The Electronic Intifada - ICCO Financial Support

ICCO Financial Support

NGO Monitor criticized the Dutch Interchurch Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO) for providng financial support to Electronic Intifada which NGO Monitor accused of being antisemitic and frequently comparing "Israeli policies with those of the Nazi regime." Marinus Verweij, chairman of ICCO’s executive board said "The EI reports frequently about the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by the State of Israel. In no way is the EI anti-Israel or anti-Semitic." He described Electronic Intifada as "an important source of information from the occupied Palestinian territories" frequently used by newspapers such as The Washington Post and the Financial Times. Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Ward Bezemer stated that whether ICCO had promoted anti-semitism, a criminal offence, is to be determined by the Public Prosecutor on the basis of Dutch law. On November 26, 2010 Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal who is Jewish and has an Israeli wife, said "I will look into the matter personally. If it appears that the government subsidized NGO ICCO does fund Electronic Intifada, it will have a serious problem with me." Rosenthal later told IKON radio that "anti-semitism is not the issue" but "my concern about calls to contribute to boycotts and embargoes".

The Electronic Intifada responded to NGO Monitor's statements regarding ICCO's financial support. The Electronic Intifada wrote: "NGO Monitor is an extreme right-wing group with close ties to the Israeli government, military, West Bank settlers, a man convicted of misleading the US Congress, and to notoriously Islamophobic individuals and organizations in the United States."

EI co-founder MP Arjan El-Fassed, who also wrote for the website Al-Awda, told major Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that the fuss created by NGO Monitor was related to one quote from an interview with the Jewish Holocaust survivor and anti-Zionist Hajo Meyer in June 2009. Meyer told EI: 'I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel.'

In the same article, the Director of the Centre for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), Ronnie Naftaniel, asserted that The Electronic Intifada is not an anti-Semitic website. He did, however, state that, while everybody should be free to express their opinion, the Dutch government should not indirectly fund a website that regularly calls for a boycott of Israel.

On January 14, 2011, ICCO decided not change its policy even after a discussion held with the Dutch foreign minister. In response to ICCO's decision, the Jerusalem Post reports that Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal “will monitor ICCO’s activities. He will consider this as a minus when he makes up the balance when ICCO applies again in new a subsidies-round,” said Ward Bezemer, a spokesman for Rosenthal."

Partos, a national umbrella for more than a hundred Dutch civil society organizations in the international development cooperation sector, strongly condemned Rosenthal's threats to ICCO's funding. "Rosenthal's position vis-à-vis ICCO creates a dangerous precedent for the future. Development organisation will have to continue to fight for an independent voice in the debate. Partos will, as branch representative, stand tall for that."

In April 2011, Professor of International Cooperation Studies Paul Hoebink argued that Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal has no say in Dutch government funding to ICCO because Minister Ben Knapen holds the portfolio. In addition, ICCO's contribution to The Electronic Intifada is paid with ICCO's own funds. Professor of International Law Nico Schrijver considers Rosenthal's threat to cut government funding if ICCO continues its financial support to The Electronic Intifada as a very worrying muzzling."