The move hits a Palestinian umbrella organization that supports boycott activities worldwide, sparking speculation about a domino-effect against other anti-Israel groups
The American fundraising website DonorBox recently suspended the online donation account of the BDS National Committee (BNC), a Palestinian umbrella organization that supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel worldwide. The action was taken following a complaint by the Tel Aviv-based non-profit Shurat HaDin.
The BNC operates from the West Bank city of Ramallah and is headed by Omar Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the BDS movement. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry claims the entity is affiliated with terrorist groups and deceives donors by portraying itself as a U.S.-based charitable operation.
“We will continue to work to reveal the true nature of BDS, counter its funding and curtail its impact,” Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan wrote in a press release. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, President of Shurat HaDin, added that the result will “send a clear warning to all fundraising platforms that helping terror doesn’t pay.”
Barghouti, an Israeli resident, is from a prominent Palestinian family whose members have been charged with carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel in the past four decades.
The family recently returned to the spotlight when the Palestinian Authority (PA) identified Jasser Barghouti as the mastermind of two recent shootings in the West Bank. Two brothers from the family, Saleh and Asem Barghouti, nephews of Jasser, are suspected of perpetrating the attacks near the Jewish community of Ofra and at the Giv’at Asaf outpost, respectively.
The brothers killed two Israeli soldiers and a three-day-old baby died after being delivered prematurely, with the mother sustaining critical injuries. Israeli security forces killed Saleh earlier this month near Ramallah as he attempted to evade arrest. Asem, however, is still at large.
When asked if DonorBox’s actions will have a “ripple effect,” Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, former Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), replied that the victory is “incidental.
“BDS exists through various organizations, and one has to see how much influence one has from country to country; there is no general rule in combatting it,” he noted.
Dr. Michal Hatuel-Radoshitzky, a Research Fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute of National Security Studies, told The Media Line that a domino effect is “difficult to anticipate because there is no one size fits all response. What may compel one company to respond negatively to BDS can motivate a second company, with a different agenda, to support the movement.”
Bassem Eid, a Jerusalem-based political analyst, echoed this sentiment, using the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) as an example. “After the United States ceased all funding for it, European countries increased theirs in response,” he conveyed to The Media Line.
BNC, consisting of 27 boycott groups, is the leader of the global BDS movement. Its first listed member, the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces, is a coalition of groups that includes Hamas, the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, and the Popular front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command, all of which have been labeled terrorist organizations by Western governments.
In June American-Jewish online magazine Tablet reported that Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, a U.S. umbrella group that coordinates 329 BDS organizations, is the main sponsor of the BNC. It also helps facilitate tax-exempt donations to the organization.
U.S.-based non-profits that wish to donate money to a foreign organization must abide by certain rules, one of which is that the funds cannot be used to support terrorism.
“To the extent that BDS activists and leaders are linked to terrorist activities is, of course, important to expose. It is first and foremost a legal and social responsibility above and beyond any ideological struggle,” Dr. Hatuel-Radoshitzky asserted.
The vast majority of BDS supporters view their movement as non-violent and disassociated from terrorism.
“Many people don’t care about terrorism that isn’t directed at themselves. If you could prove [BDS] is connected to ISIS, you have a chance,” Dr. Gerstenfeld said. “If you look at the Labor Party in the United Kingdom, its leader [Jeremy Corbyn] referred to terrorists as his ‘brothers.’ But members of the party don’t reject him; they elect him.”
Eid concluded that “while BDS is in response to Palestinian suffering, it is actually enabling it since the money accrued doesn’t go directly to Palestinians and does not increase their economy, which is desperately needed.
“BDS used to proclaim ‘short-term suffering, long-term benefit.’ When Arab leaders opened their countries to Palestinian refugees fleeing the fighting in 1948, they said the same thing. Seventy years later, look where they are.”
DonorBox’s decision comes on the backdrop of proposed bipartisan legislation in the U.S. Congress titled the “Israel Anti-Boycott Act,” which would prohibit American companies from supporting BDS outfits, including international non-governmental organizations.
The bill comes on the heels of the U.S. mid-term contest in November which saw the election of two congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who publicly support the boycott movement.