Two Israeli "Own Goals"

Ed Rettig, Director, AJC Jerusalem

November 14, 2011

Soccer players live in dread of the "own goal," where a player inadvertently kicks the ball into his own team’s goal, giving the other side the point. As I write, Israel appears poised to provide the world with a rare example of two “own goals,” and in the process harming Israeli democracy.

The Israeli cabinet set up the first on Sunday by approving two bills aimed at clipping the wings of human-rights NGOs that work in Israel by limiting their capacity to raise funds overseas. Pray that cooler heads prevail and the Knesset buries the bills. But that will not be the end of the story, as the bills are a response to the other short-sighted “own goal” committed by many of those NGOs.

The bill proposed by Likud MK Ofir Akunis would limit the ability of Israeli “political associations” to accept donations above 20,000 shekels from foreign governments. A political association is defined quite broadly: “an association whose goals include an attempt to impact on the State of Israel's political and security agenda, or an association in the framework of which activities of political nature take place." Evidently blinded by their hostility to the perceived left-wing agenda of the human-rights NGOs, the bill’s supporters seem unaware that this definition might apply to all sorts of “political agenda” activities that they presumably do not want to harm, including contributions from agencies of democratic governments and international organizations to support environmental research, safety legislation, women’s empowerment, workers’ rights, health policies, etc. The second bill, proposed by Israel Beitenu MK Faina Kirshenbaum, would tax such contributions at the confiscatory rate of 45%. Now that these proposals enjoy government endorsement, coalition discipline could ease their passage through the Knesset.

Curiously, the ministerial committee approved both measures even though they contradict each other. By setting such a low limit on contributions from foreign governments’ agencies the Akunis Bill effectively forbids them, while the other proposal taxes them. It calls to mind the old joke about the acerbic restaurant critic who noted that “the food was awful … and such small portions!”

In a rare step, Ambassador Matthew Gould of Great Britain met with Akunis to tell him of the British experience of supporting NGOs around the world and to clarify that these activities, based upon universal values, are not aimed against the Israeli government. The EU representative in Israel, Andrew Standley, in meetings with AJC’s Chicago regional delegation in Tel Aviv last week and then in a private meeting with Israel’s national security advisor, warned that passage of the bills would harm Israel’s reputation as a democratic country.

AJC, for its part, has spoken out urging reconsideration. Overbroad, undemocratic and, in the view of Israel’s attorney general, probably unconstitutional, this legislation is no way to address the problem. In a statement to the press, AJC Executive Director David Harris pointed out that there are alternatives that could encourage healthy debate without stifling free speech, such as “requiring full disclosure of the revenues, and their sources, of such groups across the political spectrum." In fact current Israeli law already requires nonprofits to be transparent about their funding.

Yet to an unfortunate degree, some of the human-rights NGOs suffer from structural dysfunctions in their own organizations that alienate them from Israeli society, rendering them vulnerable to these proposed bills. Too many activists fail to realize that their success depends on educating the Israeli public through ongoing close and empathic dialogue. Alienating that public undermines their own mission to promote human rights.

Some of these NGOs have closed their eyes to the dangers of relying on foreign governmental sources for so much of their funding (a problem that is true of non-governmental foreign sources as well). This reliance makes it unnecessary for the organizations to listen carefully to ordinary Israelis who often have real wisdom to share that can balance and sometimes correct the thinking that flourishes in in the human-rights organizational bubble. As an example, consider the decision by some of the more prominent human-rights bodies to collaborate with the infamous Goldstone Commission’s kangaroo court following the Gaza operation. To the best of my knowledge, no NGO staff member or lay leader in this country lost their jobs over such appallingly bad judgment, which speaks volumes about the NGO community’s lack of internal checks and balances. While demanding standards of performance and accountability from other branches of modern governance—courts, legislatures, executives, and media—some NGOs act as if those standards do not apply to them.

Another problem with reliance on foreign funding is that the public often suspects a connection between political activity and the flow of contributions, whether one is there or not. The Hebrew words hon, meaning wealth, and shilton, meaning government, rhyme, and are often used together to criticize lobbying by the wealthy and influential. Foreign funding for human-rights NGOs raises doubts—generally mistaken but damaging nevertheless—about the integrity of their activities. Were they more in tune with the public and not stuck in self-reinforcing NGO isolation they would be more aware of the problem and perhaps better prepared to deal with it.

Short-sighted politicians rush into the vacuum of trust created by this sort of dysfunction. Perhaps these bills will serve as a wake-up call highlighting the need for NGOs to democratize themselves by reducing reliance on overseas sponsorship. They should not merely see themselves as Israeli expressions of universal democratic values, but give the appearance of doing so as well.

And so a word of caution to the sponsors of these bills: By creating a harsher environment for the human-rights NGOs, you may be doing them a favor in the long term, providing just the incentive they need to set their houses in order and emerge stronger than ever.

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