWC), are so extensive that any funding supporting it is in violation of international terror financing laws and incompatible with human rights principles.
Israeli officials believe the UHWC is a front for the PFLP and declared it an illegal organisation in early 2020.
Mr Mashni is a founding and current board member of registered Australian charity “Olive Kids”, which claims to support Palestinian children and orphans.
One of the four partners it sends funds to is the UHWC, a non-government organisation that says it “provides health services in Gaza with focus on women and children”.
“Olive Kids collaborates with UHWC to facilitate annual Australian medical missions to operate Al Awda (hospital),” its website states.
Olive Kids specifies, in its 2020-21 annual report, that as part of their emergency appeal for Gaza, $30,000 was sent for urgent medical supplies and consumables for the UHWC Medical Centre and the Al-Awda Hospital.
Another $15,000 was given for fuel for generators for UHWC for critical energy shortages.
Olive Kids has been working with UHWC since at least 2014, according to its annual reports.
Its 2016 report said that “in collaboration with the Union of Health Work Committees (UHWC) Olive Kids facilitated an Australian medical mission to Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza.”
A January 2020 report by the Israel-based NGO Monitor, which has been set up to assess non-governmental organisations claiming to advance human rights, identifies extensive ties between UHWC and the PFLP terror group.
Washington Institute fellow, Matthew Levitt, who is also the director of its counterterrorism and intelligence program, wrote a report in 2021 examining the evidence against NGOs like UHWC providing funding to the PFLP.
“According to the Israeli indictment of Tisir Abu Sharbak, one of the four UHWC employees arrested in May 2021, the NGOs in question employed a variety of money laundering schemes to obfuscate their role as PFLP fronts,” he wrote.
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