Jorge Dastis and Patricia Martínez
Jerusalem, May 10 (EFE) .- This week the Israeli Parliament (the KNESET) began to discuss the “Tax Law on NGOs”, an initiative to impose an 80 % tariff on donations from foreign countries to Israeli organizations that do not have the explicit support of the Benjamín Netyahu government.
The law would also prevent these organisms, focused mainly on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or on the defense of LGTBI rights, appeal to Israeli judicial institutions, including the Supreme Court.
In practice, the legislation has as its main objective the critical groups with the authorities, since any NGO that receives part of its funds from the Israeli government, dominated by a coalition of the right, the ultra -right and the ultra -religious, is without paying the tax, remember these groups.
The norm would create “a civil society totally dependent on political leadership”, in the words of Avner Gvaryahu, activist and former director of the group ‘Breaking the Silence’ that leads the efforts of the main NGOs affected to fight against the proposal.
“All democratic or progressive elements of the state are in question,” Gvaryahu tells Efe in an interview.
‘Breaking the silence’, founded by former Israeli who oppose the occupation of the Palestinian territories, receives more than half of their financing of foreign governments, in particular of the European Union and the United States.
And it is that the majority of the foreign financing of non -governmental organizations in Israel comes from Western democracies, with which the country is supposed to “share values,” says Gvaryahu.
“See you as the only democracy of the Middle East (…), is part of our relationship with our European allies. But the fundamental element of democracy is the ability to exchange ideas and have an open debate,” explains the activist.
For Gvaryahu, you have to go to Russia or Hungary to find initiatives similar to the one that is discussed these days in the Knéset.
Ariel Kallner, the parliamentarian who proposed the law, does not see it that way.
“These NGOs do not reflect public opinion in Israel. They are basically 100 %foreign agents, or almost, by other countries,” explains the parliamentarian, a member of Likud, the Netanyahu Benjamin party.
For Kallner, the investments of countries such as Germany or Norway in groups such as Yesh Din, which records attacks on the human rights of the Palestinians in occupied West Bank, are “an abuse of Israeli democracy to” influence, with their own interests, in this country. “
The parliamentarian does not believe that the true objective of these investments is the promotion of human rights or the denunciation of crimes, but that people think that the occupation of the West Bank is violent and thus lay the foundations of a future Palestinian state.
“I understand that the European Union and perhaps other countries support the solution of the two states, but this is not the way to force Israel to accept it,” explains the politician.
Kallner’s initiative has been ruminating for years. In 2023, before the attacks of Hamas of October 7 against Israel, the parliamentarian proposed a similar measure that ended up being parked by the protests of the then US government of Joe Biden.
After the arrival of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025, Kallner saw the opportunity to return to his proposal. The measure was approved in preliminary reading in February and, this Monday, it began to discuss in the committee at the Knéset.
It must still exceed three more readings in the hemicycle, but the parliamentarian hopes that the law will be approved in the next three months, before the summer break, which will begin at the end of July.
Parliamentary arithmetic leaves little space for doubt. “The Government has the numbers,” Licks Gvaryahu, the former director of ‘Breaking The Silence’.
The activist has their hopes on the opposition, which for now has rejected the block measure, and in the pressure of the international community, although it admits that it will be very difficult to achieve the cooperation of the Trump administration.
Shai Parnes, spokesman for B zelem, another of the groups against the occupation of the Palestinian territories that risk losing much of their financing, explains that the rule “is nothing new”, and that the Israeli NGOs of Human Rights have been persecuted by Netyahu’s right for more than 15 years.
“This is just another step of this Israeli government to end any critical voice and to silence organizations that oppose the occupation of the Palestinian territories,” he explains.
The spokesman ensures that the measure, if approved, will not have an immediate effect, although he acknowledges that B zelem will have to “rethink” many things to continue working.
One of the most critical groups with legislation in process is the New Israel Fund (NIF, in English), based in the United States and finances hundreds of Israeli progressive NGOs.
“What we are seeing is a huge step towards a total autocracy,” laments Mickey Gitzin, executive director of the NIF in Israel.
Gitzin warns that the law, of approved, would create a “loyal” civil society to the government, where human rights abuses or critical information with the authorities do not come to light.
“A country without civil society is a non -democratic country,” he says
(photo) (video)
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