Sweden’s Minister for International Development Cooperation, Gunilla Carlsson (Moderate), is responsible for monitoring and distributing a portion of the Swedish taxpayer’s money as aid for the needy abroad. A notable share of this aid goes to a variety of Palestinian organizations, many of which are counter-productive and unethical, something that the Minister seems to ignore. Sweden is, in fact, today the world’s third largest contributor of aid to Gaza and the West Bank and continues to unconditionally send aid to Palestinian organizations which live to demonize and terrorize Israel.
Recently, as reported in the blog Fred I Mellanöstern (Swedish),
Carlsson has written several debate articles concerning her “Swedish aid reform” program. The latest one of these can be found here. The gist of her articles is that her reforms will incorporate; “a modernization of aid in order to strengthen democratic structures of societies, peace and human rights, including women’s.”
Yet, in not one of her articles does she mention reforming Sweden’s unconditional aid to the Palestinians.
In this year alone, Sweden will contribute to some 800 million Swedish kronor ($111.5 million USD) that will be transferred from the Swedish taxpayers to Gaza and the West Bank. Much of this aid will be distributed through the SIDA organization, a Swedish organization for international development. SIDA gives more aid to the Palestinians than they do to much needier countries such as D.R. Congo, Sudan/Darfur and Uganda.
As the blog Fred I Mellanöstern reports; Many governments around the world have decided to give much less aid than Sweden to the Palestinians, especially in the face of the Hamas coup in Gaza, the rocket war against Israel, the corruption and graft in the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, as well as the Palestinians’ refusal to negotiate for peace. Sweden, on the other hand, has decided to keep aiding the Palestinians even though the consequences are counter-productive. It is crucial that Sweden acknowledges its responsibility when giving unconditional aid to the Palestinians.
Arguably, while being the world’s third largest donor, Sweden holds a valuable position to positively influence a constructive change. However, Sweden has not yet showed any such significant willingness to promote constructive change.
Most disturbingly, the blog “Fred I Mellanöstern” argues “is the many millions that Minister Carlsson is responsible for and which is given to Swedish political lobby groups which are contributing to a stigmatization of Israel in Sweden”.
In Sweden, these campaigns are given a large part the contribution of aid to the Palestinians. This political lobbying is clearly not meant to get the Palestinians to the negotiation table, recognizing the Jewish state or stopping terrorism. It is solely about making Israel into a pariah state. The top agenda items for these government-funded campaigns are: questioning Israel’s right to exist, forcing territorial concessions, and putting all the blame of the conflict on Israel.
When the Swedish government allows Minister Carlsson to direct Palestinian aid to groups which are hostile to Israel, they are sponsoring left-wing Christian or leftist extreme groups which put out a perverted picture of the conflict and international law. Such groups never show any understanding of Israel’s actions. They especially do nothing in order to get the Palestinians to recognize Israel. Their agenda is to promote extremist one-state Palestinian goals.
One example is how many millions of Swedish Kronor from SIDA and Forum Syd go to ”Palestina Grupperna” (Palestine Groups) who seeks to demonize Israel. Palestina Grupperna’s chairman, who is infamous for supporting the public anti-Semite Ahmed Rami, recently showed his support for Professor Sand speaking out about the posed theory that the Jewish people was “just a fiction”.
About 300 million Swedish Kronor (42,00000 million USD) is also directed to “Diakonia” which arranges biased trips (protest tourism) to the Palestinian territories in Israel and presents the Palestinian narrative as unquestioned fact, while Israel is blamed for the conflict. This is something which has been acknowledged by NGO monitor.
The problem with the Swedish aid, directed through Minister Gunilla Carlsson, is that it counter-productively seeks to isolate the Israeli side which wants to negotiate for peace. At the same time it is unconditionally promoting the side of the intransigents. It is important that Sweden, as a major donor Palestinian territories, should choose to do so under certain conditions, such as transparency and monitoring to insure the monies are used for humanitarian purposes. If Sweden would do so, this could lead to constructive change in relations between Israel and the Palestinians. As long as Sweden unconditionally chooses to send “aid” through Swedish organizations which promote hatred and terror in the Palestinian territories, Sweden acts against those same values of peace and democracy which it claims to promote.
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