How the EU and US allow anti-Israel NGOs to thrive in the UN

• Published date: 04 October 2021
• Author: OLGA DEUTSCH
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

For over two decades, NGO Monitor has worked to hold NGO donors and other stakeholders accountable in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have exposed powerful NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which were complicit in the antisemitism at Durban, for their continued attacks on the Jewish state. The NGO network expends its resources demonizing Israel, at the expense of focusing attention on egregious violations of human rights. And Human Rights Watch leads the immoral campaign exploiting the suffering of South African apartheid to demonize Israel.

We have also highlighted the urgent need for a long-overdue review of how foreign aid has been administered in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through Palestinian NGOs. The absence of transparency and accountability mechanisms, in particular among European donors, has allowed Palestinian NGOs to abuse their mandates and enjoy unfettered access to government allocations. Significant funds have been diverted to terror, antisemitism, and political warfare against Israel.

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Notably, NGO Monitor's research found that, between 2011 to 2019, the European Union alone authorized grants of at least €38 million ($59.5 million) to NGOs linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an EU and US-designated terror organization.

Some of these NGOs have also played a key role in the many biased UN Human Rights Council's resolutions against Israel, as well as the International Criminal Court's investigations into alleged Israeli war crimes. Recently, Palestinian NGOs lobbied intensely for the failed attempt to block US funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system.

More evidence came in 2019 when the Shin Bet security service uncovered a PFLP-linked network of NGO employees in the West Bank. Among those arrested were senior NGO officials who were alleged to have carried out the 2019 bombing attack that murdered 17-year-old Rina Shnerb. In the following 18 months, the Shin Bet searched two offices and shut down an additional two in the PFLP network.

IN LIGHT of these and other discoveries, and triggered by NGO Monitor's research, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the European Union opened investigations. The EU commissioned the European Anti-Fraud Service, mandated to investigate fraud corruption and serious misconduct within European...