Yesterday, a district court in southern Israel sentenced Mohammed El Halabi, World Vision’s manager of operations in Gaza, to twelve years in prison on charges that he provided material support to Hamas in a ruling that El Halabi’s attorney strenuously denies.
“He says that he’s innocent, he did nothing and there is no evidence,” Halabi’s attorney Maher Hanna told the Times of Israel. “On the contrary, he proved in the court above any reasonable doubt that he made sure that no money will be (given) directly to Hamas.”
During the past six years of his detention, Halabi has refuted all charges against him, several times passing on offers to plead guilty on lesser charges. As is often the case when Palestinians appear in Israeli courts, Halabi’s verdict and sentence were based on a secret file that his attorney was not allowed to see.
World Vision described the ruling as “deeply disappointing and in sharp contrast to the evidence and facts of the case, “and affirmed its support for Halabi’s intent to appeal the verdict and call for a fair and transparent appeal process “based on the facts of the case.”
Before the agency suspended its operations in Gaza, Halabi oversaw World Vision’s work with 40,000 children, focusing on early child development, child protection and community resilience. For over 45 years, the global Christian relief and development organization has worked to improve the lives of children throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
Attack on civil society
In a 2021 interview with Mondoweiss, Halabi said the charges against him were made up and intended to intimidate others from working to help Palestinians in Gaza. “The claims that the Israeli prosecutor has issued against me are fabricated and aimed at stopping the humanitarian work I and others are doing for the people of Gaza,” Halabi said.
Following the verdict, the Halabi family agreed. “Mohammed represents all the international institutions that Israel wants to deter. Future generations of children will be affected by Israeli aggression against humanitarian organizations,” Mohammed’s brother, Hamed Al-Halabi, told Mondoweiss.
A Ph.D. lecturer in human rights at Palestine University-Gaza, Hamed charged, “This verdict is a revenge act against Mohammed because he refuted the Israeli accusations against him and refused to take a plea deal based on the fabricated evidence Israel presented in court.”
Raji Sourani, Director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza City, echoed the sentiment that the Halabi sentence is an attack on Palestinian civil society. Sourani told the Guardian it must be viewed in the context of the recent Israeli raid on Palestinian organizations in the West Bank, calling it part of a “systematic Israeli smear campaign against civil society and groups that help the Palestinian people.”
World Vision concurred. Its statement reads, “The arrest, six-year trial, unjust verdict and this sentence are emblematic of actions that hinder humanitarian work in Gaza and the West Bank. It adds to the chilling impact on World Vision and other aid or development groups working to assist Palestinians.”
False charges
In June of 2016, Halabi was unexpectedly arrested on his way home from meetings. World Vision staff was left unaware of where he was being held and on what charges. After a 50-day detention, he was accused, among other things, with funneling millions of dollars and providing material support to Hamas. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
After his arrest, according to a statement issued by Kevin Jenkins, President and CEO of World Vision International, the organization embarked on a thorough and wide-ranging review of its operations, including a forensic audit by a leading global accounting firm. The review countered Israel’s charges.
Haaretz reported yesterday that the team consisted of “around a dozen lawyers, including numerous former assistant U.S. attorneys.” According to Haaretz, the group reviewed nearly 300,000 emails and conducted over 180 interviews” as forensic auditors “scoured nearly every financial transaction at World Vision from 2010 until 2016.”
A 400-page report was created by the group, which included the Australian government, one of the organization’s largest donors, disputing many claims in Israel’s case. The report was offered to the court, but it refused to sign the nondisclosure agreement that would have provided access to the information.
‘A mockery of due process’
On Twitter, Human Rights Watch’s Omar Shakir called the ruling, “A profound miscarriage of justice” and that the case “made a mockery of due process.”
The family raised this point, too. “Israel preceded his case with a secret file which is against all the essential fair trials according to human rights,” Hamed Al-Halabi told Mondoweiss.
Pointing to the injustice of Halabi’s arrest and trial, in a 2016 OpEd in Haaretz Gideon Levy wrote:
Either El Halabi is one of Israel’s greatest and most dangerous enemies ever, as the indictment against him indicates – or he’s the victim of a cynical, cruel propaganda system that is exploiting him to stop the influx of international humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Either he diverted tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of tons of iron to Hamas for tunnel-digging projects, as Israel’s Shin Bet security service maintains, or he’s a “humanitarian hero,” as the United Nations designated him in 2014. Either he’s a long-time Hamas “plant” in World Vision, the huge global aid organization whose Gaza and other branches he headed, or he’s a person who has devoted his life to providing humanitarian aid to farmers, disabled children and cancer patients in the Strip.
Regardless of the sentence, the Halabi family is still calling for action, working with their attorney to appeal the verdict. “We call upon all the international institutions for a clear and serious stance against the injustice system of the Israeli courts,” Hamed Al-Halabi insists.
In the meantime, World Vision laments, “We are saddened that our work helping Gaza’s most vulnerable children has been disrupted for so long.”
With reporting from Tareq Hajjaj in Gaza.
Amnesty International:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/06/i-opt-quash-flawed-conviction-of-aid-worker-mohammed-al-halabi/
“Amnesty International is calling on Israeli authorities to quash the conviction of Mohammed al-Halabi, a Palestinian aid worker from Gaza who was yesterday found guilty in a deeply flawed trial of diverting millions of dollars to the Hamas de facto administration. The majority of the evidence used against him remains secret.”…Mohammed al-Halabi was denied access to a lawyer and held incommunicado for the first weeks of detention, facing intensive interrogations without legal representation. According to his lawyer and media reports, he was severely beaten and his ‘confession’ to stealing 7.4 million USD a year was obtained under duress. His allegations of torture have not been investigated. Mohammed al-Halabi was not charged with a crime until 4 August, more than seven weeks after his arrest.
Secret evidence! Stalin would be proud.
It takes huge courage to refuse to plead guilty in circumstances like these. Think of that when you read about people who did accept a plea bargain.
1 of 2
RGB Media – Responsive Email Template (972mag.com)
The Landline
“How a Palestinian psychologist helped explain my family’s trauma” 972 Magazine, August 31/22, by Vera Sajrawi
“Being human is no piece of cake. In childhood, a mere inconvenience might leave you with long-lasting scars, or your caregivers might unintentionally leave you with trauma that could last a lifetime if you do not actively work toward overcoming it. Most of us, after all, are adults with a hurt inner child that is begging for healing.
“Being a Palestinian is definitely not a piece of cake, either, no matter if you are living in historic Palestine or in the diaspora. No matter how much you try to protect your mental health & well-being, the traumas of living under occupation & exile will scar you deeply.
“I have lived most of my life trying to understand those scars & tend to them; at some points, the trauma of being Palestinian made it nearly impossible to function.
“I was born into an internally displaced refugee family, meaning that when Israel was established, its forces destroyed our village — Al-Sajara — & we became refugees in another Palestinian community inside the new state. To this day, even though we hold Israeli citizenship, my family is barred from returning & living on their original land.
“During the 1948 war, my paternal grandparents were uprooted & stripped of all their property following a bloody battle in their village between Palestinian fighters & Zionist militias. Before that, they lived in Al-Sajara alongside a number of Jews who immigrated from Europe & worked with them in farming.
“As a child, my grandparents never spoke to me about what happened during the Nakba (‘catastrophe’). My grandfather was likely clinically depressed after losing everything, including his youngest sister, who was 16 when the Zionist militias shot her dead during the invasion of the village. I used to think that his silence was simply a sign of his tranquil demeanor, as opposed to my grandmother, who was always irritated & expressive. Stories about what happened in 1948 came instead from other family members.”(cont’d)
2 of 2
“My parents, too, withheld our family history from me when I was growing up. I thought they were protecting me, but I was emotionally intelligent enough to pick up on cues & create a picture, however basic, of what happened to us. I spent my elementary & middle school years trying to figure out why Israelis hated me, & why Palestinians living in Israel have internalized so much of that anger. Then, I realized that the more I learn & teach about my ancestors & what they endured, the more I gained a sense of inner resilience. Since then, I have not stopped studying the effects of continuous violence, in all its forms, on the Palestinian psyche.
“Having an internal refugee family exposed me to many forms of resilience. My grandparents had to rebuild their lives from scratch, forced to adapt to a new village under a military regime that controlled all aspects of their lives until 1966. My father, aunts, & uncles grew up in extreme poverty after my grandfather lost his land. They also absorbed their parents’ PTSD. My grandmother, on the other hand, was extremely angry at their forced condition, yet she worked hard & raised her kids to be hardworking too.
“This is a glimpse of my personal story, but it is a common Palestinian one: you work hard to survive, despite all the hardships that life throws your way, while also trying to take care of your mental health.
“One of the starkest demonstrations of this resilience was on display in May 2021, when Palestinians led a mass uprising against the Israeli state. The ensuing repression spread to nearly all corners of the land; Palestinians in Gaza endured another heavy bombardment by the Israeli army, & even Palestinians inside Israel & the West Bank were exposed to lynching, police & military brutality, & a pervasive sense of danger as security forces abetted settler attacks.
“In the months following the uprising, I heard about a network of Palestinian psychologists who had formed support groups inside Israel in order to provide emergency mental health care to Palestinian victims of Israeli violence & their families…(cont’d)
Torture and secret evidence is justice for Palestinians in Israel. It never ends.