Save Darfur’s mi$$ing million$: The Israeli connection

The so-called “Save Darfur Coalition” raised tens of millions of dollars, some say a hundred million or more, to help the people of Darfur, yet an investigation by this writer can find no evidence of any of this money reaching Darfur refugees on the ground in Sudan.

I first wrote about Darfur back in 2003 and since then have interviewed over a dozen veteran aid workers from Darfur with more than 50 years on the ground there between them and first off:

1) Not a single one agrees that genocide was committed in Darfur. The consensus is that somewhere between 20–30,000 people died in the Darfur conflict and that most deaths took place in 2004 and early 2005 (the Save Darfur Coalition wasn’t started until 2007).

2) None of the Darfur aid workers I spoke with had seen any sign whatsoever of aid from the Save Darfur organization, not even a T-shirt.

Tens of millions, maybe one hundred million dollars or more, raised for Darfur and little or none of it made it to hungry children on the ground in Africa’s west Sudan, Darfur?

I wrote about this sometime ago where I told of being contacted by aid workers in Darfur who had on their own done some investigations via contacts inside the Save Darfur bunch and had learned that money was being sent to Israel.

Since this story was written contacts inside the member organizations of Save Darfur have confirmed that they were sending money to Israel and said it was for the Darfur refugee resettlement program in Israel.

There are several thousand Darfur refugees in Israel, or at least they are claiming to be from Darfur. Darfur and Eritrean refugees are allowed special status in Israel, so most African economic migrants to Israel automatically try to claim they are from either. Most of the African migrants are from Ethiopia and other countries not on the priority list.

Aid workers in Israel that contacted this writer seem to think that Darfur refugees in Israel have not benefited from tens of millions of Save Darfur dollars, unless of course, Save Darfur turned the money directly over to the Israeli government.

As violent mobs of Israeli racists attack the African communities in Israel’s cities and towns, calling for the ethnic cleansing of “the infiltrators,” be they from Darfur, Eritrea or wherever in Africa, Darfur’s mi$$ing millions go unaccounted for.

Who knows, maybe the Save Darfur/Enough Project will tell us next that they are using the money to send the Darfur refugees home to Darfur, where today it seems a safer place for them be than in the so called “lone island of democracy in the middle east,” Israel.

Thomas C. Mountain was a founding member in his home town of the Alliance for Peace and Justice in the Middle East in 1982, area coordinator for the Palestine Human Rights Campaign’s Eyewitness Palestine program from 1987–1991 and is today the most widely distributed independent journalist in Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.