OPINION
Taking over from Waleed Aly as the go-to poster-boy for Islamic terror apologism, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni has been getting a pretty sweet gig from the taxpayer-funded leftist propaganda collective national broadcaster, the ABC.
But, just who is the left-media’s latest Islamic poster boy, and what has he been up to?
Well, he’s been assiduously fundraising on the back of Hamas getting its too-long-delayed comeuppance. Even my personal Facebook feed has been hammered by money-begging ads for his charity, Olive Kids. Which does what, exactly?
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.
BFD readers may recall the name, “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine”. It’s the proscribed terror group that NZ’s very own ‘extremism expert’ was fundraising for and running a national solidarity campaign to support.
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.
Which brings us back, full circle, to Nasser Mashni.
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 […] Olive Kids has been working with UHWC since at least 2014, according to its annual reports.
By “working with”, they mean, ‘sending lots of money to’.
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.
How much of that money actually went to medical supplies, though? It seems likely that at least some of it was skimmed off for, well, other purposes.
A January 2020 report by the Israel-based NGO Monitor […] alleged that UHWC was over-charging international donors for medical equipment, among other legitimate projects, and funnelling the remaining money to the PFLP.
Oh, but they’re Joos, of course they’d say that, wouldn’t they?
They’re not the only ones.
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.
One of these is the above-mentioned overcharging. In one case, just over NZD one million was charged for medicines costing only NZD 44,000. In another case, nearly half a million NZD was charged for a project costing a mere NZD 1300.
That’s an awful lot of dark money for, well, whatever you reckon Hamas would use dark money for.
Many employees at the UHWC are also members of the PFLP.
The history between UHWC and the PFLP dates to the charity’s very inception.
A USAID document, dated 1993, states that the UHWC is “the PFLP’s health organisation”.
The PFLP, as a reminder, is a terrorist organisation responsible for hijackings, suicide bombings and synagogue massacres.
Sky News asked Mr Mashni if he was aware of the connections between UHWC and the PFLP, how much money had been sent by Olive Kids to UHWC and whether he was concerned that money intended for Palestinian children could end up with a terror group.
He did not respond to the questions.
But he does have a lot to say on other matters.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Friday that Mr Mashni had advocated for the destruction of the Israeli state and claimed the world’s power structures “all focus upon Zionism”.
The Australian
Maybe Byron Clark could sell some T-shirts for him?