At the beginning of August, a Palestinian man opened fire on IDF soldiers at the Gaza boundary, threw an incendiary device, and attempted to breach the fence. He was killed by return fire. What made his act stand out was that the man, Hani al-Majdalawi, was employed as a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), one of the world’s best-known international aid organizations. Al-Majdalawi had previously been employed by both Oxfam Great Britain and the American Friends Service Committee, two of the West’s oldest NGOs. Although he was not dressed as a medical provider at the time of his attack, his act added to mounting concern that NGOs operating in the Middle East are increasingly vulnerable to infiltration by terrorists, and susceptible to being co-opted by extremist ideologies. Doctors Without Borders is currently conducting an inquiry.
In August, another alarm was sounded about the possible spread of terrorist ideology to supposedly neutral aid groups when a respected EU police mission called EUPOL COPPS, the EU Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support, announced it was partnering with a children’s charity, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P). EUPOL COPPS, which was founded under the auspices of the EU Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process in 2005 and has a current budget of 12 million euros, provides assistance and training to the Palestinian Authority to improve its civil police and law enforcement capacity as part of the EU’s wider effort to work toward “a comprehensive peace, based on a two-state solution.” Though it enjoys the reputation of being a serious and professional group, on Aug. 8, EUPOL COPPS posted a notice on its Facebook page that it was hosting a workshop with DCI-P, an organization, it announced, with which it has enjoyed “a longstanding collaboration,” despite the fact that its founding members enjoy strong ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is considered to be a terrorist group by Israel, the European Union, the United States, and Canada.
There is nothing particularly subtle about the reasons why the EU itself labels the PFLP as a terrorist group. The organization was responsible for more than a dozen high-profile airline hijackings, bombings, and shootings starting in the 1960s and ’70s, including the Lod Airport massacre, in conjunction with the Japanese Red Army, which led to the deaths of 28 people. The PFLP-General Command was responsible for the hijacking of an Air France plane to Uganda in June 1976, which was ended with the successful Israeli rescue operation, Operation Thunderbolt, at Entebbe Airport. Since 2000, PFLP has carried out at least 13 suicide bombings, stabbings, shootings and ax attacks, including the murder of Israeli Minister for Tourism Rehavam Ze’evi.
Defense for Children International-Palestine’s links to the PFLP have been fulsomely documented. According to NGO Monitor, Mahmoud Jiddah, who was elected to the DCI-P board in May 2012, was imprisoned by Israel for 17 years for carrying out grenade attacks against Israeli civilians in Jerusalem in 1968, and is reported to be a member of PFLP. Hassan Abed Aljawad, another DCI-P board member up to 2018, represents the PFLP at public events. Fatima Daana, an attorney and board secretary, is said by Israeli intelligence to be the widow of Raed Nazzal, the former commander of the PFLP’s armed wing (the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades) in Qalqilya. Nazzal led several terrorist attacks and was killed in 2002 in a shootout with IDF forces. Shawan Jabarin, a PFLP activist, was a member of DCI-P’s board of directors from 2007 to 2014, and was convicted in 1985 for recruiting members for the PFLP and arranging PFLP training outside Israel. In 1994 Jabarin was again arrested for PFLP links and placed in administrative detention for six months. Israeli authorities claim he “had not discontinued his terrorist involvement and maintains his position in the leadership of the PFLP.” Nassar Ibrahim and Dr. Majed Nassar, also on DCI-P’s board, are also both alleged to be members of PFLP. DCI-P’s latest published annual report for 2014 is dedicated to Hashem Abu Maria, one of its employees killed during a riot in July 2014. Abu Maria’s obituary was also featured on the PFLP website and in its Facebook postings, where he was described as a PFLP military commander. After the revelation of DCI-P’s terror ties by U.K. Lawyers for Israel, both Citibank and Arab Bank deactivated their online links for monetary donations to DCI-P.
So how did such a bizarre mix come about? Defense for Children International, DCI-P’s parent organization, was founded in 1979, the “Year of the Child,” for the purpose of advancing the rights of children, particularly in cases of intercountry adoptions and human trafficking. With 45 sections around the world, and an international secretariat in Geneva, DCI has an international reputation, and holds “consultative status” on the United Nations Economic and Social Council, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the Council of Europe.