France gives $10M to Palestinian group that promotes Israel boycott

The French government has allocated about $10 million to a Palestinian organization that is a leading promoter of the boycott Israel movement.

Promoting that boycott has been found illegal in France in several high-profile cases.

The French Development Agency, or AFD, which focuses on “on climate, biodiversity, peace, education, urban development, health and governance,” last year gave an 8 million Euro grant to the NGO Development Center, or NDC, a Palestinian group that says it promotes good government practices in the West Bank. It was behind the 2008 “Palestinian NGO Code of Conduct,” a document includes a rejection of “any normalization activities with the occupier [Israel], neither at the political-security nor the cultural or developmental levels.”

NGO Monitor, an Israeli group that investigates the activities of non-governmental organizations and foreign government in the framework of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in a statement last week called on the French government to “revise its grant in line with France’s clear rejection of BDS.”

In France, dozens of promoters of a boycott against Israel — including through the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment Movement, or BDS — have been convicted of inciting hate or discrimination based on the Lellouche law, passed in 2003, which extends anti-racism laws to the targeting of specific nations for discriminatory treatment.

AFD Spokeswoman Magali Mevellec said that the funding “conforms to French law,” but offered no further commentary in a response to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s query on the issue.

France “supports strengthening local capabilities that improve the lives of populations” in what France considers Palestinian territories, Mevellec said.