The EU has quietly restricted funding to some terror-linked Palestinian NGOs

When Israel declared six PFLP-linked NGOs to be terrorist organizations, the media was uniformly dismissive that there was any evidence to the charges. It highlighted European skepticism about the accusation.

What hasn't been reported is that the EU has quietly restricted funding to two of the organizations while waiting for more information.

According to this December 17 European Parliament question by the Socialists & Democrats Group:

On 22 October 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defence declared six Palestinian non‑governmental organisations (NGOs) – Al‑Haq, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, the Addameer Institute, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defence for Children International and the Union of Agricultural Works Committees – as terrorist organisations under the 2016 Counterterrorism Law, based on still unsubstantiated accusations of links with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Commission has suspended EU funding to al‑Haq and has instructed Oxfam to cut funding to the Union of Agricultural Works Committees until the situation has been clarified.

It sounds like the EU has found Israel's preliminary evidence a little more compelling than has been reported.

Significantly, this all happened weeks before the Dutch government decided to stop funding the Union of Agricultural Works Committees.

These decisions might yet be reversed. There is tremendous pressure from "human rights" NGOs to paint Israel's decision as merely a means to silence criticism. 

That charge is antisemitic. It tries to paint the Jewish state as a dictatorship that restricts free speech and criminalizes criticism. There are hundreds of other NGOs, not to mention Palestinian media outlets, freely criticising Israel every hour of every day. Israel would be idiotic to think that shutting down six NGOs - whose links to the PFLP are beyond question - would stop criticism. 

Meanwhile, the six NGOs hired a lawyer to write to the Israeli government to request the evidence gathered against them.  They published the response that was sent on January 2:

Subject: Request to Receive Materials of the Declaration of Unlawful Associations 

Your letter dated 16 December 2021 

1. I would hereby like to respond to your request made in the letter dated 16 December 2021. 

2. Following your request, I would like to inform you that the unclassified information underlying the decision to declare your clients as unlawful associations can be found in office of the Legal Advisor to the Region of Judea and Samaria located in the Judea and Samaria Division near the town of Beit El. You may coordinate contact with the undersigned on the telephone number: 02-9977711. 

3. Needless to say, this is only the unclassified information underlying the declarations. The core of the declarations is based on classified, crosschecked and reliable intelligence that indicates that your clients operate on behalf of the terrorist organization, the "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine" and are essentially arms of the terrorist organization, which cannot be revealed for fear of threatening national security. 

4. As for your request for an extension of time for filing an objection against the said declarations, and for your request for an extension received already on 11 November 2021, I would like to inform you that the IDF Commander in the Judea and Samaria agreed to extend the deadline for filing an objection against the declarations until 18 January 2022.  

I do not know if these objections were filed by yesterday.

(h/t Gerald)

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