Finland
Finland provides direct and indirect financial support for Israeli and Palestinian political advocacy NGOs via various national frameworks.
Finland provides direct and indirect financial support for Israeli and Palestinian political advocacy NGOs via various national frameworks.
IFPB sends “3 – 4 delegations to Israel/Palestine every year,” claiming to expose the “everyday violence of war and occupation” and promotes BDS including calling to “End US Military Aid to Israel.”
In advance of the 37th Council session (February 26 - March 23, 2018), the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has released a report on the “BDS blacklist” of companies that do business with Israelis over the 1949 Armistice Line. The report, submitted by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, provides important details on the flawed process and the difficulties inherent in creating a list of companies to be targeted by this form of BDS.
NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Al Haq, have been advocating for a discriminatory blacklist for many years to advance a BDS agenda. However, this does nothing to further human rights, and the UN should not devote further resources to this charade.
The Irish Parliament is considering a bill, drafted in conjunction with Trocaire and Christian Aid, two powerful NGOs involved in demonization of Israel, ostensibly to criminalize trade in Israeli settlement goods. Although the bill refers generically to “occupied territories,” it was clearly written to explicitly target Israel.
Amnesty International-UK’s Human Rights Centre in London was originally scheduled to host a debate on January 24, between Hillel Neuer of UN Watch and Fred Carver of the UN Association, moderated by human rights attorney and Yahad board member Danny Friedman. A few days before the event (January 24), however, Amnesty-UK abruptly cancelled the event on the grounds that the organization was “currently campaigning for all governments around the world to ban the import of goods produced in the illegal Israeli settlements.
On December 22, 2017, following an internal investigation of its funding to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the Danish Foreign Ministry announced that the “majority of Danish aid to the organizations, which was suspended in 2017, will not be paid.” The ministry also confirmed that that “donor cooperation [to the Ramallah-based NGO funding mechanism] will end at the end of the year 2017.”
The Israeli government has prepared a list of 20 organizations that lead BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns, such that officials of these groups will not be allowed to enter Israel. Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not banning activists who seek to harm the country they desire to enter is the best policy approach or not.
UNICEF spearheads a campaign to have Israel included on a UN blacklist of “grave” vio-lators of children’s rights. This political agenda is a primary facet of UNICEF’s activities relating to Israel, completely inconsistent with its mandate of “child protection” and from its guidelines for neutrality and impartiality.
In a video that has gone viral, a young Palestinian approaches two Israeli soldiers. She hits, prods and slaps them. She is trying to provoke a reaction that will be caught on camera and show the ugly violence of the Israeli army. The soldiers respond with professionalism and restraint, and ignore her attack.