Oxfam drops NGO ‘linked to terror’ three years after alert
OXFAM HAS finally stopped handing over millions of euros to a Palestinian NGO — three years after being warned about the Ramallah-based organisation’s alleged terror links.
The charity’s last payment to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) was in November last year, but advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) told the JC it had been warning Oxfam about the organisation since 2019.
Israel outlawed UAWC last October ,and a 20-month-long probe by the Dutch government which concluded in January found “individual links” between the UAWC and terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The Israeli Ministry of Defence said that the UAWC was controlled by senior leaders of the PFLP, and according to Atlas, Oxfam’s online project database, the organisation has received more than €2 million from Oxfam since 2017.
Investigators from Proximities Risk Consultancy, which was commissioned by the Dutch government to probe UAWC, said the terrorist connections involved 34 people between 2007 and 2020.
In addition, 28 UAWC board members reportedly had PFLP links and, for a period, 12 of those reportedly had leading positions in the UAWC and the PFLP simultaneously.
No financial flows between the UAWC and the PFLP or any proof of organisational unity between the two groups was found in the Dutch government report, however.
Last December, the EU instructed Oxfam to cut funding to the UAWC, pending its own investigation into the NGO’s alleged terror links.
In a statement, Oxfam GB said: “Oxfam is aware of the Dutch position. Oxfam does not currently fund UAWC.” According to the charity’s website, the UAWC was formed to “improve the performance and professionalism of Palestinian farmers during the Israel-Palestinian conflict”.
In 2019 UKLFI wrote to Oxfam to inform them that “many past and present” UAWC employees had links to the PFLP.
Caroline Turner, director of UKLFI, said: “It is untenable for Oxfam to continue to fund the UAWC given the information that has now emerged from the Dutch investigation and the Israeli designation of the group.”