{Originally posted to the author’s eponymous blog, RichardMillett’s Blog}
Today is Sport Relief (brought to us by Comic Relief) with millions of people throughout the country raising money for charity. It is set to dominate the BBC TV tonight.
It is a tragic question but one has to ask how much of these funds are used properly?
Comic Relief makes grants to certain charities one of which is War On Want whom I have been writing about for many years now and, in particular, its executive director John Hilary.
John Hilary’s War On Want has been spending War On Want time and precious resources on targeting one specific country: Israel. You know, the country that also happens to be the only Jewish one.
John Hilary’s behavior has seen War On Want used to invade Sainsbury’s with activists removing Israeli produce from the shelves, produce fake guns so anti-Israel students can parade around campuses pretending to be Israeli soldiers, and sponsor meetings where speakers have suggested, inter alia, that Israel harvests organs from dead Palestinians and that “Palestinians live in apartheid ghettos“.
All disgusting lies of course with the sole intent of demonizing the Jewish state.
A recent War On Want press release again talks of “Israeli Apartheid”. The accusation that Israel practices apartheid is a disgusting lie that only minimises the seriousness of the actual practice of apartheid.
One can also buy clothes on War On Want’s website with horrific anti-Israel slogans on them (see below).
And above you can see keffiyeh wearing John Hilary at an anti-Israel rally in 2014 which even attracted one anti-Israel demonstrator wearing a shirt comparing “Palestine” to the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Dachau (see below).
One might have hoped Comic Relief would have relented from funding charities which squander scarce resources on crude, vulgar and racist political activism, but in response to its letter to Comic Relief Israel Advocacy Movement received this response:
Dear Joseph,
Thank you for your email and for bringing your thoughts to our attention.
As part of our commitment to pursuing our vision of a just world free from poverty, Comic Relief provides a number of grants to organisations that work to support slum dwellers and street vendors in some of the world’s most disadvantaged communities, as part of our People Living in Urban Slums programme. This includes grants to three projects run by War on Want – two projects in South Africa and one other in Kenya. Comic Relief has never made a grant to projects in, or relating to, Palestine or Israel and is not involved with War on Want’s campaigning work in this area.
The projects we fund War on Want to carry out help slum dwellers and street vendors to secure lasting improvements in their working and living conditions, avoid exploitation and get their voices heard in local issues such as housing and access to basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity.
We closely monitor all our grants to ensure the money is spent to good effect as outlined in the grant application and are reassured that the funds we have given to War on Want have been spent on appropriate project activities. As our grant-making policies state, we do not fund campaigning work that takes a partisan political stance. Comic Relief takes particular care to respect the guidance and regulation set out by the Charity Commission of England and Wales and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator around funding political activity and we expect all charities we fund to do likewise.
So, thank you once again for bringing your thoughts to our attention, but we are satisfied that the work we are supporting War on Want to do is making a real difference to the lives of slum dwellers and street vendors in Kenya and South Africa.
Best wishes,
Mark Hoult-Allen
Head of Grants Operations
——
Comic Relief
As you can read Comic Relief admits to continuing to fund War On Want and although the funding might not relate directly to anti-Israel political activism Comic Relief’s grant allows War On Want to divert resources that should have been used to help slum-dwellers to projects that demonize Israel instead.
At a time of rising anti-Semitism in the UK it is a shame that Comic Relief/Sport Relief funding is indirectly contributing to War On Want’s continued demonization of the Jewish state and possible further attacks on British Jews.