Another blatant example is the case of the “Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat”, a mechanism where Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands jointly fund Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. This mechanism financially supports highly politicized NGOs that engage in legal warfare against Israeli officials and companies that do business with Israel, promote BDS campaigns, advance a “1948 agenda,” demonize Israel and even promote antisemitic propaganda. The donor countries themselves are responsible for “deciding on the general framework and policy for the HR/IHL Secretariat”, an interesting fact considering that their official policies are antithetical to the political warfare against Israel.
This phenomenon is not limited exclusively to BDS. The Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch discovered a year ago that European money, ostensibly earmarked for salaries of Palestinian Authority employees, was being used to pay Palestinians terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons. More troubling was the criteria that the Palestinians set for those payments – the longer the prison sentence, the more money he or she will get. In other words – the more Jews that you kill, the more European taxpayer money you receive. Israel, with all its imperfections, is a vibrant and strong democracy that has an outstanding ability to absorb and discuss harsh criticism from its European friends, as long it is constructive and honest. However it is Europe that must decide whether it will continue to fuel the racist and destructive BDS campaign against the only Jewish state, be it through product labelling or through the funding for BDS groups, or whether it wishes to be an honest broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict.