The NGO Shurat HaDin on Thursday sent a letter to Oxfam International (Oxfam) threatening to sue in multiple countries if Oxfam did not cease its connections with two aid groups which the NGO identified as part of a terrorist group.
Shurat Hadin - Israel Law Center sent the letter to Oxfam affiliates in England (the international headquarters), the US, Australia and certain other affiliates, the timing of which came out shortly after a public fall-out between actress Scarlett Johansen and Oxfam over her appearing in a Super Bowl advertisement for Soda Stream, which has a factory in the West Bank.
The PFLP has been associated with major terror attacks dating back to the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre, the assassination of then tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001 and, according to a report by an expert on terrorism, it was responsible for rocket attacks during former prime minister Ariel Sharon's funeral and a range of others recent attacks.The letter alleges that Oxfam "provides financial aid and additional forms of material support to the Union of Health Workers Committees (UHWC) and the Union of Agricultural Workers Committees (“UAWC”), instrumentalities of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (“PFLP”) in the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority."
The letter continues, "Oxfam readily acknowledges it works very closely with these two Palestinian groups and provides them financial support," which it says were created and are subsidized by the PFLP.
"Your organization has described them as your 'partners' in the numerous press communications and reports you have published. Indeed, last month you signed a new agreement with the UHWC to provide it further financial support," said Shurat Hadin.
The terror expert's report also gives numerous examples of alleged mixing of personnel and messages of incitement between the PFLP and UHWC and UAWC.
For example, the expert says that Dr. Ahmed Maslamani served at the same time as the head of the PFLP and the UHWC in the West Bank, and that Bashir al Kheiry and Jamil Muhammad Ismail al-Majdalawi served at the same time or have served with both the UAWC and the PFLP.
He says that all of the above personnel were at one point imprisoned by Israel for PFLP activities, seeking to demonstrate that their PFLP activities were themselves criminal.
The report concludes that the evidence he assembled as an "initial" report "clearly" connects the PFLP and the UHWC and UAWC, while cautioning that the issue could be further researched.
Shurat Hadin said that "the UAHC is the PFLP’s health organization and UAWC is the PLFP's agricultural organization and these entities are an agency or instrumentality of the PFLP."
It alleged that Oxfam's providing financial aid to the UAHC and the UAWC "directly or indirectly makes assets available to the PLFP."
The letter continues, stating that the EU has listed the PFLP as a terrorist organization and that, "Article 3 of the EU Common Position prohibits the making available of, directly or indirectly, funds, financial assets or economic resources or other related services to or for the benefit of the listed terrorist entities."
Turning to US law, the letter says that the PFLP is also officially designated a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” pursuant to section 219 of the US Immigration and Nationality Act and other legal provisions.
According to Shurat Hadin, a 2010 US Supreme Court case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, "any assistance or support to designated terrorist groups, include putatively benign forms of assistance (such as agricultural aid) is criminal."
Though that decision has received some criticism in the US legal community for going too far in sanctioning human rights groups' efforts and connections with a Turkish organization declared as a terrorist organization by the US, where the activities of the groups are nonviolent, it is still decisive, and could potentially be applied to human rights groups like Oxfam in the alleged circumstances.
Further, Shurat Hadin said that Australia has listed the PFLP as a terrorist organization under the Charter of the United Nations Act 1945 which makes it illegal "for an individual or corporation to directly or indirectly make an asset available to a proscribed person or entity."
Story from Jerusalem post
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