(JNi.media) Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked this week appealed to the NGO registrar, claiming that some left-wing organizations did not report receiving donations from foreign countries, in violation of the law, Walla reported. According to Shaked, these organizations include “Combatants for Peace,” which organizes commemoration events for bereaved Arab and Jewish families, and “Checkpoint Watch,” which reports on irregularities at IDF checkpoints in Judea and Samaria.
According to a 2011 law, Israeli NGOs must report every quarter on donations they received from foreign countries and the Registrar is obligated to publish this information. These are mostly left-wing organizations, whose funds come from foreign organizations and sometimes directly from foreign embassies in Israel.
In her letter, obtained by Walla, Shaked asked the Registrar to take action against these NGOs. “I have been informed” Shaked wrote, “that the NGOs have not yet sent in their reports as prescribed by law.” In addition to “Combatants for Peace” and “Checkpoint Watch,” the minister noted the NGOs “Passive – an ecumenical liberation theology center,” “Human Rights Defenders Fund,” and “Israeli Movement Against House Demolitions.”
These five NGOs are recognized as operating against Israeli policies in Judea and Samaria, and according to the website NGO Monitor, are receiving donations from various countries in the European Union.
According to NGO Monitor, the reports filed in 2014 by left-wing NGOs in Israel reveal massive funding from the European Union (EU) ($4,488,931.29) and Norway ($3,391,006.56), which constitute 17.2% and 13% respectively of the total donations reported by political NGOs.
Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands jointly fund Israeli and Palestinian NGOs through The Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat (the “Secretariat”). Located in Ramallah, the Secretariat is managed by Birzeit University and the European consulting firm NIRAS, to distribute pooled funding from Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. This funding mechanism has a projected budget of $17.6 million over four years, including $13 million for NGOs.
Some donor bodies (most serving as conduits for government funding) such as Christian Aid, Diakonia, Oxfam-Novib, and the Norwegian Refugee Council, are themselves involved in anti-Israel campaigns.
Click here for the NGO Monitor complete index of countries and organizations financing Israeli left-wing NGOs: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat: Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United States, and the World Bank PNGO Project.
A “Checkpoint Watch” spokeswoman said the organization has not yet ” received a formal notice about it. Should one arrive, we’ll deal with it. It is amazing that instead maintain democracy, the justice minister is working to harm organizations that work for human rights, the very essence of democracy. Since our organization works according to the law, the appeal of the of justice minister to the registrar will be revealed as an attempt at battering without an evidential foundation.”
The “Combatants for Peace” movement said in a statement that “even as a government plan to legalize illegal settlements that constitute the focus of nationalist violence is being revealed, and two months after the deadly Jewish terrorist attack in the village of Duma where the guilty party is yet to be found, Justice Minister Shaked is busy persecuting of a peace loving organization over technical details, in order to shift the debate away from her failures.”
