US BDS groups are fronts for terror organizations

Emerging evidence suggests that the BDS movement has extensive ties to Palestinian terrorist organizations, using the “social justice” movement as a veritable human shield for anti-Israel ideology and activism.

By Jean Savage, jns

Palestinian solidarity protesters march towards the British parliament on June, 5 2018. Credit: Alisdare Hickson via Flickr.

Palestinian solidarity protesters march towards the British parliament on June, 5 2018. Credit: Alisdare Hickson via Flickr.

(January 18, 2019 / JNS) Over the past decade, the BDS movement has emerged as one of the principle challenges towards the legitimacy of the State of Israel. A modern distortion of the South African anti-apartheid campaign, the movement seeks to put economic pressure on Israel and to isolate it politically. While Israel continues to thrive on both fronts—with a booming economy and expanding relations throughout the developing world—the ongoing threat of boycotts remains a constant challenge, especially for pro-Israel advocates in the Diaspora.

At the same time, emerging evidence suggests that the BDS movement has extensive ties to Palestinian terrorist organizations. By using the “social justice” movement as a veritable human shield for anti-Israel ideology and activism, terror groups are now succeeding in a type of reputational and commercial warfare against Israel.

This evidence has surfaced in a recent court case in Arizona, where for the first time a U.S. government body has formally acknowledged that the BDS movement aids actors engaged in terror.

In a brief filed by Arizona’s Attorney General Mark Brnovich as part of a case before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals concerning his state’s anti-BDS law, Brnovich noted that the BDS campaign was not only motivated by anti-Semitism, but that it aids Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas, as well as the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the latter of which provides payments and stipends to convicted terrorists or their families.

“That is particularly true as the effect, and often goal, of BDS boycotts is to strengthen the hand of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which pays cash stipends to the families of terrorists, and its governmental coalition partner and terrorist organization, Hamas,” said Brnovich.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan called Brnovich’s stance “a significant achievement in the fight against the boycott organizations. … This step strips the mask off the boycott organizations, most of which maintain deep ties with terrorist groups while seeking to enjoy immunity as human-rights groups.”

Marc Greendorfer, founder of the Zachor Legal Institute, said the ties between BDS and terror organizations are “extensive.”

“The ties are extensive and quite serious,” he told JNS. “Some of the BDS groups, like Dream Defenders, send members to the Middle East to meet directly with terror groups like the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], and there has been testimony before Congress that financial backers of Hamas are also providing support to BDS groups. Further reports to Congress showed that the PLO has a ‘war room’ in Europe from which they coordinate and fund BDS groups in the U.S.,” he explained.

Last year, the Zachor Legal Institute submitted a letter to the Department of Justice urging the U.S. government to open an investigation into the ties between Palestinian terror groups and several U.S.-based BDS groups, including American Muslims for Palestine (and its affiliated entity, Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation), Dream Defenders, the Muslim Students Association, Samidoun and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

“We believe—and there is copious evidence to support the allegation—that these organizations are working with designated foreign terror organizations in the United States, often as part of the BDS movement to target Israeli companies, academics and institutions,” Zachor stated in a memo provided to JNS.

Greendorfer said Zachor has used publicly available information to document these group’s ties with terror organization.

“As part of our research into BDS groups, we developed reports on each of the groups we named in the letter and how they provide support for designated terror groups,” he said. “The evidence comes from reviewing social media and other publicly available information, such as congressional testimony.”

Greendorfer added: “Taken as a whole, the reports demonstrate that BDS groups have frequent contact with representatives of terror groups, disseminate propaganda from terror groups and are funded by terror groups.”

Tax deductions and tax-exempt donations related to terror groups

Concern has been generating over links between terror and BDS groups for several years now.

In testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2016, Jonathan Schanzer, who serves as senior researcher for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, presented evidence of how former leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Islamic Association for Palestine and KindHearts for Charitable Development—three organizations implicated in financing Hamas between 2001 and 2011—have gravitated towards a new organization called the American Muslims for Palestine.

“AMP is a Chicago-based organization that is a leading driver of the BDS campaign,” Schanzer told lawmakers at the time. “AMP is arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine, which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States.

“The overlap of former employees of organizations that provided support to Hamas who now play important roles in AMP speaks volumes about the real agenda of key components of the BDS campaign,” said Schanzer.

He noted that the IRS, unlike its European counterparts, pays only scant attention to the prior histories of Section 501 entities and their officers or directors, and he urged lawmakers “to look at legislating a more transparent disclosure process for charity employees and board members previously implicated in terror finance.”

“Americans have a right to know who is behind the BDS campaign. And so do those members of the BDS campaign who may not fully understand its history,” he told lawmakers.

Additionally, earlier this year, Tablet magazine uncovered how the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), an organization that coordinates the efforts of 329 different pro-BDS organizations, helps to facilitate tax-exempt donations “to a Palestinian coalition that includes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other groups the U.S. State Department designates as terror organizations.”

According to the report, the USCPR is the “fiscal sponsor” of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), which is a Palestinian-based group that serves as the Palestinian arm of the BDS movement and helps to coordinate international BDS efforts. The BNC operates the website Bdsmovement.net that serves to educate and update readers on the BDS movement, as well as allow for American supporters to make tax-deductible donations to the group through the Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, a 501(c)3 charitable organization linked to the USCPR.

In its memo provided to JNS, Zachor Legal Institute noted that a group called the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces (PNIF), a founding member and current managing entity of BNC, includes as members five organizations designated by the United States as foreign terror organizations, as well as the PLO.

One organization that evinces the ties between BDS and terrorism is a group called Samidoun, points out Greendorfer.

“While other BDS groups like SJP tend to have layers of obfuscation between their operations and the terror groups, Samidoun appears to act as a direct proxy for the PFLP,” he said.

According to Greendorfer, two of Samidoun’s leaders (Khaled Barakat and his wife, Charlotte Kates) are also PFLP members, with Barakat being the head of PFLP’s foreign operations. Other Samidoun officials, like Mohammed Khatib and Mustafa Awad, are also PFLP members.  Samidoun members also have close ties to Hamas, and Hamas’s chief of security (Tawfeek Abu Naim) in particular. Furthermore, Samidoun members such as Sayel Kayed is also a board member of another BDS group, American Muslims for Palestine, and Lamis Deek, another Samidoun member, is a board member of Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) (an unindicted co-conspirator in the funding of Hamas).

“While Samidoun is not the most visible promoter of BDS, they definitely are active in BDS, especially behind the scenes,” said Greendorfer. “Samidoun is a perfect example of a BDS group that operates in the U.S. having direct ties to terror groups, as well as involvement in sister BDS organizations.”

Urging the U.S. government to investigate

While Israel continues to see trivial effects from the BDS movement, supporters of Israel in North American and Europe face a more challenging situation. This is especially true on college campuses, where pro-Israel and Jewish students confront mounting boycott challengesfrom fellow students and even faculty.

Similarly, concern is growing as well for bipartisan support for Israel with the election of several new congress members who openly support the BDS movement.

“BDS is a proxy for foreign terror groups, and it is becoming increasingly popular with the American left,” said Greendorfer. “BDS promotes discrimination and normalizes the message of terror groups by cloaking it in the vernacular of civil rights. It is a mistake to take BDS lightly. The most important thing that the pro-Israel community can do is to spread the facts that BDS is discriminatory, a front for terror and is the nonviolent arm of terror groups whose ultimate goal is to disenfranchise Jews from their right to their own country.”

As such, Greendorfer said that his organization has resubmitted its letter to investigate BDS groups to Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and will also urge nominee William Barr to do the same once confirmed.

“We have been able to obtain copious evidence of the ties between BDS and terror, but we don’t have the power to actually investigate BDS groups to find how deep the terror ties are,” he said. “Only government has that power and we have provided the DOJ with more than enough evidence to start an investigation.”

January 22, 2019 | 8 Comments »

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  1. Ireland’s surprise attack
    Last Sunday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day and, in America and Europe, people are working hard to put an end to anti-Semitism. They can look forward to permanent employment. Anti-Semitism is a virus that can be treated but not cured. It morphs.

    It’s been said before but bears repeating: In the 20th century, the goal of extreme anti-Semites was a Europe “cleansed” of Jews. In the 21st century, the goal of extreme anti-Semites is a Middle East “cleansed” of a Jewish state. For many, “Never again!” means never again in the 20th century will European Jews be slaughtered by Nazis. As for Middle Eastern Jews in the 21st century, they’re fair game.

    Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, expresses this candidly. “Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the Earth,” he has said.

    Eager to set those fires are Hezbollah and Hamas. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s Labour Party, has described both groups as “friends.”

    But that’s just talk. The pertinent question is what can be done to further imperil Israel and the Jews who live there? Last week, the lower house of the Irish parliament passed legislation (78 votes to 45) offering one answer: Wage economic warfare against Israel, in particular by criminalizing a range of business transactions with Jews in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

    You should know – as perhaps some Irish parliamentarians do not – that the Golan Heights came under Israeli control after Syrian attacks in the Six-Day War of 1967. No one who identifies as a Palestinian lived there then or lives there now. The implication that Israel should hand over the Golan – and its indigenous Druze population – to Syria’s mass-murdering dictator, Bashar Assad, is ludicrous.

    As for east Jerusalem, it contains the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, a place where Jews have lived since the time of King David over 3,000 years ago. Through slaughter and forced exile, foreign invaders, one after another, have attempted to make them “disappear.”

    Jordan’s Arab Legion seized and occupied east Jerusalem in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Also conquered: territories that had been known as Judea and Samaria, thereafter renamed “the West Bank.” Losing them was the price Jordan paid for joining in the 1967 war against the Jewish state.

    On several occasions since, Israeli leaders have offered to turn over more than 90% of the West Bank to Palestinian leaders in exchange for peace. Those leaders – there have been only two, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas – have refused.

    What they have insisted upon instead is land for and recognition of a Palestinian state while continuing their fight to eliminate the Jewish state.

    Some proponents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign forthrightly state that as their goal. Others insist they favor a “two-state solution,” with Israel’s withdrawal from “Palestinian territories” seen as a step forward. But that theory has been tested.

    In 2005, the Israelis withdrew from Gaza, a territory taken from Egypt in the 1967 war. Soon after, Hamas fought – literally, not metaphorically – Fatah, its rival. Hamas won and turned Gaza into a platform for continuing attacks against Israelis using missiles, terrorist tunnels and other means. Hamas leaders have consistently said they will never accept Israel’s existence within any borders.

    Irish parliamentarians might want to play out the hand they are attempting to deal. Israel withdraws from the West Bank. Hamas takes over from Fatah. Missiles are launched at nearby Tel Aviv. Israelis defend themselves. Bloody battles take lives on both sides. Over time, the West Bank resembles Gaza – or Syria. Is this really the result Ireland wants to facilitate?

    There is a chance that the legislation passed by the Irish parliament will fail to become law – though probably not because the arguments I’ve made above have resonated. Ireland has attracted some of America’s largest companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook. They pay lots of taxes and provide lots of jobs.

    Obeying the Irish law would likely mean violating existing U.S. federal law that prohibits American firms from participating in foreign boycotts not endorsed by Washington. More than two dozen state laws also penalize firms that engage in such boycotts.

    The U.S. in 2017 accounted for two-thirds of all foreign direct investment in Ireland. So, in the end, this law could have more impact on Ireland’s economy than on anything happening in the Middle East.

    Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has said the legislation also may run counter to European Union trade regulations. Ireland’s attorney general has called the bill “legally unsound.”

    Based on such considerations, the executive branch of the Irish government may find a way to shelve the legislation – again, based on what it will cost Ireland, not because it’s perceived as unfair and discriminatory, or apt to fuel more and bloodier conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis.

    Final point: There are disputed territories around the world yet Irish parliamentarians have had little to say about Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Morocco’s claim to the Western Sahara, or China’s stranglehold on Tibet.

    In only one Middle Eastern country do Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze and others hold citizenship, vote on a regular basis, and enjoy freedoms. Only one country in the world has given up land for peace and is willing to do so again. Irish politicians now want to single out that country for punishment. It’s their special way of commemorating International Holocaust Memorial Day. Like I said, the virus morphs.

    Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The ?Washington Times.?

  2. Ireland’s obsessional hatred of Israel – As I See It
    Strangely, the Israel issue has become emblematic in the battle over Irish identity.

    ireland
    Flag of Ireland. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
    There’s a particularly sweet spot in the enormous technology deal Israel has just pulled off.

    Over the next five years, the tech giant Intel will invest a whopping $11 billion in a new semiconductor fabrication plant in Israel. The investment will be worth around 0.7% of Israel’s gross domestic product and is expected to produce thousands of jobs.

    The sweet spot is that in securing this deal, Israel beat off competition from Ireland. For Ireland has become the most extreme Israel-bashing country in the West.
    Its Dáil, or parliament, recently gave a first reading to a bill which would make it a serious criminal offense to supply goods or services provided by Israelis in east Jerusalem or the disputed territories of Judea or Samaria.

    Claims by the bill’s sponsor, the Irish senator Frances Black, that it doesn’t target any particular country are disingenuous. Its terms have been drawn up in such a way that they apply only to the disputed territories and east Jerusalem.

    It is also uniquely vicious. For it wouldn’t just target Israeli “settlers.” It would also mean, for example, that an Irish tourist on a visit to the Western Wall for which he is paying an Israeli tour guide might be arrested when back in Ireland for an offense carrying a potential jail term.

    The bill is promoted by a coalition of NGOs, including several Christian groups, and is seen as a Trojan horse for a wider onslaught against Israel, with many of its supporters actively campaigning to boycott this year’s Tel Aviv Eurovision Song Contest.

    The Irish government may yet block the bill. It was promoted in the Dáil by Fianna Fáil, the largest opposition party and on which the ruling minority Fine Gael party depends.
    Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, has warned, however, that the bill contravenes EU trade laws and would therefore place Irish companies in jeopardy.

    Moreover, Irish-American companies might be in violation of American laws forbidding US-based companies from co-operating with trade bans on Israel.

    Whether or not the bill becomes law, it once again raises the question of why Ireland is so consumed by the obsessive hatred of Israel it so regularly displays.

    One obvious answer is that, as a country which believes itself to have suffered under British colonialism, it identifies with other peoples acknowledged by anti-colonialists as similarly “oppressed” among whom the “Palestinians” enjoy iconic status.

    With the island of Ireland divided between the Irish Republic and the UK province of Northern Ireland, Irish republican terrorists have waged war against the UK on and off over the past century with a fragile peace finally brokered in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

    Strangely, the Israel issue has become emblematic in this battle over Irish identity, with the Protestant Unionists identifying with Israel and the Catholic Republicans identifying with the Palestinians.

    As a slavish EU member, Ireland has allowed Brussels negotiators to use the fraught issue of the post-Brexit border with Northern Ireland as a weapon to force the UK to surrender its independence even after it formally leaves the EU.

    The essence of this Irish passion for the EU is that Ireland doesn’t understand what it means to be an independent nation. Like so many cultures with a shaky sense of what they are, with an outsize chip on their shoulder and infantilized by being almost entirely dependent on others to survive (their “Palestinian” friends fall into that category too) the Irish hate Israel, the paradigm nation state of a people with an unequivocal sense of itself.

    Britain, EU running out of road on Brexit: Irish foreign minister

    So, of course, Ireland bought wholesale into the whole farrago of lies and distortions that make up western left-wing globalist discourse about Israel, which is shared by the EU itself.

    But there’s more to Ireland’s malevolence against Israel than this.

    Over the years, Fianna Fáil governments have always been hostile to Israel. Currently, Fianna Fáil is jostling with its rival Sinn Féin – which heavily supported Frances Black’s election to the Irish Senate in 2016 – to maintain its political position.

    Sinn Féin’s former military wing, the Provisional IRA, was responsible for the bloody campaigns against the UK in support of a united Ireland.

    In the 1970s, Sinn Fein publicly supported the Palestinian cause. The IRA and the PLO became extremely close, training together and sharing terrorist strategies and tactics. The IRA received substantial funding and military aid from Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, and also collaborated with Hamas and Hezbollah.

    In 1980, the minister for Foreign Affairs, Fianna Fáil’s Brian Lenihan, claimed the PLO was no longer a terrorist organization and described Yasser Arafat as a “moderate.” In 2006, Sinn Fein MP Aengus O’Snodaigh described Israel as “without doubt one of the most abhorrent and despicable regimes on the planet.”

    During the Second World War, Ireland was neutral. Upon learning of Hitler’s death, its Taoiseach or prime minister, Eamon de Valera, visited the German Embassy in Dublin to express his condolences.

    Some IRA members, such as the high ranking Sean Russell, collaborated with the Nazis. The Fianna Fáil government denied residential visas to many Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany and to Holocaust survivors after the war.

    Historically, the Catholic church in Ireland bears a heavy responsibility for this anti-Jewish hatred. Over the years, the church has pumped out stereotypical hatred of Jews as parasitical moneylenders and exploiters of working people.

    In 1904, a priest, Father John Creagh, organized a two-year boycott of Jewish businesses in Limerick. The town’s small Jewish community fled in what became known as the Limerick pogrom.

    In 1970 the town’s Labour mayor, Steve Coughlan, made a speech defending the Limerick pogrom, referring to Jewish money-lenders whom he termed “warble fly bloodsuckers.”

    That provoked an outcry. But all this is the context in which the hateful Frances Black bill must be placed.

    Appallingly, some 15 Israeli luminaries, including the former speaker of the Knesset Avram Burg, former Knesset member Prof. Naomi Chazan, vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences Prof. David Harel, former ambassador Ilan Baruch and others wrote to the Irish Times in support of the bill on the grounds that “Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories is morally and strategically unsustainable, is detrimental to peace, and poses a threat to the security of Israel itself.”

    Not for the first time Israelis who choose to blame Jewish “settlers” for the absence of peace, rather than the genocidal Arab and Muslim fanatics who want to wipe Israel off the map, are unwittingly sanitizing, facilitating and incentivizing Jew-hatred.
    It’s not just a cause for dismay that so many Irish people refuse to acknowledge the right of the Jewish people to their own land. The deeper tragedy is that this venom has poisoned some Jews, too.

    Melanie Phillips is a columnist for The Times (UK).

  3. It is interesting that a “respectable” newspaper like the Arkansas Times wanted to maintain the “option” of joining BDS.

  4. EU gave nearly $5.7 million to NGOs that promote Israel boycotts over past 2 years, report finds
    January 23, 2019 1:17 pm
    JERUSALEM (JTA) — The European Union gave nearly $5.7 million to organizations that promote boycotts against Israel in 2017 and 2018, a new Israeli government report found.

    The money has gone to at least 10 nongovernmental organizations, including one based in Gaza, according to the report titled “The Money Trail: 2nd Edition,” released Wednesday by the Strategic Affairs Ministry.

    The funding was provided by the European Union to the organizations in 2017 and multi-year funding beginning in 2018, for which full data has not been released by the EU. The report comes after a first report by the Strategic Affairs Ministry, released in May, on EU funding for 2016.

    The report notes that it does not cover all EU funding to “anti-Israel boycott organizations,” but focuses on the financial support to 10 NGOs active in promoting boycotts of Israel. It asserts that the funding to the 10 NGOs is being used to promote boycotts against Israel even if it was granted for other projects due to “insufficient oversight.”

    The report called on the EU to stop funding organizations that promote a boycott of Israel and to ensure full transparency of granted funds.

    The EU responded that it does not support nor fund boycotts against Israel. It added, however, “Simply because an organization or individual is related to the BDS movement does not mean that this entity is involved in incitement to commit illegal acts, nor that it renders itself ineligible for EU funding.” It also said that the EU “stands firm in protecting freedom of expression.”

    (JTA) — The lower house of Ireland’s Parliament approved a bill on Thursday that would ban the import or sale of goods originating in all “occupied territories,” with lawmakers’ discussions centered on eastern Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank.

    Some Irish lawmakers suggested that passage of the legislation would lead Israel to close its embassy in Dublin and also could affect Ireland-U.S. relations. Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the legislation “an expression of pure hostility.”

    The Dail passed the measure by a vote of 78-45 with three abstentions. It is the second of a five-phase process, according to reports.

    The measure introduced by the conservative Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party would make illegal “the import and sales of goods, services and natural resources originating in illegal settlements in occupied territories.” Sinn Fein, a left-wing party, supported the bill.

    Fianna Fáil foreign affairs spokesman Niall Collins told the Irish Independent ahead of the vote that his party has become “increasingly concerned about the actions of Israel and its continued and blatant disregard for international law.” He said the bill would not harm trade in Israeli goods, just goods produced in the settlements.

    The upper house of the Irish Parliament, the Seanad, passed the so-called Occupied Territories Bill in July in a 25-20 vote, with 14 senators abstaining.

    Top Israeli diplomat in NY storms out of Jerusalem arts school’s fundraiser

    January 24, 2019 12:57 pm
    (JTA) — Israel’s top diplomat based in New York walked out of a gala fundraiser for the Bezalel Academy.

    Dani Dayan was outraged by the Jerusalem arts and design school’s president, Adi Stern, saying that freedom of expression is under attack in Israel. Dayan reportedly shouted “That’s not true” before storming out of the Manhattan event on Wednesday night with his guests, according to reports.

    “Freedom of expression in Israel — as in the U.S. — is under attack, and Bezalel is at the forefront of the struggle to protect democracy,” Stern said.

    After departing, Dayan said, according to reports, “My presence there could have been interpreted as corroborating his outrageous claims.”

    Dayan spoke before Stern and praised the school, Haaretz reported.

    Federal judge dismisses challenge to Arkansas law requiring contractors pledge not to boycott Israel

    January 24, 2019 9:21 am

    A man protesting against Israel in Melbourne, Australia, June 5, 2010. (Wikimedia Commons)

    (JTA) — A federal judge in Arkansas has dismissed a newspaper’s lawsuit challenging a 2017 state law requiring state contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel.

    Judge Brian Miller of the U.S. District Court in Little Rock on Wednesday dismissed the suit filed late last year by the Arkansas Times. The newspaper does not boycott Israel.

    The publisher of the newspaper filed the suit after a regular advertiser, the University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College, refused to place advertising in the newspaper unless it signed the pledge. If the college had decided to go ahead with the advertising, the newspaper would have been required to reduce its fee by 20 percent for not signing the pledge.

    Miller said in his decision that the state’s law does not violate the First Amendment right to free speech, as the lawsuit charged, because the boycott ban would apply to its commercial activities and not to its editorial copy.

    At least 26 states have passed legislation that prohibits boycotts against Israel. Some of those states, including Texas, Kansas and Arizona, also are facing legal challenges to the laws designed to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

  5. This from yesterday’s Times of Israel:

    Jerusalem accuses EU of giving €5 million to NGOs that back Israel boycotts
    Ministry urges Europe to make funding contingent on commitment to not promote BDS; EU insists it reject boycotts, but will defend free speech

    By Raphael Ahren 23 January 2019, 12:20 pm
    Protesters shout slogans during a rally in Paris, France, June 3, 2010, as they demonstrate against Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship; a man in the foreground wears a T-shirt calling for a boycott on Israel. (Jacques Brinon/ AP)
    The Strategic Affairs Ministry on Wednesday accused the European Union of funding organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to the tune of millions, urging Brussels to make any financial aid to NGOs contingent on an explicit commitment to opposing boycotts of Israel.

    The EU responded by saying that it opposes BDS, but will defend freedom of speech, noting that it similarly rejects actions to “close the space” for civil society groups.

    In a new 34-page report, the ministry said the EU had given more than €5 million (about NIS 21 million) to at least 10 NGOs that promote boycotts against Israel.

    Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

    The report, entitled “The Money Trail: European Union Financing of Organizations Promoting Boycotts against the State of Israel,” showed that two prominent pro-Palestinian NGOs, Al-Haq and Al-Mezan, were last year awarded a multiyear grant of over €750,000.

    “The time has come for the EU to begin a deep reexamination of its policies,” Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said in a statement.

    “Instead of hiding behind empty statements, the European Union needs to implement its own declared policy and immediately cease funding organizations that promote boycotts against the State of Israel.”

    Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, speaks during a press conference in Tel Aviv, on September 13, 2018. (Roy Alima/Flash90)
    The report stated that funding for “seemingly legitimate causes enables BDS-promoting NGOs to channel other funds to advance the delegitimization and boycott of the State of Israel.”

    The fact that the EU funds groups that support BDS, even if the actual money is designated for other purposes, gives those organizations “enhanced legitimacy,” which, in turn, helps them secure grants for anti-Israel activity, the report argues.

    In the report, Israel urged the EU to “immediately implement” certain recommendations, including stipulating that any future funding to NGOs be “contingent on a commitment not to promote” boycotts of Israel.

    It also called on the EU to halt funding to NGOs “with connections to terror groups.”

    The ministry’s report further quoted a December 2018 report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), the EU’s financial-audit body, which urged the union to be more transparent about its funding of NGOs.

    “The ECA warned that the European Union lacks sufficient information and transparency as to how these funds were distributed or spent,” Erdan’s ministry said in a statement.

    In response to the ministry’s accusations, a spokesperson for the EU’s delegation to Israel noted that the ECA’s report found the union’s selection of NGO-led projects “to be generally transparent” and in accordance with international transparency standards.

    “We stress that the Audit reviewed EU cooperation across the world, and did not make any specific findings regarding funding of Israeli or Palestinian NGOs,” the spokesperson told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.

    The EU has “very strict rules to screen and vet the beneficiaries of EU funds,” the spokesperson went on, vowing to seriously investigate any allegation of misuse if it is presented with substantive evidence.

    Brussels’ opposition to the BDS movement has not changed, the spokesperson added.

    “While it upholds its policy of clearly distinguishing between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied by it since 1967, the EU rejects any attempts to isolate Israel and does not support calls for a boycott,” she said.

    “The EU does not fund actions that are related to boycott activities. At the same time, the EU stands firm in protecting freedom of expression and freedom of association in line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.”

    On its Twitter feed, the EU mission in Ramat Gan wrote that individuals or groups that are “related to the BDS movement” are not necessarily involved in incitement to commit illegal acts and are not automatically ineligible for EU funding.

    The EU “stands firm in protecting freedom of expression” even if it some ideas may offend or disturb some people,” the mission tweeted, adding: “Any action that has the effect of closing the space for civil society organisations should be avoided.”

    All EU engagement vis-a-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “serves the key EU policy objective of a peaceful solution by advancing and ultimately achieving a viable two-state solution.”

    Wednesday’s tit-for-tat was not the first time Erdan and his ministry have clashed with the EU.

    In the first installment of the “Money Trail” report, issued in May of 2018, the ministry alleged the EU funds nonprofit groups that not only campaign for boycotts of Israel but in some cases even have ties to terror groups.

    At the time, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini responded to Erdan, accusing his ministry of spreading disinformation.

    In a letter, Mogherini objected to “any suggestion of EU involvement in supporting terror or terrorism” and warned that “vague and unsubstantiated accusations serve only to contribute to disinformation campaigns.”

    “Allegations of the EU supporting incitement or terror are unfounded and unacceptable,” she wrote. “We are confident that EU funding has not been used to support boycott of Israel or BDS activities and certainly not to finance terrorism.”

    Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the Commission, speaks during a EU Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) at the European Council in Brussels on November 20, 2018. (John Thys/AFP)
    On Wednesday, the EU spokesperson told The Times of Israel that an analysis had found that the allegations made in the May 2018 report were “unfounded and factually incorrect.”

    Following the publication of the first “Money Trail” report, the EU embassy invited Israeli authorities “to engage in a productive dialogue on civil society as foreseen by the EU-Israel Action Plan,” she said.

    “This offer was not responded to, but still stands. We consider it unfortunate that again unsubstantiated material is being publicized without prior dialogue and engagement.”

  6. This from Israel Hayom:

    Israel calls on EU to stop funding groups backing BDS
    Strategic Affairs Ministry: Some NGOs that support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement to isolate Israel internationally receive funding from EU, despite EU’s official stance against BDS • EU reiterates rejection of attempts to isolate Israel.

    Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

    Israel says that insufficient oversight by EU has allowed it to fund pro-BDS groups | Photo: Facebook / screenshot

    Israel has accused the European Union of financing organizations that promote boycotts of Israel.

    The Strategic Affairs Ministry said in a report Wednesday that certain non-governmental groups that support the Palestinian-led boycott movement against Israel receive EU funding.

    Although the EU opposes the boycott movement, the ministry said that “insufficient oversight” by the EU has allowed some of these groups to use European funds for boycott activities. The ministry estimates the figure amounts to millions of euros per year.

    The EU says claims that it supports “incitement or terror, or condoning anti-Semitism, are unfounded and unacceptable.”

    The EU said it rejects “any attempts to isolate Israel and [does] not support calls for boycott, nor fund actions that are related to boycott activities.”

  7. Let’s not forget the EU countries, which provide even more support for BDS than the American Muslim organizations. Ireland is the worst, or at least the most open, offender. From today’s Arutz Sheva:

    Irish Ambassador summoned for reprimand
    Irish Ambassador to be reprimanded after Irish parliament advances boycott of products from Judea and Samaria.

    BDS activists in Ireland
    The office of Prime Minister Foreign and Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that the Irish ambassador will be summoned to a reprimand in the Foreign Ministry on Friday, after the Irish parliament approved a law promoting a boycott of Judea and Samaria products.

    “Israel is outraged over the legislation against it in the Dail which is indicative of hypocrisy and anti-Semitism,” said Netanyahu’s office in a statement.

    “Instead of Ireland condemning Syria for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians, Turkey for the occupation of northern Cyprus and the terrorist organizations for murdering thousands of Israelis, it attacks Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. What a disgrace,” the statement added.

    Israel’s Foreign Ministry had earlier blasted Ireland after its parliament advanced the law criminalizing business with entities connected to Judea and Samaria.

    The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the law is a result of “pure hostility on the part of its initiators and deserving of full condemnation”.

    The legislation had previously been approved by the upper house of the Irish parliament. It is believed that the Irish government is likely to refuse to implement the legislation even if it passes the lower house.

    The discussion on the bill at the Irish Senate was postponed last January after Ireland’s Ambassador to Israel, Alison Kelly, was summoned for a meeting at the Foreign Ministry to clarify the legislative initiative. However, the bill was brought back to the table in July.

  8. Could these groups be prosecuted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? Do they raise funds for terror groups? That could be a grounds for prosecution under more recent congressional enactments.