World Vision court action on hold

ISRAELI civil rights group Shurat HaDin has postponed commencing legal action against World Vision Australia after the two organisations met in Sydney over the weekend.

Shurat HaDin had given World Vision Australia until this week to cease funding a Gaza-based charity, which the former claims is a front for terror, or face proceedings in the Federal Court for breaches of the Charter of the United Nations Act 1945, and claims for misleading and deceptive conduct.

Attending Sunday’s meeting – convened by Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim – were Shurat HaDin solicitor Andrew Hamilton, World Vision Australia’s general counsel Seak-King Huang and World Vision Australia adviser Professor Tim McCormack.

“Several ideas were put forward with a view to achieving a resolution of the issues,” Wertheim said. “The parties have agreed to consider these ideas in good faith in further detail, and to communicate with one another again once they have done so.”

Shurat HaDin first wrote to World Vision Australia and the Australian government’s foreign aid arm, AusAID, in February, claiming that the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), which AusAID funds through World Vision, is a subsidiary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was listed as a terrorist organisation by the federal government in 2001.

World Vision Australia has consistently claimed that it has undertaken thorough investigations that have cleared the UAWC of any links to the PFLP.

GARETH NARUNSKY

A UAWC demonstration.

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