https://www.jns.org/british-foreign-office-accused-of-cover-up-over-terror-linked-palestinian-groups/
The British Foreign Office is suspected of sending millions to terror-linked Palestinian groups and then covering it up to avoid a public backlash after refusing to disclose where the money went.
The United Kingdom granted the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) £4.6 million, or about $5.9 million in 2022.
NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute, filed a freedom of information (FOI) request on March 25, 2021. It asked the U.K.’s Foreign Office, officially the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), for names of the beneficiaries.
The NRC is infamous in Israel as an NGO engaging in anti-Israel activities disguised as “humanitarianism.” It made headlines in Israel a few years back when it tried to undermine the country’s judicial system by flooding its courts with cases.
NGO Monitor suspected that the Norwegian Refugee Council had funded Palestinian organizations with terror links, notably to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
A tipoff was the U.K. government’s growing reluctance to talk about the NRC’s beneficiaries.
“Up until 2018 or so, the government used to publish the names of all local NGO recipients of U.K. aid via the NRC,” Anne Herzberg, legal adviser at NGO Monitor, told JNS. “We began to see a marked decrease in transparency regarding NRC funding to local NGOs around 2018-2019.”
NGO Monitor knew that the NRC worked with the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC). Fatah identifies UAWC as an official “affiliate” of the PFLP. Two of its officials were arrested in 2019 for the murder of 17-year-old Rina Shnerb. A 2017 NRC document showed the group still worked with the UAWC.