Two NGO Monitor reports released Wednesday exposed how radical NGOs in Israel are warping Israeli law to present it as "racist" for an international public, and are receiving heavy funding from Europe and the US.
One report focused on the Israel-based Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, which was behind an unsuccessful 2012 petition to nullify the "Nakba Law" that blocks funding for groups claiming the founding of Israel was a "catastrophe."
Adalah's database launched last March lists 101 Israeli laws and proposed bills that it considers "discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life." Adding to the importance of the list is the fact it has been cited widely in international media.
"Adalah's law database promotes the false and demonizing allegation that 'Zionism is racism,' and labels all references to the Jewish connection to Israel, including use of the Hebrew calendar or menorah symbol, as 'racist,'" NGO Monitor president Professor Gerald Steinberg said.
Steinberg added "Adalah also strips away the comparative context, treating Israel's status as the nation-state of the Jewish people as if it were unique among democratic societies."
NGO Monitor further noted that many of the "racist" laws in the database have nothing to do with Arab citizens of Israel, and laws benefiting those who completed IDF or national service which the group claims "discriminate against Arabs" in fact apply to the thousands of Bedouin and Druze Arabs who serve and are given the benefits.
A full 44 of the 101 entries in the database are bills that never passed voting in the Knesset, making the presentation of "discriminatory" legislature all the more questionable.
"It is disconcerting that European governments, along with the New Israel Fund, continue to support Adalah," said Steinberg. "Its efforts to deny the legitimacy of Israel and its democratic processes are incompatible with the stated goals and guidelines of its funders. There is an urgent need for due diligence on the part of those who continue to fund Adalah and similar NGOs."
Foreign funding for the "Nakba"
In a second report, NGO Monitor tackled Zochrot, another NGO in Israel that supports the "Nakba" narrative opposing Israel's very existence, and accuses Israel of "ethnic cleansing."
The NGO is set to host an event at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque running from Thursday to Saturday entitled "48mm - The 2nd International Film Festival on Nakba and Return."
The group stated that it seeks to "raise public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba...the memory and responsibility that the Jewish public should take on the Palestinian Nakba are basic conditions to peace between people." As NGO Monitor notes, that agenda is "equivalent to calling for the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people."
Digging into the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits, the group revealed that Zochrot received a whopping 335,337 shekels (nearly $87,000) in the first half of 2014 alone.
The group received 1.87 million shekels (around half a million dollars) from abroad in 2013, and 1.82 million shekels in 2012. Much of the money was brought in as "humanitarian aid" from church groups that promote boycotts of Israel.
Zochrot wrote in 2012 "it is our hope that the new political structure created in de-Zionized Palestine will be that of a single democratic state."