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The Chutzpah of EU Intervention in Israel

(Israel Hayom) Gerald M. Steinberg - The European Union engages in ongoing attempts to force Israel to accept its views on borders, assists widespread illegal construction in Area C, and provides massive funding of NGOs that lead anti-Israel demonization campaigns. Every year, some of the most virulently anti-Israel, anti-peace, and, in some cases, anti-Semitic NGOs are funded under the EU's European Neighborhood Instrument (ENI) framework. ENI houses the EU Peacebuilding Initiative, which funds propaganda groups such as the Ma'an Network, and the Popular Art Center (PAC). In February 2016, PAC organized a ceremony in honor of "Palestinian martyrs" whose homes were demolished, featuring the "father of the martyr Baha Eleyan." Eleyan was one of the terrorists who murdered three people in the October 2015 attack on a Jerusalem bus. The ceremony featured a musical performance captioned "no to laying down arms." Other ENI grantees have named schools after notorious terrorists, and bring members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to speak to teenagers to "strengthen Palestinian youth and their engagement in civic and political life in Gaza." Through other frameworks, the EU channels large-scale funding to fringe Israeli groups like Breaking the Silence and B'Tselem, turning these groups into instruments of European policy under the pretext of "civil society." There is no other democracy in the world that is treated similarly by the EU. A serious consideration of Israeli interests in relations with the EU, including NGO funding, is long overdue. The writer is president of NGO Monitor and professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University.
2017-12-27 00:00:00
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