5 Things You Need to Know About World Vision - by Dexter Van Zile

...tolerating a certain amount of diversion of charitable donations is part of the business World Vision is in. In an important 1994 essay about humanitarian aid, Alex de Waal introduces the word “fieldcraft” to describe how officials from humanitarian organizations make “compromises with the authorities for the greater good.” Field officers use their discretion to tolerate “a certain degree of … corruption and extortion,” he writes. The allegations against Halabi, however, go far beyond “fieldcraft.” The allegations indicate he wasn't shipping stuff to Hamas so he could keep helping kids, he was helping kids as a pretext to get resources to Hamas.

Dexter Van Zile..
CAMERA Middle East Issues..
18 August '16..

World Vision, a Christian organization devoted to promoting child welfare throughout the world, is facing a scandal that threatens its credibility in a profound way. One of its employees, Mohammed El-Halabi, stands accused of stealing charitable donations and handing them over to Hamas, a terrorist organization.

On August 4, 2016, the Israel government announced that it was charging Halabi with diverting funds donated for the benefit of children to Hamas, which used the money to purchase weapons and to construct attack tunnels into Israel.

According to Shin Bet, Halabi confessed to diverting money and in-kind contributions (such as food packets) to Hamas fighters, some of whom were included on World Vision's payroll. Children of Hamas members were, according to Israeli officials, falsely put on lists of injured children so that their families would qualify for World Vision donations. Halabi reportedly even confessed to using his position as a World Vision employee to spy out and mark out egress points for Hamas terror tunnels into Israel.

The allegations against World Vision's man in the Gaza Strip are lethal to the organization's credibility. World Vision collects money through a child-sponsorship program in which donors give money to assist and benefit individual children and here is Halabi allegedly confessing to turning these donations into some sort of terrorist-sponsorship program.

What makes the accusation so bothersome is that World Vision has a well-documented tendency to portray Israel as singularly responsible for the suffering of children in the Gaza Strip (and for the Arab-Israeli conflict) while giving Hamas a pass.

Here are a five things that people need to know about World Vision.

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