The U.S. State Department announced what it said is a “historic” $2 billion distribution of global health foreign assistance, partnering with three faith-based organizations on the largest such U.S. allocation in two decades.
One of the partners that the department announced on Thursday, World Vision in the United Kingdom, has a history of links to terrorism funding.
In 2022, an Israeli court convicted Muhammad Halabi, manager of Gaza operations at World Vision, on charges of funneling up to $50 million to Hamas.
World Vision shuttered its Gaza operations until it carried out an audit, which it said found no evidence of financial irregularities involving Halabi. He was freed in a hostage-prisoner exchange deal during the most recent Israel-Hamas war.
World Vision was also the subject of a 2019 U.S. Senate Finance Committee probe, which found that the Christian charity contracted in 2014 with Islamic Relief Agency as a sub-grantee for a U.S. Agency for International Development-backed humanitarian project in Sudan.
Islamic Relief Agency is under U.S. Treasury Department sanctions for ties to terror financing, including for Osama bin Laden.
The Senate Finance Committee concluded that World Vision had inadequate internal compliance mechanisms in place and failed to properly vet Islamic Relief Agency, instead transferring $125,000 to the entity.
The Senate panel called World Vision’s vetting procedures “borderline negligent.”
It also took the charity to task for not releasing its audit of the Halabi case.
In 2022, World Vision received $491 million in “food, non-food commodities and cash” from the U.S. government, and it was the “sixth largest implementor of USAID grants,” per the Senate committee. (JNS sought comment from the State Department and World Vision.)
Founded in 1950, World Vision International has a U.S. branch in Washington state. It operates in more than 90 countries and provides emergency services and relief in more than 56 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, per its website.
According to NGO Monitor, World Vision describes itself as being “committed to advocating for the improved well-being of children living under Israeli occupation” and “believes that the Israeli occupation has negative spiritual and psychological effects on Palestinians and Israelis, especially the children.”
Its Israel branch was dissolved in 2024 after an audit process ordered by the Israeli Justice Ministry found that World Vision transferred assets to entities linked to terrorism and had board members who were vocal advocates of boycotting and delegitimizing Israel.
After this article ran, a State Department spokesman told JNS that “any implication that the Trump administration is permitting the diversion of U.S. foreign assistance to organizations with ties to terrorism is baseless.”
“No administration has held Hamas and other radical Islamist terrorist organizations more accountable than the Trump administration,” the spokesman said.
“We are confident in the vetting process that informed this partnership and remain committed to ensuring that U.S. assistance reaches the people it is intended to help,” the spokesman told JNS.
The U.S. contribution to World Vision does not include funding for World Vision in Gaza, the Foggy Bottom spokesman told JNS. World Vision suspended its operations in the Strip in 2016 after it was accused of terror funding ties.
