Who Funds Israel's Right-Wing Organizations?

[Purveyor]

The sponsors of two bills approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday accurately identified the soft underbelly of Israel's left-wing and human-rights organizations: They are the only ones who receive funding from foreign governments and international organization - and this is the exact kind of funding the bills seek to curtail. Right-wing groups get no funding whatsoever from these sources.

But this doesn't mean right-wing groups are short of funds. On the contrary, a look at their financial statements shows that what they raise from private donors, mainly Jews living overseas, far exceeds what left-groups manage to raise from foreign governments. At the same time, right-wing groups are far less transparent than their left-wing rivals.

In 2008, for instance, Elad, which is apparently the wealthiest of the right-wing groups, received NIS 47 million in donations and had a budget of NIS 57 million. By comparison, the budgets of the seven largest left-wing organizations - Peace Now, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Ir Amim, B'Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights - came to NIS 37 million combined.

Most of the left-wing groups' money came from foreign governments. Elad, in addition to donations, also earns revenues from its franchise to run the City of David national park, which is one of its two main occupations. The other is settling Jews in East Jerusalem.

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http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/who-funds-israel-s-right-wing-organizations-1.395594