Israel
Israel passed controversial NGO law
Similar provisions, is otherwise known from Russia: The Israeli Parliament has approved a law that foreign-government organisations not funded sharp conditions.
Under the new law, all future non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Israel, which receive more than half their money from foreign governments need to show proof of this in their publications. Representatives of these groups must also bear in Visits to the Parliament special plaques. Violations should be punished with fines of the equivalent of 7000 Euro.
Especially against government critics directed
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The Parliament approved on Tuesday night the law in the third and final reading. 57 of the 120 deputies voted, according to media reports for the “transparency law”, and the Rest abstained or was absent.
Left-wing politicians and Arab groups say the push for goals in an unfair manner on the left and pro-Palestinian human rights organizations, because they receive the most funds from abroad, for example from European governments. Critics of Israeli settlement policy should be branded, for example, as an outsider. Right-wing groups in Israel are financed mainly through private donations, which are exempted from the law. The head of the Arab unity list, Ayman Odeh, has appreciated the new provision as an “attempt at Intimidation”.
Netanyahu rejected this reading. The law should prevent “the absurd Situation in which foreign States intervene on the funding of NGOs in Israel’s internal Affairs without the Israeli Public knew the truth…”. The law should increase the “transparency” and thereby “strengthen democracy”, wrote the head of the government after the Knesset vote on his Facebook page.
Criticism also from Germany
The German-Israeli parliamentarian group in the Bundestag had not asked the Israeli government, in writing, to adopt the law. The Chairman of the parliamentary group, Volker Beck of the Greens, said with a view to a similar scheme in Russia, the Israeli law, “breathe in Putin’s mind”.
chr/qu (dpa, afp, ap)