The Morrison Government is gaining notoriety for leaving people behind.
Currently, there are more than 25,000 Australians stranded across the world unable to return home, some estimate there are 30,000 plus Australians desperate to return in the UK alone. Morrison may be throwing money at Qantas, but he just can’t seem to arrange for commercial or charter flights to bring citizens home.
This piece, however, is about someone Australia left behind and betrayed nearly five years ago and has continued to betray every day since.
The person is a Director for World Vision Australia who has been rotting in various prisons in Israel for close to five years, his name is Mohammad El Halabi. His crime is doing what the Australian Government requested of him.
El Halabi wasn’t doing anything covert like spying. He was distributing foreign aid on behalf of the Australian Government. That foreign aid was going to Palestinian children that struggle for clean water, scrounge for food and who have been traumatised by the ravages of war and constant one-sided attack.
World Vision Australia place tenders with the Department of Foreign Affairs for specific projects and these are either approved or rejected. Any funding allocated is exact and specific.
Mohammad El Halabi was World Vision Australia’s Gaza Project Director. he had been with World Vision for ten years before his arrest on what has been described as “trumped-up charges”.
Read the article by Peter Wicks in Indpendent Australia.