February 25, 2010 Thursday 11 AdarI 5770 10:16 IST
(http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=169478#)
Terra Incognita: The European lobby in Israel By SETH J.
FRANTZMAN
23/02/2010 The EU, realizing it cannot get Israel to change its laws
through diplomatic means, has resorted to creating an internal lobby -
through lavish funding of NGOs - to get Israel to bend.
Ever since the publication of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's The
Israel Lobby there has
been much talk of the "lobby." In England mainstream and respectable
Channel 4 aired an
entire program entitled Inside Britain's Israel Lobby which claimed the
"lobby" "owns"
the Conservative Party. Amidst all the talk of an Israel lobby in the
West, people have
ignored the growth of a lobby located in the Holy Land itself, the
European lobby in Israel.
The European Parliament adopted the European Initiative for Democracy and
Human Rights
(EIDHR) in 1994. This was part of the European Union's broader belief that
"democracy and
human rights are universal values that should be vigorously promoted
around the world."
The initiative was supposed to promote democratization through the
promotion of "fair and free"
elections and mainstreaming "democratic values" through "accountability,
transparency and equality."
In 2007, a subtle change in the name of the EIDHR was made. The word
"initiative" was changed
to "instrument." This seemingly banal change may be a result of semantic
arguments among EU staffers
but it puts in words the increasingly meddlesome way the EU has chosen to
work within Israel.
The EU may have realized during the second intifada that its concerns were
not being listened to.
Perhaps they heeded the increasingly alarmist statements of Israelis
themselves, such as former
Haaretz editor David Landau who in 2007 told US secretary of state
Condoleezza Rice that
the US needed to "rape" Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians.
Regardless of the exact cause,
in 2002 the European Union began lavishly funding non-governmental
organizations in Israel. It claimed
that it was doing this because of "the vital contribution made by NGOs to
the promotion and protection
of the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and the
rule of law."
Between 2002 and 2008, a total of $14 million was granted to various
Israeli NGOs through
the EIDHR. My investigation of the NGOs that received funding revealed
that the lion's share
of the money benefited two groups: Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. $5.5
million was directed
specifically to causes for Palestinians such as the Association for Civil
Rights in Israel's project
"Building a Better Future: Empowering the Palestinian Residents of East
Jerusalem to access
their planning and house [sic] rights" which received $135,000. A further
$7m. went specifically
to programs that benefit only Israeli Arabs such as the al-Awna fund's
"Master Plan for the
Unrecognized Beduin Villages: Securing minority rights for housing and
social services" which
received $263,000. Even when the EIDHR funded programs for women it did so
only for
programs for Beduin or Israeli Arab women, except for a token $100,000 it
gave to an
organization called Isha le Isha (Woman to Woman) which helps fight women
trafficking.
There was not one cent directed specifically towards any of the numerous
and diverse Jewish
communities in Israel: Ethiopians, Russians, Yemenites, Persians or Jews
from the Caucasus.
The only mention of Jewish citizens as potential recipients was in a grant
to the Mossawa Center,
the advocacy center for Arab citizens in Israel. It received $402,000 for
a project that "aims to
combat racism and transform inter-communal relations between target groups
who include
the Jewish majority, Arab minority and ethnic groups including the
Russian, Ethiopian,
Mizrahi and Reform Jewish communities."
Around $73,000 was directed towards former IDF soldiers. It wasn't to help
them with trauma
or reward them for a "shared citizenship." It was to get them to "break
the silence" about what
they witnessed while in the army, to provide testimony that might lead to
a process whereby
European courts might put the soldiers or their officers on trial for war
crimes. Of course that
is not what Breaking the Silence stated for the public. They described
their project
as "personal encounters with former Israeli combat soldiers."
THE EIDHR's "instrument" to affect Israeli policy is merely the tip of the
iceberg. In its
November 2009 report "Trojan Horse: The impact of European government
funding
for Israeli NGOs" NGO Monitor illustrated that individual European
embassies in Israel
and other EU projects give lavishly to Israeli NGOs, sometimes even making
up the majority
of their budgets. In fact "foreign-funded local NGOs are responsible for a
significant portion
of the petitions brought before the Israeli High Court of Justice," says
the report.
The EU, realizing it could not get Israel to change its laws through
diplomatic means, has
resorted to creating an internal lobby within Israel to get Israel to bend
to the will of Europe.
Israel's human rights organizations would counter that it is not important
where their money
comes from, their cause is just. It is also true that some Israeli human
rights organizations view
everything through the lens of the conflict, meaning they apply only for
projects involving
Palestinians or "Palestinian citizens of Israel" and don't have an
interest in the rights
of the Jewish population of the country.
Shatil, which claims to help Ethiopian Jews, applied for $1m. for Beduin
and $1m. "to educate
and raise awareness among the Arab residents of Israel's five Jewish/Arab
mixed cities"
and nothing for the Ethiopians.
The question is whether the EU funding of these organizations constitutes
the creation of a shadow lobby.
The EIDHR doesn't directly sue Israel on behalf of the freedom of movement
of Palestinians. Instead
it funds local NGOs that do. Furthermore the EIDHR sends $8.4m. in funding
directly to NGOs in
the Palestinian territories on top of the money it gives to Israeli NGOs
whose projects
only benefit Palestinians.
In every other country in the world, the EIDHR directs its funding towards
large-scale projects
supporting "democracy" and "civil society." In Egypt it gave $10m.
(2003-2008), none of which
went specifically towards projects for the minority Coptic Christians.
It is time for those, especially in Europe, who speak about a
"Jewish/Israel" lobby to recognize that
for eight years Europe has directed a concerted effort towards
establishing a European lobby in
Israel that discriminates against its Jewish population and supports some
radical NGOs.
The writer is a PhD researcher at the Hebrew University.
(http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=169478#)
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