Opinion Page: Israel is experiencing NGO tax bill deja vu – analysis

THE ROLE OF HUMAN RIGHTS NGO’S: HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS OR STATE SOVEREIGNTY DESTROYERS?

From the Jerusalem Post, May 28, 2023

If 2016 is any indication, though, there’s a good chance the latest NGO bill will make a comeback, even if some of its sharpest edges are filed down.  And the reason for that is that governments, mostly in Europe, and the NGOs they fund have not substantially changed their behavior since the transparency requirements were put in place.

No country likes other countries intervening in their affairs. Still, there might be more understanding in Israel if the donations were going to what one might typically define as “civil society” organizations – groups that focus on Israeli society, such as “human rights defenders, human rights NGOs, bar associations, student clubs, trade unions, university institutes, bloggers, environmental rights activists or charities working with discriminated groups,” to name some of the examples in a UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights definition of the concept.  

The other examples the OHCHR gave are “human rights defenders and human rights NGOs,” but as a recent report by the research institute NGO Monitor said, there is a “deep politicization of the universal human rights discourse… demonstrations of bias and the absence of credible and consistent criteria.”  

The behavior that sparks these NGO laws is, generally, when foreign-funded NGOs try to intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by making extreme anti-Israel statements around the world, advocating for Israel to be put on trial for alleged war crimes and similar actions.  

For example, Breaking the Silence, whose representatives travel the world, claiming Israel committed war crimes, received 55.6% of its funding from foreign governments in 2017-2019, according to NGO Monitor. They include Switzerland, France, Norway, Spain, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium and more. B’Tselem received 49.7% of its funding from foreign governments in the same period of time, with international donors including the EU, Norway, the Netherlands, France, the UK and more, and is active in promoting the claim that Israel is an apartheid state.

darryll jones