NGOs Fellow-Traveling With Palestinian Terror
The decision by Benny Gantz, Israel’s minister of defense, to proscribe six nongovernmental organizations that provide services for the Arab population of the Palestinian National Authority as terrorist groups with EU funding was very late in coming. At least three Israeli monitoring organizations, NGO-Monitor, Palestine Media Watch and Regavim, have for the past decade been sounding the alarm concerning the actual nature of those six NGOs. And their information was gathered from open sources.
It was well-documented that a mastermind of an August 2019 terror attack using a controlled bomb at a swimming hole near the West Bank settlement of Dolev that killed and Israeli teen was employed by one of these NGOs. In May, we were informed that four Arabs from the Palestinian territories will be indicted for funneling European humanitarian aid to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terrorist group. In February 2020, the UN was apprised of these terror links.
Of course, we all await the evidence that will be presented and the trial’s conclusion, but the outrage and fulmination, as well as the United States’ official reaction that somehow US officials weren’t informed of the groups’ alleged terror affiliations, indicates that something deeper is at work here.
We are witnessing the European Union, and perhaps the US State Department, moving from pronouncements, press releases and the funding of projects to browbeating and the application of diplomatic force against Israel. It is as if Israel should have no right to defend itself, conduct investigations, suspect illicit doings and ferret out immoral money transfers in the guise of “human rights” or, as State Department spokesman Ned Price said, “civil society organizations.”
But besides this, what is at the root of the dispute seems to be that Israel is held – without proof – by the suppliers of these monies to be an apartheid state and the illegitimate administrator of territories gained in a war of defense. As such, they do not mind, and some encourage it would appear, the use of a right of resistance. And that “right” translates on the ground to the use of violence against Israeli civilians.
They do not promote peaceful coexistence. They do not have Jewish residents and Arab residents share discussion sessions, cultural activities, sports or any other project that could bring about the willingness of all to accept a two-state solution. In the end, the only “humans” who possess “rights” in this situation would seem to be exclusively Arabs.
It was Tuvia Tenenbom, disguised as “Tobias,” who in his book “Catch the Jew” shines an investigative light on what he termed the “peace industry” funded by foreign nations and NGOs. If that funding was reduced or properly spent, thousands of ‘good souls’ would lose jobs and their raison d’etre. And local Arabs would have less of an impetus potentially to siphon off funds for terror.
Instead of propping up violence, we might have had peaceful behavior, compromise and coexistence long ago. As one example, in 2019, it was made clear to the EU that their monies were spent on BDS campaigns and the demonization of Israel.
Moreover, the return, in early October, of the United States to the United Nations Human Rights Council is, in connection with this latest incident, all the more worrisome. This body, fed with lies and misrepresentations, much of it even antisemitic, by organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – who do not do independent research but rely on reports from, among others, these six PFLP- NGOs in order to besmirch Israel, has created a cauldron of spuming hostility. This is combined with the fact that the diplomatic corps and the foreign affairs officials in the related countries who attend international conclaves and approve the spending are youngish and have been brought up in universities, which are not necessarily friendly to Israel and Jews, and their training is to accept the Arab narrative to the “Palestinian Question.”
The US State Department is being briefed about the information upon which Minister Gantz made his decision. I assume other EU states are as well. If the information proves reliable and true, will there be an apology forthcoming? And will these activist diplomats admit error? Or is Israel to be treated as a pariah, the goal of Arab propaganda all these past decades?
What is also disturbing is the blind commitment Israel and Jewish groups display. A petition by the organization Peace Now refers to “Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations” who have “long faced such spurious accusations” regarding their terror links. Delegates from 25 Israeli civil society groups showed up in Ramallah on Wednesday in order to express their solidarity with their counterparts in the Palestinian Authority.
The feeling is that, no matter what evidence becomes available to the Europeans, Americans and certain Israelis, they will not be moved from their idée fixe, for the alternative would be disastrous for them. Israel seems not to have rights to be preserved and protected.
