Summary
The 2016 law requiring NGOs that receive 50% or more of their funding from foreign governments to state that fact in publications, reports and hearings, which Adalah’s Discriminatory Laws Database presents as marking out and harassing human rights organizations critical of government policy, in a Description-only entry (Discriminatory Laws Database, lines 1095-1117).
Details
- An NGO receiving 50% or more of its funding from foreign governments must state that fact in all its publications, in written reports to MKs and decision-makers, at any hearing or discussion involving a written protocol, and in any oral discussion in a place where public officials work. A violation is punishable by a fine of NIS 29,200 (c. US $7,500) (line 1108).
- An earlier version would have compelled representatives of such NGOs to wear tags in the Knesset stating their names, organizations and foreign-government funding; that provision was removed from the latest draft, dated 18 January 2016 (line 1108).
- Adalah’s account is that all registered non-profit organizations already had to publish quarterly reports on foreign-government funding under a 2011 amendment to the Law of Associations, so the information was already public, and that donations from private individuals are not covered, leaving right-wing settler organizations heavily funded by private US donors unaffected. The entry records criticism of the law by the US, the EU and members of the European and German Parliaments (lines 1110-1112).