To read this article, click here.

[Excerpt:]

"Gerald Steinberg, the executive-director of NGO Monitor, said it was common practice for foreign governments, primarily European ones, to fund NGOs that were engaging in "lawfare" against Israel, a term coined to refer to attempts to use international law to delegitimize Israel. There is little transparency in these payments, and sometimes the money is funneled through government aid agencies that are not carefully monitored, Steinberg said. He named Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Britain as countries that regularly funneled money – through governmental agencies – to a basket of NGOs that are "fundamentally opposed to the Israeli government, and routinely accuse Israelis of war crimes." These organizations, like Breaking the Silence, get most of their traction overseas, Steinberg said, as the Israeli public knows to be discriminating when analyzing their reports. Among the organizations that get European funding are the Alternative Information Center and Yesh Din, he said. According to NGO Monitor, the Alternative Information Center is a radical political organization founded by members of the Trotskyite anti-Zionist Revolutionary Communist League (Matzpen), and gets money from the Swedish and Irish governments, as well as from the Catalan government in Spain. Yesh Din, meanwhile, has as its stated mission, according to NGO Monitor, "to oppose the continuing violation of Palestinian human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory… documenting and disseminating accurate and up-to-date information about the systematic violation of human rights in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories], by raising public awareness of such violations, and by applying public and legal pressures on government agencies to end them." This group, according to NGO Monitor, is funded by the Dutch, German and UK foreign ministries, the Open Society Institute (USA) and the New Israel Fund. Steinberg said that until now, the Israeli government had not paid attention to details such as who was funding extremely critical NGOs, but that it was now beginning to take notice."