Europeans Fund Anti-Israel Libels

By Gerald Steinberg, ME Quarterly

In May 2014, Zochrot—a radical Israeli nongovernmental organization (NGO)—was the focus of widespread mainstream media coverage featuring its iNakba mobile application (app). Articles on the app and Zochrot were published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Haaretz, The Christian Science Monitor, Time Magazine, and several prominent blogs. Most, including The New York Times, promoted Zochrot’s agenda while others, such as The Washington Post, included some criticism.

Designed and promoted as a vehicle for drawing attention—particularly among journalists—to the Palestinian narrative of the 1948 war, iNakba features an interactive map and photos of pre-1948 Arab villages and encourages the “right of return” narrative through crowd sourcing. As stated by The New York Times, “Perhaps the app’s greatest promise is its social component—users can upload photos and videos, or ‘follow’ villages to virtually recreate lost communities.”[1] Small wonder that the release of the app was timed to coincide with Israel’s sixty-sixth Independence Day (May 15) and the Nakba (catastrophe) as Palestinians and Arabs call this event.

While Zochrot has promoted this inverted narrative of “historic injustice” for many years, its sudden transformation from a fringe political NGO into a major media attraction was made possible by a steep increase in funding from European governments, often channeled through Christian international development and humanitarian aid organizations without any public scrutiny or parliamentary control. This funding grew from some 950,000 NIS (Israeli new shekels) in 2005 to 1,868,485 NIS (more than $500,000) in 2013.[2] Such funding is far from unique and can be viewed as a showcase for a wider phenomenon: the central role of European governments and Christian aid organizations in promoting a radical, anti-Israel agenda.

CONTINUE

December 16, 2014 | 4 Comments »

Leave a Reply

4 Comments / 4 Comments

  1. Through the iNakba app, Zochrot gained a platform to promote a highly partisan, false perspective via journalists who accepted the narrative at face value and then acted as force multipliers for this agenda. This is the halo effect, in which the NGOs are perceived as reliable sources with moral authority and knowledge untainted by partisan politics[58] at a time
    when they are actually partisan purveyors of a false historical narrative and executors of a political warfare that has reinforced Palestinian rejectionism and made peace ever more remote

    christian churches are at the forefront of this evil agenda…. what’s new.
    the Christian war against the Jews with Jewish kapo collaboration

  2. Excellent article
    validation of what I have been saying for a long time that the main enemy of Israel and the Jews is the euro christian collective. basically the BDS churches engage in swindling and libeling th Jews and sub contract out the torturing and slaughter to their related jew killer orgs. Zochrot is a terror entity who supported the terrorist gaza flotilla.

    these christian and euro orgs should be sued by shurat ha din to expose in court their despicable agenda to kill the Jews. Their libels and lies put Jews lives in danger….those involved in these attempts to incite genocide indirectly are existential enemies and indirect murderers. Murderers should be executed.

  3. This is part and parcel of Europe’s age-old war against the Jewish people, now subsumed to financing and promoting anti-Zionist NGOs like Zochrot within Israel. The real aim here is to intellectually and morally delegitimize the Jewish State as a prelude to its destruction. Europe is interested in undermining Israel – not in helping it to attain peace with the Arabs. With friends like the Europeans, Israel doesn’t need enemies.