Improper Use Of EU Funds

Video Of The Week-Are the Gazan Protests Peaceful? https://tinyurl.com/ycq5eu36

  From Israel Hayom - https://tinyurl.com/y7tzm4pn

Report by Israeli watchdog triggers EU turmoil over funding of NGOs linked to terrorist groups.

NGO Monitor data prompts Brussels to order its envoys in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to investigate if EU funds are reaching organizations affiliated with Palestinian terrorist groups. EU Ambassador to Israel Emanuel Joffre: If there is evidence of improper use of EU funds we will investigate them.

The EU on Tuesday ordered its representatives in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to investigate whether EU funds are reaching organizations affiliated with Palestinian terrorist groups.

The move follows a report by NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that promotes greater transparency among foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations operating in Israel.

The watchdog recently exposed an EU letter to an umbrella organization of 142 leading Palestinian NGOs assuring them that, even if a Palestinian NGO applying for EU grants is an affiliate of EU-designated terrorist groups or employs individuals from these groups, the EU will still provide the organization with funds and legitimacy.

After the information became public, EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi stated that the EU "will have to conduct an in-depth review, and if there is any concern we will act immediately. ... This [funding terrorism] will not be tolerated. And if it happens it will have to be rectified."

The Commission for Neighborhood and Enlargement is in charge of overseeing the accession process of prospective member states and relations with states bordering the European Union. The commission's policy is directed towards candidate states along the EU's eastern border and on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

Following the exposé on how the EU was potentially skirting the ban on financing terrorism, the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem had summoned EU Ambassador to Israel Emanuel Joffre, asking for clarifications on the matter.

Tuesday saw Joffre reiterate that "if there is evidence of improper use of EU funds we will investigate them."

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MANIPULATION OF CHRISTMAS AS A WEAPON AGAINST ISRAEL

Ben Cohen 23/12/2014

http://tinyurl.com/q7jj98e

A new report from Israeli watchdog NGO Monitor has exposed disturbing levels of anti-Israel hatred in the Christmas messages and appeals promoted by radical Christian groups dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Come All Ye Haters: NGO Exploitation of Religious Themes to Demonize Israel”reveals that “at the height of the holiday season, NGOs, well-known charities, and church groups once again are exploiting Christmas to conduct political warfare against Israel.”

According to NGO Monitor – which tracks both the statements and activities of NGOs working in the area as well as their funding by foreign governments and charities – “In some instances, the rhetoric used reflects antisemitic theology and sentiments such as comparing Israel to First Century Romans, portraying Israel as inherently oppressive, and referring to the ‘tribal god’ of Judaism.”

Among the several examples cited in the report is the annual “Christmas Alert” booklet produced by Kairos Palestine, an organization rooted in the 2009 Kairos Declaration on Palestine, a document authored by the Palestinian Christian activist Naim Ateek and other church figures, which denies the historic connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel while asserting that, in contrast, “Christian and Muslim Palestinians” are “deeply rooted in the history and geography of this land.”

In its 2014 booklet, Kairos quotes Father Jamal Khader of the Latin Patriarch Seminary in Beit Jala describing the “Israeli occupation” as the “greatest evil” – the abuse of Christians elsewhere in the Middle East, including the genocidal campaign waged against them by Islamic State terrorists in Iraq, is not even acknowledged.

Meanwhile, another article in the booklet presents Israel as an inherently illegitimate state, claiming that “since 1948 (the year of Israel’s creation,) Israel developed a regime that combines occupation, apartheid and colonization which acts as the root cause of the ongoing forced population transfer of the Palestinian people.”

“During the current holiday season, NGOs exploit religious sources and biblical verses as part of their political warfare against Israel,” the NGO Monitor report observed. “The traditional Christian themes are introduced into a simplistic, one-sided narrative of the conflict that omits terrorism, Hamas control of Gaza, and Israel’s basic security needs to protect its civilian population.”

Wi’am, described by NGO Monitor as “a ‘grassroots organization’ that is involved in BDS,” declared in its Christmas message that “Christ was born in Bethlehem under the Roman Occupation. This story is not strange for us…The new Herods are instilling fear in whole communities, using religion to depict a god of vengeance, a tribal god of retaliation.”

This same theme was echoed in a Christmas message distributed by Rev. Kate Taber, the representative in the “Holy Land” of the Presbyterian Church USA. “As we celebrate the birth of the Christ child this season, it is impossible for me not to imagine what his life would have been like, or Mary’s as his mother, had he been born in Bethlehem today,” Taber wrote.

Much of the funding for these and similar organizations comes from European and American church groups who are in turn recipients of taxpayer funds. “As funders, these governments are enablers and share the moral responsibility for the actions of the NGOs,” NGO Monitor concluded.

BLACKLISTING OF PRO-ISRAEL ORGANIZATION BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

By David Bernstein 2/12/2014

For the full article see; http://tinyurl.com/nllnlz7  

Former AP journalist Matti Friedman wrote an article this past Summerabout how the media frames the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians for an online magazine called Tablet. To his surprise, it went viral, with almost one hundred thousand Facebook shares. It was recommended at the VC by David Post and me. Many people think it’s the single best article ever written on the topic, in part because it provides a rare insider perspective, from someone who actually worked for a major media company’s Jerusalem bureau.

Friedman is back with an even longer and, I think, even more revealing article on the same topic, this time in The Atlantic. Among other things, he ruminates about how many Israel correspondents act not as objective journalists, but as part of class of mostly foreign elites who live in Israel or the territories and have taken up the Palestinian cause. This class includes the employees of international organizations based in the Palestinians territories, and several left-wing Israeli NGOs.

Friedman points out that these highly influential organizations are almost never subjected to any real scrutiny by the reporters who rely on them as objective sources. And indeed, the Associated Press, according to Friedman, actually banned its journalists from interviewing Gerald Steinberg, an American-Israeli professor who runs the watchdog organization NGO Monitor out of Jerusalem. Here’s the relevant paragraph:

Around this time, a Jerusalem-based group called NGO Monitor was battling the international organizations condemning Israel after the Gaza conflict, and though the group was very much a pro-Israel outfit and by no means an objective observer, it could have offered some partisan counterpoint in our articles to charges by NGOs that Israel had committed “war crimes.” But the bureau’s explicit orders to reporters were to never quote the group or its director, an American-raised professor named Gerald Steinberg. In my time as an AP writer moving through the local conflict, with its myriad lunatics, bigots, and killers, the only person I ever saw subjected to an interview ban was this professor.

Long-time readers will recall that I’ve relied on NGO Monitor’s work in the past. Indeed, one of the most consequential “scoops” I’ve had as a blogger, that Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson fundraised among rich Saudi Arabians with a pledge to use the money to counter pro-Israel forces in the West, came from NGO Monitor. My blog post on this, reprinted at the Wall Street Journal’s website, set off a controversy about HRW’s anti-Israel bias that has yet to fully recede (and assuredly won’t until someone less maniacally anti-Israel than Whitson and her boss Kenneth Roth is in charge).