Dutch Government Cuts Funding to Leading Palestinian NGO, Citing Extensive Individual Ties With PFLP Terror Organization
The Dutch government on Wednesday announced that it was cutting funds to a Palestinian NGO working in the agricultural sector over its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — designated as a terrorist organization by the US, the European Union, Israel, Australia, Canada and Japan.
The decision means that the Netherlands will not pay out the next installment of an aid grant to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a Palestinian NGO that has so far received approximately $25 million of Dutch taxpayer money.
In a lengthy joint statement, Ben Knapen, the Dutch Foreign Minister, and Tom De Bruijn, the Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, said that research commissioned by the Netherlands cabinet from an independent consultancy had “provided sufficient evidence that there were ties at the individual level between UAWC staff and board members and the PFLP for a considerable period of time.”
The statement noted that “for the government, the findings on individual links between the UAWC and the PFLP and the lack of openness about this from the UAWC, also during the investigation, are sufficient reason to stop financing the activities of the UAWC. The Netherlands will not proceed with payment to UAWC of the last part of the financial contribution under the Land and Water Resource Management Program.”
Last October, the UAWC was one of six Palestinian organizations proscribed by the Israeli government over their connections with the PFLP. Formed in 1967 as an ideological fusion of Marxism and Arab nationalism, the PFLP’s overarching goal is the violent defeat of the State of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian state extending from the Mediterranean coast to the Jordan River.
Netherlands defunds blacklisted Palestinian group
Former Dutch prime minister criticized for accusing Israeli settlers of poisoning Palestinians
A former prime minister of the Netherlands, Dries van Agt, said in an interview for a recently aired documentary that Israeli settlers poisoned their Palestinian neighbors in 2015, drawing criticism from Dutch Jews who say he is perpetuating a centuries-old antisemitic blood libel.David Singer: Grovelling before Abbas
B’Tselem, the leading Israeli organization devoted to documenting alleged human rights violations, said it is not aware of the incident described by van Agt.
“The colonizers who conquered the hill a week or two earlier came each night to pound on their door at night, to achieve maximum intimidation, to tell them to go away and they refused,” Van Agt said in the interview for a documentary on antisemitism that was aired in November by the KRO-NCRV broadcaster. “And then one morning something terrible happened: The olive grove and the vegetable garden below — the colonizers always take to top hills – were strewn with poison. And a three-year-old child became very ill. The only explanation was that she drank the milk of a poisoned goat. She was poisoned.”
Van Agt, 90, then began crying and apologized for his emotional state. The incident occurred in 2015 near Nablus, he said.
His interviewer, Frans Bromet, asserted: “These things, they’re not unusual.Van Agt replies: “Oh, no. That’s what the wonderful people from the peace organization say. This happens all the time in the occupied territory.”
It didn’t take long for President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to be shown up as inept political leaders following the much-publicised visit by President of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Chairman of Fatah its largest faction – Mahmoud Abbas - to the home of Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz.
Their two-and-a-half hour’s meeting was Abbas’s first in Israel since meeting then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Jerusalem in 2010.
Whilst Bennett privately criticized Gantz’s intention to hold the meeting and expressed resentment about the hosting of Abbas in Gantz’s home – he did nothing to prevent it occurring.
Some Ministers in Bennett’s Government were not so circumspect.
Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin said:
“I wouldn’t have invited to my home someone who pays salaries to murderers of Israelis and also wants to put senior IDF officers in prison in The Hague, including the host himself.”
Elkin was referring to Abbas’s:
- Pay for slay policy: paying monthly stipends to terrorists in Israeli jails and the families of slain terrorists killed while committing terror attacks. These annual payments now total over US$300 million – about 8% of Abbas’s budget.
- Campaign to see Israeli security officials - including Gantz — a former Israeli chief of staff — being prosecuted by the International Criminal Court as war criminals.
Israel’s Communications Minister - Yoaz Hendel – said he:
“personally wouldn’t have met” with Abbas, who “in my eyes is still a Holocaust denier and is playing a very strange double game.”
However Abbas’s visit brought this effusive response from US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price: “The US is very pleased Defense Minister Gantz hosted PA President Abbas at his home in Israel. We hope confidence-building measures discussed will accelerate momentum to further advance freedom, security, and prosperity for Palestinians and Israelis alike in 2022."