How the Israeli government funds right-wing groups
In response to the "transparency bill" designed to hamstring watchdog and human rights associations, opposition Knesset member Tamar Zandberg has initiated a bill requiring all associations to disclose their public funding sources.
“Something good finally came out of the government’s persecution of leftist associations,” Knesset member Tamar Zandberg of Meretz told Al-Monitor. “It made us wake up, stop being passive; it drove us to search where the right-wing NGOs’ budgets, amounting to millions of shekels, actually come from. We were surprised to discover that some of this money came out of the taxpayers’ pockets and was hidden [in the state budget] under the generic heading of 'participation.'”
Zandberg was referring to two recent investigative reports. One was published by the Israeli news website Walla, and the other by the Peace Now movement, both of which add to a 2014 investigative report by Molad. The investigations present a disturbing picture: Public money is finding its way to nongovernmental organizations linked with the far right, without those groups being required to report on their funding sources. After all, Israeli law does not require it of them.
