Donor alert after Australians fund ‘Jihad’ stadium

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PETER KOHN

JEWISH people should carefully examine the ideologies of humanitarian groups they donate to, an aid expert warned this week, after it was revealed that an Australian-funded soccer stadium in the West Bank has been named after a leading terrorist.

Jewish Aid Australia (JAA) CEO Gary Samowitz said donors need to be diligent when deciding where to give their charity.

“A lot of the time, they don’t know where their funding is going. They just give, and then they get a nasty surprise,” he said.

Samowitz was commenting after news emerged that Palestinian authorities are planning to name a sporting complex in Jenin, which contains a soccer field funded by World Vision Australia, the Abu Jihad Youth City.

Abu Jihad, also known as Khalil al-Wazir, was a commander of Fatah’s armed wing and plotted several attacks on Israel in the 1970s and 1980s.

A World Vision Australia spokesperson has stated the aid group did not have anything to do with the naming of the complex.

“Subsequent to our work establishing the soccer field, the governor of Jenin and the ministry of youth and sport have embraced it and determined they will build additional sports facilities on the site,” she told media.

Samowitz said that JAA does not work with World Vision “because we don’t want Jewish funding going towards a project like this, obviously”.

He told The AJN a lot of aid organisations “have quite a firm stance” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

By contrast, JAA recently worked with Care Australia, distributing $140,000 in funds raised by the Jewish community towards the Haiti earthquake appeal. “Care Australia are non-political and non-religious …We’ve met with them and we’re assured they’re an organisation we can trust and they’re not anti-Israel.”