Wednesday, December 17, 2014

European gov'ts, NGOs fund 'Greater Palestine' groups


These countries claim they support the 'two-state solution'.  So why are they funding Palestinian attempts to claim all of Israel as their own?

And if they think it's so important, shouldn't they also support groups which encourage the connection of Jews to their national homeland?

As Israeli watchdog NGO Monitor has noted, in 2013, Zochrot, which vocally supports the BDS campaign against Israel, received a staggering $500,000 in grants from foreign donors, many of them church organizations who receive taxpayer funds from their national governments. Among the groups’ financiers are Oxfam in the UK, Trocaire in Ireland, the church-based ICCO from The Netherlands and Germany’s Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

In an article for the latest edition of The Middle East Quarterly, NGO Monitor president Professor Gerald Steinberg warned that the infusion of funds is enabling Zochrot to expand its activities, which include iNakba – described as “a new mobile app to help locate Palestinian villages destroyed since 1948? that was warmly praised by New York Times Israel correspondent Jodi Rudoren and other journalists – and such initiatives as its September 2013 conference in the heart of Tel Aviv promoting the Palestinian “right of return.”

“Most of this European public (taxpayer-based) funding is channeled through humanitarian aid agencies, which in turn redistribute the money to individual NGOs, including Zochrot,” Steinberg wrote. “This pattern of funding also reflects the central role of both Catholic and Protestant aid frameworks in promoting radical political agendas, in many cases mixed with classic anti-Semitic themes.”

“There is a direct and causal connection between increased funding for political advocacy NGOs, mainstream media visibility, and support for the distorted Palestinian narrative,” Steinberg concluded. “As a result of an increase in funds, Zochrot was able to go from a fringe group with virtually no impact to a major player, influencing others with its ideological and political perspective.”

More: Algemeiner

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