Dutch officials posed in 2017 with Schnerb terrorist

Photo appears on Netherlands Representative Office in Ramallah’s Facebook page

Dutch civil servants took a picture with one of the terrorists charged with killing 17-yearold Rina Schnerb, The Jerusalem Post has learned, despite their government’s denial of any known connection between organizations they fund and terrorist groups.

The photograph from 2017, which can be found on the Netherlands Representative Office in Ramallah’s Facebook page, features Dutch officials, including Head of Cooperation in Ramallah Henny de Vries, and leaders of the Palestinian-run organization Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), to which the Dutch representative in Ramallah pledged nearly $20 million in 2013-2021.

Among the UAWC officials in the photo – though not named in the Facebook post – is Abdul Razeq Farraj, the NGO’s Finance and Administration director and who was indicted in October 2019 on four counts, including aiding an attempt to cause death in the terrorist attack on the Shnerb family that year and holding a position in a terrorist organization. According to the indictment, Farraj recruited for the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and knew about attacks carried out by the cell, as well as details of its weapons and explosives.

The Knesset will enter the fray in fighting antisemitism and efforts to delegitimize Israel around the world, thanks to a new caucus officially formed by new Likud MK Ariel Kallner.

Kallner entered the Knesset in place of new ambassador to the US Gilad Erdan, who led the government’s fight against efforts to boycott, divest and sanction Israel as strategic affairs minister.

The new MK dealt with such issues as chairman of the Hazon Leumi (National Vision) organization, whose goal is to raise a generation of strong young leaders, with developed Jewish identities and intellectual ability to develop deep vision to affect the agenda of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

“Israel is the state of the Jewish people, and we are responsible for the Jews of the world,” Kallner said. “Antisemitism and delegitimization go hand in hand around the world. It’s the same old hatred of Judaism.”

Kallner said the caucus would centralize efforts to reveal organizations in Israel that receive aid from foreign countries in delegitimizing the country, its citizens and the IDF, and would use legislation and legal means against those organizations. He also intends to fight efforts to put Israelis on trial at the International Court of Justice at The Hague and stop foreign countries from funding Palestinian attempts to take over land in Area C of the West Bank.

But he said there were also positive trends of European parliaments stopping funding for organizations advocating boycotts against Israel and other antisemitic activities.

MKs from Likud, Blue and White, Yesh Atid and Yamina are in the caucus. Kallner intends to meet with the leaders in Israeli efforts against antisemitism, including ADL Israel office director Carole Nuriel and Erdan’s replacement as strategic affairs minister, Orit Farkash-Hacohen.

Palestinian terrorists killed Shnerb on August 23, 2019, in a bombing attack at a spring near Dolev, injuring her father Rabbi Eitan Shnerb as well as her brother Dvir.

The commander of the PFLP terror cell that prepared and detonated the bomb was Samer Arbid, an accountant for UAWC at the time of his 2019 arrest.

Also in the photo is Ubai Aboudi, UAWC’s Monitoring and Evaluation Officer until April 2019, who was sentence to a year in prison in June 2020. Farraj’s indictment refers to Aboudi as a PFLP member working with Farraj in recruitment.

The Facebook post says the photo was taken after the Netherlands Representative Office and UAWC signed a $11,250,000 agreement to continue a land and water resource management project over the subsequent four years.

NGO Monitor, the research institute that found the connection between the Dutch government and the PFLP terrorists said the photograph “highlights what [they have] long warned about direct ties between senior UAWC individuals and PFLP and how dangerous it is to entrust such organizations with distributing humanitarian aid.”

On Tuesday, Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Development Minister Sigrid Kaag admitted to parliament that the Netherlands paid part of the salaries of terrorists involved in killing Shnerb last year.

In immediate response, the Netherlands suspended its

DUTCH OFFICIALS pose for a photo in 2017 with leaders of a Palestinian agricultural union, among them Ubai Aboudi (right), a recruiter for the PFLP who was sentenced to a year in prison in June, and Abdul Razeq Farraj (second right), who was indicted in 2019 for aiding in the attack that killed 17-year-old Rina Schnerb.

donations to UAWC indefinitely, pending an investigation.

“Because careful action is so important in this regard, I have

decided to commission external research into any ties between the PFLP and UAWC,” the ministers wrote. “The Cabinet… wants to independently determine whether and how continuation of the contributions is appropriate.”

The salaries were paid in part by Dutch funds covering UAWC overhead costs, though they were not directly involved in the program sponsored by the Netherlands.

They also received accreditation, identifying themselves as “employees of a partner organization of the Dutch representation,” in Ramallah, a letter from the ministers said.

The ministers’ remarks came in response to a parliamentary question from three right-wing parties.

Kaag claimed that she was not previously aware of UAWC’s ties to terrorist groups. This despite that both the Dutch-Israel advocacy organization Center for Information and Documentation on Israel and the organization UK Lawyers for Israel reached out to the government and lawmakers in The Hague in May 2019 to highlight those connections, based on research by the Israeli think tank NGO Monitor.

NGO Monitor said: “We sent letters to Dutch ministers of foreign affairs and development in late 2019 and in June this year, specifically about UAWC. The decision to freeze the funding and open an investigation is extremely important and shows accountability, but we hope it will also set a precedent and serve as an example for others like the EU, Germany, France and Italy who all have supported or still support UAWC.”