Netanyahu needs to cut left-wing NGO's foreign life line

If that is truely what Israel wants stop milking other countries for money and military support, get out of our politics and then you might have right to complain. As the country that has been subsidized more than any other in history get used to the countries paying your way telling you what you should do.

Because the sources hate Israel and want to destroy Jews.

"Sovereignty, among other things, means keeping foreigners from interfering in domestic issues." Really? You best get on the line to AIPAC and their analogues throughout the rest of the world then. Unless, that is, it's alright for Israelis to meddle in the domestic politics of other countries. But wait, wouldn't that be hypocritical?

.. and that is the reason, why it doesn't matter if they get dismantled or not. They already have delivered more than enough information to delegitimize Israel several times over.

And you wonder why Jews outside Israel are losing interest in identifying with you!

As long as the funding is transparent there should be no problem with it. So when the US, an ally of Israe, funds Israel, there is nothing wrong with that. But when Saudi Arabia, an enemy of Israel funds organizations in Israel, there is definitely a problem with this. Saudi Arabia is not going to fund an organization which promotes the welfare of Israel. Anf if someone asks, how do I know the funds come from Saudi Arabia, well thats what transparency is about.

Until you agree to cut those lifelines too you're not someone to be taken seriously. You come off as a crank.

You then launch into a tirade that is aimed directly at the left! And your clear innuendos that there are dark undermining motives against the state of Israel that lie behind their funding are little more than outright lies. The effort is to change a policy that is detrimental not only to Israeli security, but international security as well. The settlements are NOT Israel! Quit trying to indocrinate people into thinking they are! You don't like the fact that western nations seek to change your extralegal activities in the occupied territory, then quietly accept the alternative that is no doubt soon to find fruition...which is an outright international boycott and sanctions. You'll scream about that too, won't you? You're already screaming about the few that exist...we can just imagine how it'll be then. Your commentary is nothing but pure right wing hasbara meant to protect the occupation and its settlement enterprise under a thinly veiled pretext of objectivity.

then you can start lecturing tiny NGOs about their relationships to foreigners .. Oh? You want the $3 billion? Oh? You can't build your precious settlements without all that money? Oh? You don't really mean that Israel should be self-sufficient? Oh? You're nothing but a hypocrite? How surprising!!!!

would in any other country have been interned or shot. the remarkable world experts who post in these columns need not only education but some real physical hard work to get their brains to function !

Any law cutting foreign funding of political activist organizations should apply equally to those whose activities support the sitting government's policies and those who oppose them. That's a concept the leftwing founders of my country, the U.S., called 'equal protection.' Ready to pass a law barring foreign monies now, Harel, or is the notion of equality under the law a little too leftist for you?

In a real democracy it would be laughable to even talk about a government targetting only those on one side of the political spectrum or the other. In Israel this is business as usual, since there are no protections for the minorities in Israel. If people have no rights, then the government can do anything. For those Israelis whose political beliefs coincide with the government, which is most of them, this is not a problem. Nobody anticipates that the left will rise again so there is no thought of risking revenge. This is the way that Israel operates and it seems to work for them. As an American tax payer, I don't want to support it. We should have the same goals in identifying all the various monies that America gives to Israel just as Israel investigates monies sent to the NGO's. The three billion a year which America gives Israel for weapons is only a part of the river of American tax payers money flowing into Israel.

1. The author confuses 'human rights' with leftist groups; dangerous attitude! 2. As a 'civilized' country, Israel is party to international treaties that undermine its sovereignty; including permitting public scrutiny on the degree of compliance; 3. Instead of undermining human rights NGOs, which in part kept a clean part of Israel's face, just stop the grave violations of international law. It's not like they do not happen if NGOs don't tell about them. 4. It's ironic that groups that are political and promote violation of international law; e.g. colonisation and discrimination, are encouraged, while those who stand for true human values are attacked; 5. Why a Bill/law? NGOs are obliged to declare their sourcs and report to government anyway. It's nothing about transparency; it's distorted politics where the 'majority' opresses the 'minority'. Congrats for the democracy oasis of the MA! Deal with it.

So long as all are equal under the law, we are all for transparency. Since more of the so-called left wing organizations (actually centrist mainstream by standards of western democratic countries supporting equal human rights, compliance with international law) are formally organized and reporting to tax authorities they are already more transparent. The right wing ones (truly right wing; anti-equal rights; main purpose is violate international law and to occassionally incite to murder prime ministers) are often unofficial, funnelling right wing money not only to public activism to but secret private settlement development.

as much of it is used to build illegal settlements and steal land from the Palestinians. Such patronising nonsense---pure zionistic drivel.

we can examine foreign (right-wing fundamentalist Christian) funding of right-wing groups, and remind Bibi that he did once promise to cease receiving foreign aid from the US ...

handouts of the USA... " if foreign countries do start meddling in our affairs again" ... this is total hogwash as Israel loves the US diaspora's 'meddling' $$$ money!

Stop taking billions of dollars every year from American taxpayers, some of which goes to support the Jewish terrorists living in The West Bank.

The US government funds Human Rights Watch, which, criticizes the USA and American allies in Europe; European states provide funding to Amnesty International which criticizes them and the USA. What Harel is describing isn't something new or controversial in the West. The British don't care if Israel funds the Jewish Agency or Jewish lobby groups in Britain because it is one state amongst many that fund groups within its borders; it also helps Britain that it doesn't have a cancerous military occupation in which 2.5 million people are held in bondage

"The Israeli government, weak willed and lacking confidence in the rightness of its path.." What path Harel? This government has no path other than to appease those it needs to keep their seats warm in cabinet. Your article also forgets to apply your (in my opinion flawed) logid to right wing NGO's. Why dont you care to mention wealthy chritistian and jewish donors in the USA who without their immense funding would probably cause the settler movement to collapse.

... to build itself. The Left in Israel are not building Israel by their foreign ideologies they are encouraging the enemies of the jewish state to destroy the unity that always has been the strength of the jewish success in building their only home land. A state without being jewish is the diaspora again,

"It also means that if foreign countries do start meddling in our affairs again, as they did in the dark days of exile, we should contemptuously turn our backs on them." Quite right, Harel, kick out the American settlers and their money from the West Bank and E. Jerusalem! Oh wasn't that what you meant? Is it only SOME foreigners you disagree with? Only those who don't share your right-wing opinions?

i doubt there will be any action against the right wing groups even if they get funding from abroad, netenyahu will find a loop hole to let them keep working.

It would have been nice if he'd bothered to bolster his argument with some concrete examples of shady foreign governments funding these horrible subversive leftist groups, instead of just making vague allusions to European countries. As it is, it doesn't say much for his credibility. Neither does the fact that his own settler movement is the one that's going to spell the end of Israeli democracy, and I'm pretty sure it gets some foreign funding.

There are probably a dozen schemes to circumvent this law, a storm in a tea cup.