Intrusive largesse

Shame on Martin Schafer, spokesman for Germany’s Foreign Ministry, for seriously misrepresenting the central provision of Israel’s 2016 NGO Transparency Law (“Germany compares Israel’s NGO law with Russia and China,” June 25).

Schafer claims the law shows that Israel regards “the funding of nongovernmental organizations, of civil society efforts, by donors from abroad as... hostile.” In fact, the law, as well as related legislation, was very carefully drafted to apply only to donations by foreign governments, just as provided in the Foreign Agents Registration Act (1938) of the US, on which the laws are based.

While reporter Benjamin Weinthal correctly states that Israel’s law “requires nonprofit organizations that receive more than half of their funding from foreign governments to report this fact each year to the registrar in the Justice Ministry,” he does not point out the error in the spokesman’s statement.

The danger of foreign-government funding for Israeli nonprofits that are politically active and attempt to influence public option cannot be overstated. Fortunately, our government is becoming increasingly aware of this reality, and as Weinthal points out, our prime minister now “wants to make the NGO transparency law stricter.”

Based on Schafer’s misrepresentation, he has a list of non-democratic countries that, in his view, have similar laws, to which Israel has been added. Let’s ask him to provide us with another list, this time of those countries to which his government contributes significant funding for politically active NGOs, and preferably without disclosure. Would there be any other countries on this list, or are we the sole beneficiary of Germany’s intrusive largesse? JAN SOKOLOVSKY

Jerusalem