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George Galloway writes to the Charity Commission over its Viva Palestina intervention

George Galloway writes to the Charity Commission over its Viva Palestina intervention

Categories: Latest News

Wednesday April 15 2009

  George Galloway MP has revealed details of difficulties being experienced by the Viva Palestina initiative in a letter addressed to the Charity Commission.

Galloway, who travelled to Gaza last month with British Muslims and a convoy of vehicles loaded with aid, has written to the Commission countering some of its allegations concerning the workings of the organisation. His letter has been made public and can be read in full on the Viva Palestina website.

Excerpts from the letter are copied below:

‘Your correspondence seems to represent a wildly disproportionate and inappropriate reaction to our recent delivery of aid to the suffering Palestinians in Gaza, and must raise the question: Why?

I have become increasingly concerned about the abuse of your powers displayed in your brazenly obvious political double standards. About your attempts, under the guise of regulating British charities, to police the democratic efforts of political activists in Britain in a way never envisaged by parliament. About your preparedness to waste large sums of public money in political stunts, either at the behest of others or in the hope that you are properly anticipating their wishes. And above all, in the context of this issue, your almost laughably obvious prejudice against the Palestinian cause and against Britain’s two million-strong Muslim community.

During Israel’s 22-day attack on virtually defenceless Palestinian civilians in Gaza – condemned by virtually everyone in the world from the United Nations to the Pope and including the British government – an organisation The Zionist Federation took out a full page advert in the Jewish Chronicle on 9th January asking readers to send “care packages” to “our [ie Israeli] soldiers fighting on the front line” in Gaza and to send charity vouchers to a British registered charity Operation Wheelchairs Committee (charity number 263089) for the same purpose.
 
Although this was immediately drawn to your attention you appear to have done absolutely nothing at all about such an abuse of charitable status. The Zionist Federation is presumably not a registered charity any more than Viva Palestina was. The Zionist Federation appeal was for money for “care packages” with donations possible online to www.zionist.org.uk and to the charity Operation Wheelchairs Committee. By the logic of your actions towards Viva Palestina, surely you should have immediately declared the Zionist Federation to be a charity with all that that entails. But you did not do so. Why? In any case, the Operation Wheelchairs Committee is a charity, soliciting for funds in this advert to support a foreign army involved in a widely condemned military action, in which thousands of civilians were killed, maimed and orphaned. Yet the Charity Commission did nothing. No freezing of bank accounts, no press releases, no carefully briefed “concerns”, no threats of High Court judges.
 
It will only take the reader (I am publishing this letter as widely as I can) a moment’s thought to imagine what the Charity Commission’s attitude would have been if a British – Muslim – Charity had taken a full page advertisement in a different British newspaper raising money for “care packages” for “our [ie Palestinian] soldiers fighting on the front line” in Gaza.

Without any knowledge of the intentions of Viva Palestina and on the basis of press reports, you pronounced, as is your wont, that we were in effect a charity, to give yourselves locus in our affairs.

You first frightened the banks into refusing our attempts to open a bank account. When we finally found a bank which would allow us to open an account you intimidated them into freezing it, I believe exceeding your powers. You then began procuring documents – possibly illegally – about us from the Islamic Bank. As a result of your press briefings about your “concerns” newspapers began to refuse to accept advertisements from us, donors turned away, and the public were encouraged to believe that Viva Palestina was something to be avoided – conjuring-up an undisclosed but lurking suspicion about it.

In all this you acted not as the public would expect a Charity Commission to do, but rather as a self-appointed state policeman of the activist sector, a mission-creep towards a style of work which simply must be contested.

[…] It is you, for transparently political reasons, who insisted that charitable status should be sought. You registered Viva Palestina as a charity in record quick time and without the great bulk of the information you normally required. And then you froze the record-quick new charity’s bank account so that it could not operate. These are police state tactics, entirely inappropriate and without any basis.
 
Viva Palestina simply provided a focus for an aid convoy from Britain to Gaza. It was de-centralised. Each participant was responsible for raising their own money, bringing their own vehicles, filling their own vehicles with their own aid, making their own donations in Gaza. You have been told this but continue to misrepresent the position. The money raised by Viva Palestina itself – a much smaller amount – was publicly declared to be intended as a donation to a British charity for work in Gaza – Interpal, with which you are depressingly familiar for having harassed it for years on repeatedly debunked smears.
 
The vast majority of the participants in the convoy, and the vast majority of those who helped them with money and aid, were British Muslims.

Having exerted that mighty effort, those British Muslims now find that their peaceful democratic response to the crisis in Gaza has been criminalised by you, and their aid confiscated. This all follows the high-profile police raid on vehicles from the Muslim community in the North West heading to join the convoy the night before its departure. This raid, blazed across the media, saw the arrest of ten Muslims headed for the convoy. All ten of them were later released without charge, but not before sowing the seeds of tremendous bitterness in the communities from which the men came.

Viva Palestina’s work has effectively come to a halt since your intervention in its affairs and in my absence. This was, I’m sure, your intention. …If necessary we will start a new organisation free from your wrecking efforts. There are Palestinians dying as a result of the malignant, sinister, cynical actions taken by you. Trust me you’ll be hearing more about this.’
 

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