Officials from the Office of the European Union Representative met Tuesday with members of the six Palestinian groups that Israel had designated as terrorist organizations.

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The move was announced last week by Defense Minister Benny Gantz following an investigation that, according to Israeli officials, proves that the groups, which are ostensibly designed to promote human rights or operate as civil society organizations, are in fact linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is a terrorist group designated, among others, by Israel, the United States, and the EU.

Posting through its special "EU and Palestinians" Twitter handle after the meeting, the EU representative's office said it took the matter seriously and asked Israel for an explanation as to why it decided to outlaw the groups.

1/2 Today, the EU Representative, a number of MS+likeminded countries met with representatives of the six Palestinian CSOs listed by Israel's MoD. In response to questions, EU Rep. clarified that the EU takes this very seriously and is seeking clarifications with Israeli partners pic.twitter.com/KJYaAyq2xM

— EU and Palestinians (@EUpalestinians) October 25, 2021

It also tweeted that "past allegations of the misuse of EU funds by certain Palestinian CSO [civil society organizations] partners have not been substantiated."

The 27-member bloc further stressed it will continue "to stand by international law" and support the groups in "promoting human rights and democratic values."

The move garnered harsh criticism from right-wing watchdog groups Im Tirtzu and Lach Yerushalayim.

"The European Union should be ashamed," they said in a joint statement. "Apart from turning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a thriving business, in which propaganda and terrorist organizations profit and make a living from the conflict, it has never acted or did anything to calm the tensions.

"The European Union's subversion and colonial gall know no bounds. We very much hope that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will not show weakness, but rather stand firm against this foreign and intolerable interference."

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A new report by pro-Israel NGO Im Tirtzu reveals that over the last five years, UN. encies have funneled at least $40 million to radical anti-Israel groups, some with terror ties. It also offers a prescription: a Taylor Force Act applied to the United Nations.

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Passed by Congress in 2018, the Taylor Force Act, named after a US war veteran and graduate student killed by a terrorist while visiting Israel, conditions US aid to the Palestinian Authority on its halting payments to terrorists. The PA puts such a high premium on these payments that its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said in July 2018: "If we are left with one penny, we will spend it on the families of the prisoners and martyrs."

The law led the Trump administration to cut more than $200 million to the PA.

Eytan Meir, Im Tirtzu's director of external relations and development, tells JNS that a US law holding the UN accountable for funding malevolent NGOs will lead the United Nations to become more transparent and take greater care in its review of its "implementing partners," the UN's term of art for organizations to which it channels funds to carry out in-country projects.

The United States is the largest financial supporter of the United Nations, providing 22% of its financial support (China is a distant second with 12%). "Americans should know what their money is going toward. I think it would shock most Americans to learn that their tax dollars are going to terror-linked organizations," said Meir.

Ties to terrorism and the BDS movement

Anne Herzberg, legal adviser of NGO Monitor, said a UN Taylor Force Act is a "good idea."

"We've also suggested it in our reports that money to the UN should be blocked if it's going to be used for terror-linked partners," she tells JNS.

More than a third of the Palestinian groups (eight of 19) identified in the report, titled The United Nations' Funding of Radical Anti-Israel Organizations, have ties to terrorism. Virtually all of them support the BDS movement that calls for boycotts against Israel.

Meir notes that in July 2019, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution against BDS (398-17) with numerous US states passing their own anti-BDS laws. "It's the general consensus that BDS is not something that America supports. But then you have all this money going towards BDS."

To identify the nature of the NGOs receiving money, the report relied on work by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy, whose February 2019 report Terrorists in Suits detailed the links between terror groups and anti-Israel NGOs. The ministry told JNS that it has brought attention to "the UN's financial support of Palestinian NGOs with ties to internationally designated terror organizations throughout the years. … The Ministry calls on the UN to cease any and all support it still provides to Palestinian 'human rights' NGOs which instead of protecting human life, seek to end it through their continued ties to terror groups."

Most of the NGOs on the list sound innocuous, like the Agriculture Development Association, Women's Affairs Center and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Yet all have been linked to promoting BDS. The last has ties to two terror groups, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). These three NGOs alone collected more than $5 million from UN agencies between 2016 and 2020.

"They all have nice names, but then you look into what they do. One of these groups is an environmental group; you think, 'Great, they want to improve the environmental situation in Gaza.' Then you go on their website and see their videos, and they're all dedicated to attacking Israel, to accusing Israel of everything under the sun, and that's essentially what all these groups are doing," said Meir.

Herzberg noted that the groups listed in the report support a one-state solution – that is, "Palestine" in place of Israel, meaning the United Nations is channeling money to groups that contradict its own position. "The UN framework is two states for two peoples, and I don't think any of those groups support that."

The United Nations channels funds to the NGOs primarily via three agencies: the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund).

The agencies are not always transparent about where they're sending the money they receive from donors, stated Meir, noting that OCHA is "the worst in documenting where things are going." The report includes a screenshot of a 2018 OCHA grant. Under "implementing partners" it lists "N/A" (not available). In some cases, OCHA listed the implementing partners but not how much money each received.

JNS reached out to all three agencies for comment but received no reply.

'The bigger issue is the Europeans'

Herzberg said it's important to point out that the UN agencies are not supplying the money. The UN agencies act more as a "clearinghouse," directing money from a donor to an ostensibly humanitarian project within the region. Sometimes, the money comes from a country, like Canada or the European Union, "which I think is really important because the funders are the people who need to be held accountable."

In most cases, UN agencies aren't picking the projects either, said Herzberg. They rely on a group called the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), described by OCHA as a "forum of humanitarian organizations operating in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt)." The HCT is comprised of UN agency heads and two NGO umbrella groups, one of which is the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO). PNGO refused to sign an anti-terror clause, which is a condition of U.S. government funding. In 2007, PNGO launched a boycott against USAID when the group introduced updated anti-terrorism procedures. Nine of the 19 groups listed in the Im Tirtzu report are members of PNGO.

OCHA's website description of PNGO is at odds with reality: "The Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) seeks to support, consolidate and strengthen Palestinian civil society on the basis of the principles of democracy, social justice and sustainable development."

The Palestinians are basically the ones choosing the projects, says Herzberg, and they have no trouble working with terrorists. "Almost all the so-called human-rights NGOs – they're part of the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine]. I think it was in the 1990s a deliberate strategy by the PFLP to set up these NGOs as a good way to do propaganda and perhaps also to funnel money to themselves."

Herzberg noted that the role of the United Nations is important because it gives the donor governments some plausible deniability: "Oh, it's a UN project" is a response to deflect criticism.

With the UN funding process ripe for reform, the question is whether the Biden administration will be open to a Taylor Force Act, particularly as it has rebooted funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the biggest source of humanitarian aid for the Palestinians and one that has been widely criticized for corruption.

Meir said it's unlikely, though Herzberg is more optimistic. "With UNRWA, they've wanted to increase the oversight. [US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken made a speech about that not too long ago. And certainly, it's an issue for members of Congress. So I do think they'd be amenable to it."

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"The bigger issue is the Europeans. You could have US legislation, but a lot of the money comes from Europe and from individual European governments," said Herzberg. Even in Europe, which is so "wedded" to the idea of NGOS that "they don't even look at the outcome or the product of what they're funding," progress can be made through "naming and shaming," she added.

"When you actually expose how the money is being used to the parliaments back in Europe, people are usually pretty shocked," she said. "They just had no idea their money was going to those types of programs or counterproductive initiatives, and oftentimes, they've been very embarrassed because many of the groups have ties to terror groups."

Following such exposure, she continued, "generally, they start taking a closer examination, and that's a good way to end the funding."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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Last Saturday, the justices of the International Criminal Court (ICC) took a major swipe at the Jewish state. They ruled that the ICC prosecutor is permitted to open a formal investigation of Israel for fake war crimes. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the decision referring to it as "pure anti-Semitism."

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Netanyahu added, "This court was founded to prevent atrocities like the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people, and now it is attacking the Jewish people's only state."

Netanyahu is absolutely right. The court's decision is bigoted at its core. To reach its decision, the judges had to ignore the 1998 Rome Statute on which it is founded. The Rome Statute makes clear that only states or the UN Security Council can petition the court for redress. And having ignored its own legal writ, the judges proceeded to take a knife to the very concept of international law. They applied a standard of behavior to Israel that is applied to no other state in order to single out Israel for legal proceedings that have no basis either in the court's specific mandate or in the law of nations.

The fact that Hamas – a terrorist group formally committed to the genocide of the Jewish people – published a statement applauding the court's ruling shows just how prejudicial the court's decision was. It is worth noting that every missile attack and suicide bombing Hamas terrorists carry out against Israel is a separate war crime under actual international law.

Hamas terrorists understand the racket the ICC is running against the Jews. The phony war crimes investigation is a practical application of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 from 1975 which defined Zionism – the Jewish national liberation movement – as a form of racism and so rejected Israel's moral right to exist.

Although Resolution 3379 was rescinded in 1991, it is alive today in every UN agency where Israel is condemned on a daily basis for absolutely nothing. It is alive in the European Union which subjects Israel to systematic discrimination. And it is alive on the international left, whose members throughout the Western world vilify Israel at every turn – again, for absolutely nothing.

All of these forces understand that the point of putting IDF soldiers, commanders and Israeli civilians in the ICC dock for war crimes that never happened is to advance their goal of rescinding international recognition of the Jewish state's right to exist as a normal, sovereign state. They also know full well that simply by holding show trials of Israeli Jews, they will legitimize and expand support for Hamas' goal – Israel's physical destruction.

Around the time that Resolution 3379 passed, Henry Kissinger claimed there was nothing to worry about, really. Neither the United States, nor "in the last analysis Europe," would ever "negotiate over the survival of Israel," he said.

But an examination of the forces that are producing the ICC Inquisition makes it clear that Kissinger was naïve – at least as far as Europe is concerned.

To be sure, the primary party responsible for the Jew hating charade at The Hague is the ICC itself. The political Star Chamber has an institutional interest in pursuing fake charges against Israel. In 2017, the African Union passed a resolution calling for its member states to withdraw from the ICC. The AU resolution stemmed from what African leaders viewed reasonably as the ICC's prejudicial focus on their governments. When the resolution passed, nine out of ten cases before the court dealt with African states. The governments of Africa were fed up with the court's discrimination.

Shortly thereafter, ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda completed her preliminary examination of Israel and submitted her request to the judges to open a formal war crimes investigation. The chain of events gives up the game. The ICC needs a non-African scalp. And Israel fits the bill. The Africans are satisfied that a nearly-Western state is being pursued. And Western states are happy because they don't consider Israel a member of their club.

In other words, Israel is the ICC's scapegoat that it can sacrifice to secure its organizational interests.

But as corrupt and depraved as the ICC's motivations for building a phony war crimes case against Israel are, the ICC couldn't act on its own. It needed three things to be done by others to enable its actions.

The first thing that had to be done to pursue fake charges against Israel was for the Palestinian Authority, which is not a state, to join the ICC as a state signatory of the Rome Statute. Since the PA is not a state, to pretend it is a state, the ICC needed UN cover. So in 2012, the PA applied for non-state observer status at the UN.

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Votes at the ICC and the UN General Assembly passed overwhelmingly. The Czech Republic was the only EU member state that opposed the legally baseless moves.

To be clear, the PA's purpose in signing the Rome Statute and requesting the upgrade of its UN status was known to all involved. All the states that approved these moves – or failed to oppose them – knew that their actions were setting the conditions for the ICC to try innocent Israeli soldiers, commanders and civilians for war crimes that were never committed.

The State of Israel itself cannot be formally placed on trial. The ICC, as a supposedly legal body, needed complaints against actual named Israelis. And it needed "evidence," and "testimonies" to give weight to the allegations. Over the past several years, NGO Monitor has documented copiously how two different sets of non-governmental organizations have run this part of the show. First, international groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have run a major lobbying effort against Israel for decades. Its purpose is to deny Israel the right to self-defense. In recent years, those efforts have focused specifically on pushing the PA to join the ICC even though the act was a material breach of the PA's signed agreements with Israel. They have published spurious allegations of Israeli "war crimes," lobbied for an upgrade in the PLO's status at the UN, and for the ICC to charge Israel with war crimes.

The second type of organization behind the ICC effort are local Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. Israeli groups including B'stelem, Yesh Din and Breaking the Silence and Palestinian groups including the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al-Haq, Al Dameer and Al-Mezan delivered the goods. European governments including Germany, France, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and Britain contribute millions of euros annually both separately and under the European Union aegis to these and other groups.  As NGO Monitor has documented, in recent years, a portion of those contributions has been specifically directed towards actions to facilitate the ICC actions against Israel. Without the support of European states and the EU, these groups would lack the financial wherewithal to run campaigns to demonize Israel and to promote ICC witch hunts against its soldiers, officers and civilians.

Finally, the ICC would not have opted to discredit the entire concept of international law by going after Israel for non-existent crimes if it believed that it would be penalized for doing so. In 2015, when Bensouda initiated her preliminary examination, Israel asked ICC funders to retaliate against the move by defunding the institution. Israel's request was rejected.

More than 60% of the ICC's budget is funded by European governments. Germany is generally the ICC's largest or second largest funder. A German government representative quoted in a Reuters' report of Israel's request said that Germany "couldn't imagine" scaling back, much less defunding of the political court.

So without the actions of European governments like Germany, Holland, Switzerland, France, Norway, Britain and Sweden, and without the EU as a whole – the ICC would never have opened its bigoted proceedings against Israel, the purpose of which is to reject Israel's right to exist. At every point, the Europeans had the power to prevent or end the ICC's bigoted treatment of the Jewish state. And at every point, the Europeans took active steps to ensure that the targeting would continue. Indeed, by funding and directing the efforts of the likes of NGOs Breaking the Silence and Al-Dameer, (which is affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group), the Europeans were the puppet masters directing the passion play.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas criticized the ICC's ruling move in a statement he put out shortly after it was announced. Maas didn't condemn the immorality of pursuing fake war crimes allegations against an innocent nation. Rather, Maas's criticism focused on the fact that despite the efforts of the ICC and the UN, the fact remains that "Palestine" is not a state. "The court has no jurisdiction," he tweeted, "because of the absence of the element of Palestinian statehood required by international law."

This is, to be sure, the key legal problem with the ICC's ruling. But the much larger problem with the judges' decision is that the investigation is a politically motivated effort to cause material harm to Israel, as the Jewish state. Israel abides scrupulously by the rules of war, and everyone knows that. The reason German politicians like Maas should oppose the ruling is because the court's behavior is part of a larger effort to undermine international acceptance of the Jewish people's right to their state. But then, as a major funder of both the ICC and the NGOs behind the fictitious, libelous allegations, and as a state that failed to oppose the Palestinians' legally groundless bids for the status of state at the ICC and the UN, Maas clearly doesn't have a problem with the immorality of the enterprise. To the contrary, he is playing a key role in moving it forward.

In a way, the ICC's efforts to harm the Jewish state is a modern-day version of the Dreyfus trial. The Dreyfus trial was an anti-Semitic reaction against France's decision to grant the full rights of citizenship to French Jews in the framework of the Emancipation. Anti-Semitic officers in the French General Staff needed a scapegoat to blame for acts of treason they had committed. By choosing Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, for the role, the officers enjoyed the cover and support of powerful anti-Semitic clerics, anti-Semitic intellectuals and newspaper publishers, and anti-Semitic politicians. All of the figures involved realized that by framing Dreyfus "the Jew," they advanced their efforts to discredit the idea that Jews could be full partners in French public life.

The big difference between the people that produced and directed the blood libel against Dreyfus 125 years ago and the people that are producing and directing the blood libel against Israel today is that in France at the turn of the 20th century, people were proud to attack Jews openly. Today, their contemporary successors prefer a passive aggressive approach. They pretend to oppose the efforts to delegitimize and criminalize the Jewish state while they pay for and direct them.

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"The Belgian funding was coordinated with the Palestinian government and with NGOs tied to the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine]," which is classified by the European Union as a terrorist organization, according to NGO Monitor.

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The Jerusalem-based watchdog organization first disclosed documents last month revealing the anti-Israel funding.

"Government officials cannot hide behind slogans like 'NGO independence' when the organizations that they select for funding promote hate and demonization," said Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. "This diplomatic démarche reflects the growing Israeli anger over Europe's support for the NGO cold war against Israel."

Israel and Belgium have been entangled in diplomatic tensions before.

In February, Belgian Deputy Ambassador Pascal Buffin was summoned by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to hear Jerusalem's complaint that Belgium, in its capacity as president of the UN Security Council that month, had invited Brad Parker of Defense for Children–Palestine to brief the council, Israel Hayom reported.

Though calling itself a human-rights group, Defense for Children reportedly has ties to extremists, has accused Israel of torturing Palestinian children, and supports the BDS movement, which calls for boycotting, divesting from and imposing sanctions against Israel.

In 2017, the Israeli government declared that the "Belgian government needs to decide whether it wants to change direction or continue with an anti-Israel line."

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The statement was issued after initiatives were said to have been launched by the Belgian state prosecutor to put on trial senior Israeli military and political figures for supposed war crimes against Palestinians.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The Syrian army was reportedly also involved in training the PFLP cell, which reportedly operated under the guise of a civilian welfare organization known as "Al-Shabab Al-Alumi Al-Arabi."

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The cell first appeared on Shin Bet's radar following the interrogation of Yazan Abu Salah, a 23-year-old PFLP member arrested in April. He was revealed to be a member of a larger cell involving two attack units, one in Ramallah and one in Samaria. He was arrested before departing for Lebanon to partake in military training.

Muhammad Abu Salah, Yazan's cousin, was also arrested by the Shin Bet as part of the crackdown, along with eight other radicals involved in the plot.

The cell was plotting to conduct major attacks on Israeli targets and communities, including a plan to kidnap an IDF soldier to use as a bargaining chip for the release of Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons.

The terrorist operation was headed by Assad Al-Amali, a Lebanese resident who worked to connect the cell with Iran and Hezbollah.

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At 12:30 the plane stopped in Munich for a connection, and 34 passengers got off. After a short wait in the terminal, the rest of the passengers got on a bus that would take them back to the aircraft. All of a sudden three Arab terrorists boarded the bus, armed with grenades and guns. They tried to hijack the vehicle. Captain Uri Cohen took down one of them, and the grenade the terrorist was holding exploded and blew off his hand. The German bus driver ignored the shouts not to allow the terrorist to board the bus. He opened the doors, and some of the passengers managed to get off, but then one of the terrorists threw a grenade inside the bus. Arie Katzenstein, 32, threw himself on the grenade – saving everyone else, but losing his own life. A total of 11 passengers were wounded, including Meron, who lost her left leg.

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The three terrorists – two Jordanians and an Egyptian, all members of Dr. Issam Sartawi's Action Organization for the Liberation of Palestine – were captured by West Germany's security forces. They said they had planned to hijack the aircraft to Libya and demand that Israel release dozens of security prisoners in exchange for the hostages. The terrorists' trial was repeatedly postponed, supposedly for bureaucratic reasons, but really because Germany was in no rush to hold a trial that posed a security risk. All three were released in September 1970 as part of a deal between West Germany and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that followed the hijacking of three passenger aircraft. Their release paved the way for the slaughter of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

A new study about the West German foreign ministry's attitude toward Israel from 1967-1979 exposes how West Germany buckled to Palestinian terrorism and the key role West German diplomacy played in the country adopting a kid-gloves policy toward the Palestinians.

Author of the study Dr. Remko Leemhuis, acting director of the Ramer Institute for German-Jewish Relations at the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, says that "the Palestinians learned very quickly that in Germany, like other countries, terrorism paid off, and when they extorted the West German government, it would give in."

"That conclusion clearly comes from conversations that representatives of the federal foreign ministry held with representatives of the Palestinians. Despite the Palestinians' friendly conduct, they made it clear that if the people they were talking to didn't do what the PLO wanted, the Palestinians couldn't promise that there wouldn't be more terrorist attacks on German soil. The German side was afraid of that.

"What is horrifying to me is that the German Foreign Ministry never held any discussion about finding a firm response to the Palestinian extortion. No one said, 'We won't let terrorists or Palestinians extort us.' They threw up their hands and freed terrorists.

Leemhuis says Germany could have responded differently.

"I found a document from the American State Department that stated explicitly that the US could talk to the PLO, but for that to happen, it had to meet certain conditions, such as recognizing Israel's right to exist," he says.

When West Germany and Israel launched diplomatic relations in May 1965, most Arab countries severed ties with Bonn and approached East Germany, instead.

Leemhuis says that establishing relations with Israel was a "disaster" for West German foreign policy.

"Official talk about balanced relations with Israel and Arab states was a trick intended to hide the [German] foreign ministry's true position, which was biased in favor of the Arabs," he says.

"The Arabs controlled the most important resource for the world economy, oil, whereas the small Jewish state didn't have much to offer. What's more, Israel was a liberal democracy, and all the Arab states were dictatorships who were making daily threats to wipe it out. So even then, it wasn't really possible to treat the two sides equally."

Arab terrorism against Israel, via Palestinian organizations, increased after the Arab countries that fought Israel were trounced in the 1967 Six-Day War. The terrorist groups focused on attacks outside Israel's borders, hoping to shake up its international position. The first such attack on West German soil was perpetrated in September 1969, when terrorists threw a grenade at the Israeli Embassy in Bonn. Luckily, no one was wounded.

Five months later, the El Al plane was attacked in Munich, heralding the start of Palestinian air terrorism in Europe. Only 11 days after the attempted hijacking in Munich, a bomb exploded in the cargo hold of an Austrian airplane that took off from Frankfurt and was headed to Tel Aviv, with a stopover in Vienna. The pilots managed to land in Frankfurt and avoid a major disaster. Terrorists also sent a bomb through the German postal system that was supposed to be sent on an El Al flight. But the package was placed on a Swissair plane and detonated in Swiss airspace, killing 74 passengers and crew.

Three days later, Germany's ambassador to Jordan reported that one of his aides had met with Issam Sartawi. The ambassador wrote that he had approved the meeting so that Germany could "better assess the danger that Sartawi's organization posed to German citizens in Jordan."

Sartawi expressed regret at how the attempted hijacking in Munich had played out, but said that his organization had chosen West Germany because it was very "pro-Israeli" and stressed that the attack had been designed to force the West German public to re-think the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that he could not guarantee that his group would not decide to buck his instructions and carry out more attacks there.

The embassy aide promised to take steps to ensure that the German media did not report attacks by Sartawi's organization "inappropriately" and did not spread suspicion of Arabs and Palestinians.

German diplomacy waved a white flag. Sartawi ended the meeting with a tempting offer, expressing his willingness to avoid more attacks on German soil and against German institutions if the three members of his group who were arrested in Munich were released.

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A short while later, Israel's foreign minister, Abba Eban, paid his first official visit to West Germany. He urged his hosts to hold Arab governments accountable for their support for the PLO and its terrorist activity. A few days passed, and Germany's ambassador to Jordan met with King Hussein. According to a report he sent to the German Foreign Ministry, he did not devote a single word of the meeting to the fact that Jordan was hosting the terrorist organization that had attacked the El Al plane in Munich.

In July 1970, that same ambassador met with a senior official in the Fatah organization. Leemhuis is almost certain that the Fatah official was Ali Hassan Salameh, who would eventually become a leader of the Black September group, which murdered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

The ambassador reported that he had told Salameh that Germany had stopped all weapons shipments to Israel and that the Germany government, particularly then-Chancellor Willy Brandt, were consistently working toward a neutral German position in the Middle East and that the government wanted to show the Palestinians that it desired good relations with them.

Palestinian terrorist attacks were not limited to Germany. In July 1970, terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked an Olympic Airlines plane, demanding the release of seven terrorist imprisoned in Greece. Athens gave in. That September, the PFLP hijacked three more planes – TWA, Swissair, and Pan Am flights – to secure the release of terrorists. Two of the three hijacked planes were forced to land in Amman, as was a British plane that was hijacked later that month.

Terrorists were holding American, Israeli, German, and Swiss citizens hostage in Jordan. The separated the Jews from the rest of the passengers and demanded that terrorists imprisoned in Israel and in western Europe be released. The German government immediately signaled its willingness to meet their demands, and even pressured Israel to cooperate, sending a diplomat to meet in London with a representative of the World Jewish Congress, where he voiced concern that the deal did not include the Jewish and Israeli hostages.

Fearing a military mission to free the hostages, the terrorists moved them to various secret locations and blew up the aircraft. Attempts by the Red Cross to mediate failed, and the clock was ticking to a clash between the Jordanian army and the Black September group.

The German government decided to send the secretary-general of the ruling social-democratic party, Hans-Jurgen Wischnewski, a fervent supporter of the Algerian independence movement who had extensive connections in the Arab world, to Amman. Jerusalem saw him as pro-Arab. After a Red Cross delegation left Amman, Wischnewski met with Abu Maher Ghneim, one of the founders of the PFLP, who informed him that his group was willing to negotiate with each of the countries involved, separately.

Wischnewski urged Brandt to make an immediate announcement that Germany would be releasing the terrorists behind the Munich attack. Germany's ambassador to Jordan also kept up the pressure.

On Sept. 30 the terrorists were let out of Germany.

From 1968-1984, 48 of the Palestinian terrorist attacks in Europe were carried out on German soil. The deadliest was the slaughter of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 by eight members of Black September.

The man responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks was the man Germany's ambassador had met within Jordan, Ali Hassan Salameh.

Then-director of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, who had been sent to Germany to track the attempts to rescue the athletes, asked his German counterpart what the German authorities intended to do with the terrorists who remained alive, since the Palestinians could hijack a Lufthansa plane and force the Germans to free them. The head of Germany's spy agency said he couldn't guarantee that scenario wouldn't occur.

During the attack on the Olympic village, Brandt publicly criticized Arab nations, but his foreign minister, Walter Schell, rushed to clarify that the attack was "one instance" of terrorism for which the "governments of certain countries were not responsible."

The day after the murder of the Israeli athletes, Germany's ambassador to Egypt, Hans-Georg Stelzer, send a long letter to his superiors in which he recommended that Germany refrain from any harsh criticism of Arab countries, because they had no influence on acts of terrorism.

In a later message, Stelzer even asked that Germany show understanding of the terrorists: "Even if we must condemn the actions of the Munich terrorists, the Arab position must be understood … they see idealistic young people who were acting out of desperation at the crisis situation in their homeland."

Leemhuis cites the "coldness and lack of empathy" with which the German authorities responded to the Munich Olympics massacre.

"They said, 'Life goes on,' without any feeling for the significance of the attack and its historical importance to the Israelis. The documents don't show an ounce of any horror, or that any of the functionaries in the Foreign Ministry opposed the official approach and wanted to demand that the Palestinians be held responsible," he says.

"They [the Foreign Ministry] knew that Black September was part of the PLO, and that in contrast to Yasser Arafat's lies, the organization did not operate on its own. But none of that made any of the German diplomats pull away; it made them want to talk with the PLO, thinking that by doing so they could prevent terrorist attacks in Germany. That idea has guided all of [Germany's] contact with the PLO," Leemhuis observes. 

 Leemhuis discovered a document from October 1972, issued less than a month after the massacre, which clearly shows that the German Foreign Ministry knew about Black September's ties to Fatah and that the new terrorist organization was designed to provide camouflage that would allow Fatah to avoid responsibility for terrorist acts committed by its members.

"The Fatah leadership wants to avoid any harm to the esteem in which it is held, to its good name, and to its stature," the document reads.

The interior minister of Germany at the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, outlawed activity by Palestinian student activists and deported hundreds of illegal Arab residents, as well as ordering strict border checks for Arab citizens entering West Germany. But the Foreign Ministry opposed these steps and they were eventually canceled.

According to Leemhuis, "The Foreign Ministry wasn't worried about relations with Israel at all, just with the Arab image in West German media. There was no sense of guilt about the negligent developments that led to the deaths of nine athletes in the failed rescue attempt [two others were killed in the Olympic village itself]. The prevailing belief was that Germany had done everything correctly, no mistakes. Even Israel's response was relatively placating. Golda Meir was very careful in her criticism," he notes. (Meir was very close to Brandt and did not want to endanger his chances of re-election in November of that year).

It took little time for Zamir's prediction to be fulfilled. On Oct. 29, 1972, Palestinian terrorists indeed hijacked a Lufthansa flight that was en route to Frankfurt from Damascus, with planned stops in Beirut, Ankara, and Munich. The hijackers demanded that the three terrorists arrested after the murder of the Israeli athletes be freed. The West German government agreed that same day, and the three were flown to Libya. The terrorists let the hostages go.

Even today, some claim that the hijacking had been coordinated between the PLO and the German government as a way of allowing the Germans to avoid trying the terrorists in court. Leemhuis has found no confirmation of that theory, but says that in 2009, one of Brandt's close advisors told a German paper that he saw the idea as "legitimate."

The day the terrorists were released,   the director of the Middle East Desk in the German Foreign Ministry sent a telegram to the Israeli government which read, "In regard to the accusations that our government has given in to the Palestinian guerrilla fighters and is thereby encouraging more actions of this type, it should be said that the federal government cannot make a decision that would put the lives of the passengers and crew of the hijacked plane in danger."

The telegram ended with the observation: "These are the results of a conflict, and both sides have a responsibility to reach a solution."

Israel was outraged that the terrorists had been freed. Eban summoned the German ambassador to Israel for a rebuke, telling him that Germany had handed the terrorists a "great victory."

As this was unfolding, the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Elyashiv Ben-Horin, was summoned to a meeting with the German foreign minister, who told him that West Germany's policy on the war against terrorism had not changed, but that the government had no choice other than to release the terrorists.

Germany's capitulation paved the way for formal relations between West Germany and the PLO, which demanded a mission in the West German capital, to be housed in the offices of the Arab League.

The Palestinians also asked the Germans to help fund the PLO.  A telegram sent on Feb. 28, 1973 by Helmut Radius, head of the Middle East Department in the German Foreign Ministry, ordered the transfer of 50,000 marks to support the Wafa news agency, which disseminated Palestinian propaganda. Radius also issued instructions that the purpose of the funds be hidden to avoid diplomatic complications, although there is no confirmation that the money was actually transferred.

None of the German diplomatic correspondence made any mention of the Holocaust. According to Leemhuis, "historical responsibility did play any role in the German Foreign Ministry's position toward Israel. After the compensation agreement of 1952, the German diplomats said, 'That's it, the matter of the Holocaust is closed. We paid, and from this moment on, history will not play any part.'"

Leemhuis also points out anti-Semitic accusations made at the time that Israelis and Jews wanted to profit from the Holocaust, after Israeli diplomats made repeated references to Germany's history with the Jews.

"It shows the coldness that characterized German foreign policy, as well as the ignorance about the suffering of the survivors and about historical responsibility. It's chilling to see how soon after the Holocaust the German diplomats moved on, while stressing the historic trauma that the establishment of the state of Israel caused to the Arabs. In other words, history played a role as it met their needs," he says.

When Israel Hayom asks Leemhuis whether the fact that many West German diplomats lived Nazi Germany influenced this approach, he says that while he has not looked into the personal background of the diplomats, "when you read their anti-Semitic comments, it's obvious that the influence of the Nazi period played a role."

"The open anti-Semitism in the documents surprised me. The functionaries felt they could write these things, knowing that it wouldn't bother anyone. And who knows what they said about Jews and Israel in conversation … I was amazed that there was no objection to these positions. The Six-Day War, the attacks in Munich, the Yom Kippur War … none of these changed their thinking," he says.

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The 135 organizations in question steadfastly decline to sign the request, claiming Palestinian terrorist groups are merely "political parties," according to a statement by Israel's Strategic Affairs Ministry.

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Shawan Jabarin, executive director of the Palestinian boycott organization Al-Haq, told The New Arab: "We demanded to include conditions stipulating that we do not have to recognize the criteria listed regarding terror groups."

A letter of protest was later sent to a meeting between EU representatives in the Palestinian Authority and representatives of Palestinian civil society organizations, led by Mustafa Barghouti, secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, and Jabarin.

1/2 Unbelievable! Palestinian NGOs which call for the delegitimization of #Israel are refusing #EU aid because they are being required to distance themselves from terrorism!

— גלעד ארדן Gilad Erdan (@giladerdan1) January 1, 2020

In recent years, the Strategic Affairs Ministry has been revealing the shared ties between supposed Palestinian human rights organizations and terrorist groups. In its report released earlier this year, "The Money Trail," along with additional findings from organizations such as NGO Monitor, it was found that EU institutions have awarded millions of euros in financial aid to Palestinian civil society organizations that have ties to terrorist entities and promote boycotts against Israel.

Additionally, in its "Terrorists in Suits" report, the ministry cited more than 100 links between BDS organizations and internationally designated terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas.

The PFLP is designated as a terrorist group by the European Union, United States, Canada, and Israel. Hamas is also considered a terrorist entity by the United States, Canada, and Israel.

According to the report, so-called Palestinian civil society organizations act as a medium for funds for terrorist entities, enabling them to raise money for their activities through legitimate bodies including the European Union. These organizations' opposition to criteria preventing the transfer of funds to terror-related activities proves the report's claim.

A Shin Bet security agency investigation into the August 2019 Ein Bubin bombing – in which 17-year-old Rina Shnerb was murdered and her brother and father were wounded – led to the arrest of 50 PFLP terrorists.

Those detained included senior officials who served in Palestinian "civil society" organizations, including one of the 135 Palestinian NGOs, Addameer.

Addameer is an organization which, alongside its ongoing campaign to boycott and delegitimize Israel, calls for the release of PFLP terrorists while also providing them with legal representation, according to NGO Monitor.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The decrease in the number of casualties does not indicate a diminished motivation among the terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip or Judea and Samaria. If anything, the opposite is true and their motivation to carry out attacks against Israeli civilians and security forces is only growing.

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The only thing keeping them at bay are the tireless counterterrorism efforts of the Shin Bet security agency and the military.

The two latest successes in this arena, namely the detection and arrest of Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist cells in Judea and Samaria, have little in common other than being representations of this phenomenon.

But they nevertheless symbolize the two-pronged effort by the Palestinian terrorist groups. On the one hand, Hamas is trying to orchestrate terrorist attacks by having operatives abroad plan them, while on the other hand, the PFLP is trying to execute attacks within Judea and Samaria.

The two groups themselves are also very different: Hamas is a religious organization while the PFLP is a secular organization.

The latest report suggesting that Hamas operatives based in Turkey are planning attacks in Israel is not new in and of itself.

Hamas has been maintaining an active branch in Istanbul for years, tasking it with fundraising and with planning attacks in Judea and Samaria.

The British Telegraph's report, however, paints a broad picture that sheds new light on Turkey, its ideological empathy with Hamas, and its desire to have more of a say in all things Gaza and Jerusalem-related.

The report further suggests that by harboring Hamas operatives, including the once-deported-but-now-returned deputy Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri, Ankara is in breach of a 2015 US-brokered deal with Israel.

In recent years Arouri has proven that his reputation as an arch-terrorist isn't what it used to be, which is why Hamas leadership in Gaza has taken over the direction of most terrorist attacks. Still, his very presence in Istanbul and the fact that Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades officials roam Turkish soil freely is a sign of Turkish defiance, which is potentially very dangerous.

As for the PFLP cell nabbed in Judea and Samaria, while this case has local features, the Shin Bet has to investigate how these terrorists – some of whom have a long record as security prisoners – were able to stay under the radar for as long as they did.

One reason for this could be the fact that the PFLP is an extremely compartmentalized organization that trains its operatives in a virtual vacuum so that in the event they are arrested, they cannot divulge too much information.

Shin Bet interrogators have also said that the cell's members proved tough nuts to crack, but those are mere extenuating circumstances. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine should always be on Israeli intelligence's radar.

It is likely that there will now be a decline in the activities of this organization, as happened to it in the past after waves of previous arrests of its activists. This will allow the GSS to focus on its main challenge – Hamas – that goes nowhere. Judging by the test of intent, it will take strenuous intelligence work (and, as usual, not too much luck) to continue the trend in terrorism data in 2020 as well.

The PFLP is likely to retreat to its corner, as it has been the case after previous Israeli raids against its operations. This will allow the Shin Bet to focus on its main challenge in Judea and Samaria – Hamas. Gaza's rulers seek only to tighten their grip on the area, both to target Israel and further undermine the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Judging by the test of intent, Israel will have to employ strenuous intelligence efforts – and rely on some luck – to see the declining trend of terrorist attacks continue in 2020.

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The announcement on Wednesday by Israel's Shin Bet security agency that it has arrested some 50 members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) capped off a monthslong targeting of the terror group for its role in the deadly terror attack on Aug. 23 that killed an Israeli teenager hiking with her father and brother.

Rina Shnerb, 17, died as a result of an explosion near the town of Dolev in Samaria; her brother, Dvir Shnerb, 19, was injured, along with their father, 46-year-old Rabbi Eitan Shnerb. According to Israeli reports, the explosive device included 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of explosive material, making it an "unusually powerful bomb."

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The arrests coincidentally provide evidence of further links between the PFLP and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. Among those arrested by the Shin Bet include Khalida Jarrar, 56, who the Israeli security service noted was the head of the terror group's operations in the West Bank. Until recently, Jarrar also served as the vice chairperson, director and board member of the BDS organization Addameer.

"With regard to Jarrar, this is really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the BDS/terror connection," said Marc Greendorfer, president of the Zachor Legal Institute and author of The New Anti-Semites: The Radicalization Mechanism of the BDS Movement and the Delegitimization Campaign Against Israel.

"Jarrar is simply one example of the extensive overlaps between terror organization leadership and BDS, going all the way to the top, where the organizing and operational leadership of BDS [the BDS National Committee, or BNC] includes a coalition of groups designated as foreign terror organizations by the United States and other countries," Greendorfer told JNS.

Last February, Israel's Strategic Affairs Ministry released a report titled Terrorists in Suits that found that Hamas and PFLP activists had infiltrated organizations that call for boycotts on, divestment from, and sanctions on Israel.

The report, which examined 13 international BDS organizations, discovered that senior positions were held by 30 terror activists – 20 of whom who had actually spent time in prison for their crimes, including murder.

It also determined that global interconnections between BDS and terror organizations were vast, with more than 100 connections being identified.

Founded in 1992, Addameer claims to be an NGO that works to support Palestinian prisoners, yet evidence suggests that the organization is actually an affiliate of PFLP.

According to NGO Monitor, more than half of Addameer's current and former employees, as well as lawyers that work for it, have links to the PFLP; other employees have ties to Hamas.

Addameer is a member of the Palestinian NGO Network, which itself is a member of the BNC or BDS National Committee, that coordinates the global BDS movement.

'Affecting countries across the West'

"The BDS movement was funded by terrorists, and it is being led by terrorists across the world. There must be a wide recognition of these connections, and countries must wake up to that fact and take action," said Yifa Segal, director of the International Legal Forum.

"This problem doesn't affect only Israel; it is also affecting countries across the West. They aim to entrench institutional and civilian support for terrorism, to effectively recruit manpower; to raise funds, as well as to radicalize the population and subvert democratic values. They are present on the streets, on college campuses and in parliaments hiding under the guise of legitimate human rights organizations," he explained.

Indeed, Addameer has a number of ties with US-based pro-Palestinian organizations, including US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, US Palestinian Community Network, Palestinian Youth Movement, Students for Justice in Palestine, Middle East Children's Alliance, and Jewish Voice for Peace.

Sahar Francis, the foreign affairs representatives of Addameer, has attended numerous events and conferences abroad, including in the United States. In 2017, she was at an event in Brooklyn, NY, organized jointly by Addameer, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Adalah NY and Black Youth Project 100.

Additionally, in 2013 and again in 2017, US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) sponsored an Addameer US National Tour with Francis.

These tours included stops at the University of California, Irvine, and San Francisco State University, which were events co-sponsored by local SJP affiliates and Jewish Voice for Peace. She also attended events sponsored by the Palestinian Youth Movement, which included other sponsors such as the Arab Community of South California, Women's International Network, American Muslims for Palestine, and the Palestinian American Congress.

Both SJP and USCPR have shared Addameer's content on social media.

Moving forward, Greendorfer hopes that Jarrar's terror arrest and her role within Palestinian NGOs with ties to the BDS movement will spur further action by US authorities against BDS organizations.

"BDS and terror are two sides of the same coin, and Jarrar is the rule, rather than the exception, in this regard," he said.

"We've pointed out these connections and even listed those BDS leaders who are also terror group operatives in our scholarship and our court briefs, and hope that United States' law enforcement takes notice of this dangerous infiltration of terror groups into US social-justice campaigns."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Shnerb's father and brother were seriously wounded in the attack.

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The home belongs to Yazen Hassin Hasni and is located in the Jams neighborhood of Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah.

Hasni, 25, is an active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and lives in Ramallah. He has been arrested for involvement in terrorist activity and was part of the planning and execution of the bombing at Danny Spring.

Three other members of the terrorist cell behind the attack were arrested last month. The head of the cell, Samer Mina Salim Arbid, was hospitalized in serious condition during his interrogation.

All the terrorists hail from the Ramallah area and are active in the PFLP.

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