‘Stop UN funding NGOs that defend terrorists’
More than 40 bereaved families, in a letter to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday, demanded that the United Nations stop funding Israeli organizations that defend terrorists in Israel’s Supreme Court.
Guterres made his first visit to Israel in his capacity as secretary-general this week. “In recent years, the United Nations has been a prominent sponsor and supporter of Israeli organizations that are leading the lawfare efforts against Israel,” the families wrote.
According to the letter, written in conjunction with rightwing organization Im Tirtzu, the UN gave over NIS 2 million to Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual and to Arab legal aid organization Adalah.
The families said only people who attacked Israelis received this kind of legal aid from the UN. “Is the purpose of the UN treasury to lay the groundwork for the next murder of Israelis? The blood of our parents, children, brothers, sisters and other loved ones, cries out from the earth,” they wrote.
The letter’s signatories include Rina Ariel, mother of Hallel Yaffa Ariel, who was murdered in her Kiryat Arba bedroom in June 2016; Tzvika Mark, brother of Rabbi Miki Mark who was murdered near Hebron in a drive-by shooting in July 2016; Merav and Herzl Hajaj, parents of Shir Hajaj who was murdered in a car-ramming attack in Jerusalem in January 2017; and Dvorah Gonen, mother of Danny Gonen who was murdered while hiking near the village of Dolev in June 2015.
The families also came out against the UN’s funding of far-left organizations, such as B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, which they said “delegitimize Israel and defame IDF soldiers.”
“The time has come to cease this callous interference with Israel’s internal affairs,” the letter concluded.
Merav and Herzl Hajaj called the UN funding of the aforementioned NGOs “an industry... surrounding the murder of Jews.” Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg said that “the outcry of the bereaved families is not only a struggle for justice, but a struggle for Israeli democracy as a whole. We expect the new UN secretary-general to end this disgraceful funding perpetrated by the organization that he heads.”