AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime accused European Union institutions on Friday of funding non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that promote "anti-Israel boycotts” and called for the support to end.
Issuing a 40-page study, the regime’s ministry of strategic affairs and public diplomacy put the scope of such assistance to European and Palestinian groups at 5 million euros in 2016.
It said it based the sum on EU figures for that year, describing them as the latest available.
Israel has long decried groups like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement who want to isolate the Zionist regime over its policies against the Palestinians.
The EU delegation in the Israeli-occupied territories said it had not received any communication by the regime on the matter but would be happy to review any relevant information received concerning EU-funded activities.
"Money from the EU budget may only be spent for the purpose for which it was contracted, under strict transparency rules and is subject to extensive monitoring requirements,” a statement from the delegation’s office said.
"We are therefore confident that EU financing does not go to support terrorism nor to BDS activities, as apparently suggested in the report,” it added.
More than a dozen NGOs "which promote anti-Israel boycotts” received the money, "in stark opposition to the EU’s own declared policies rejecting such boycotts”, the regime’s report claimed.
Several million more euros, the ministry said, were channeled to NGOs through third parties that received EU assistance.
In its descriptions of "anti-Israel delegitimisation”, the report included calls by various NGOs to boycott Zionist and foreign companies over ties with Israeli settlements in occupied territories Palestinians seek for a state.
The European Union, and many countries, regard the settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds, areas captured in the 1967 Middle East war, as illegal.