The NGO had an annual budget of millions of euros, paid for by the governments of Sweden, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland.
Denmark’s decision coincided with an investigation launched by The Netherlands into the Secretariat funding.
Steinberg’s research had revealed that of the 24 core NGOs funded by the Secretariat, six have ties to the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is on the EU’s official list of terrorist organisations.
Some 15 were involved in worldwide campaigns to “destroy Israel by economic means” Steinberg concluded.
Denmark’s decision, according to Steinberg, came after the Swiss Parliament voted for the government to cease funding for “projects carried out by NGOs involved in racist, anti-Semitic or hate incitement actions”.
“The Danish example is the most important,” Steinberg said, “as it is the largest chunk that has been cut in one fell swoop, and Danes were among the Secretariat’s founders.”
European politicians, in order to promote human rights, actively support NGO’s that guarantee a “halo effect,” a term used in psychology to describe the tendency to favorably judge people, companies, groups, products, and so forth, based on good morality, Steinberg pointed out.
In the context of NGOs, groups that promote peace, human rights, justice and coexistence, are favoured, but here are no checks and balances imposed on such groups. The NGO lobby at the UN plays a crucial role, since it has become a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business.
The NGO in Ramallah was supposedly supervised by NIRAS, a Danish consulting firm for societal development, but the funding was distributed to groups “linked to terrorist organisations, antisemitism, and the campaign to suffocate Israel economically”, says Steinberg.
He said average EU taxpayers, had no clue about how their money was being spent. During a parliamentary discussion in Spain a few months ago, some lawmakers who voted against continued funding to NGOs that promoted divesting from Israel. “Why are we wasting this money when we have a huge unemployment problem?” they wanted to know.
NGO funding – under the banner of “development” and “civil society” — has been a major part of Western European foreign policy.
In May 2017, Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen travelled to Ramallah and was shown how the funding went to a number of radical groups.
NGO Monitor also revealed that the United Nations will be allocating more than $1 billion for 2018-2022, to “support Palestine’s path to independence”. According to Steinberg, the Ford Foundation provided the funding for the creation of the nexus between NGOs and the UN.