PM’s revisions to NGO bill

Netanyahu says he will advance the justice minister’s controversial NGO, but with several revisions.

He says he would remove a clause requiring representatives of organizations who receive the majority of their funding from foreign governments to wear special tags in the Knesset.

However, rather than only mandating groups that receive over 50 percent of their funding from foreign governments to label all documents as such, Netanyahu proposes requiring funding reports from “the first shekel or dollar from foreign governments.

“I do not understand how a requirement for transparency is anti-democratic; the opposite is true,” he says, addressing the controversy over the bill. “In a democratic regime, we need to know who is financing such NGOs, from the right, the left, up or down; financing by governments is certainly something the public should know about — it has a right to know.”

In proposing the changes, Netanyahu likens it to a House of Representatives resolution from January 2015 that requires witnesses that appear before committees to disclose their foreign government funding.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked says in response that she will weigh the prime minister’s proposal.