

At the end of March, activists from the far-right Zionist group Im Tirtzu gathered outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem to confront human rights attorney Nadia Daqqa. "Who funds you?" they asked her, filming the scene. "Germany, the European Union, the Palestinian Authority?" Through such tactics, Im Tirtzu activists sought to discredit Israeli organizations that condemn human rights abuses against Palestinians. They have joined forces with Ariel Kallner, a member of the Likud party (the right-wing party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), to draft a bill that would impose an 80% tax on foreign government funding received by Israeli NGOs.
The bill would also strip these organizations of their right to petition the Supreme Court. This legal recourse is one of the few tools available to human rights NGOs to slow violations of Palestinian rights – even though, as the Israeli daily Haaretz wrote on May 23, the country's highest court "has denied all requests to protect Gazans." The bill targets Israeli NGOs whose budgets are mostly funded by foreign governments or by international NGOs, themselves financed by foreign governments.
You have 83.15% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.