PCHR, an organization named in the report (Wikimedia Commons) A new report issued by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs asserts that many of the NGOs promoting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) have dozens of former and current members of the terrorist organizations Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in key positions. The report demonstrates how these NGOs are used in order to “exploit Western governmental funding, philanthropic foundations financial platforms, and civil society” all to advance an anti-Israeli agenda. The report analyzes the membership and leadership of notable NGOs such as Addameer, Al-Haq, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the Palestinian BDS National Committee, Samidoun, the European Coordination of Committees and Association for Palestine, and numerous others. The report breaks down the associations and funding of these organizations, showing how self-styled terrorists are openly operating within the ranks of their memberships. There are numerous examples of these terrorists working directly with NGOS, including Leila Khaled, a “PFLP member infamous for hijacking two civilian planes in 1969 and 1973, who was found to have planned terrorist attacks in Jerusalem as recently as 2011.” Khaled is currently an active fundraiser for BDS organizations in both Europe and Africa. Salah Khawaja, a former PFLP operative, is a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee secretariat. Khawaja was convicted in 2016 for “training and maintaining contact with a hostile entity.” The terrorist backgrounds of the groups mentioned in the report, such as the PFLP and Hamas, are not debated. The report notes that the PFLP is a designated terrorist organization in Israel, the United States, the European Union, and Canada. That members of such terror organizations can rise to prominence in organizations supposedly focused on human rights issues is alarming. Their membership serves, according to the report, to “promote a radical agenda” which includes “’whitewash[ing]’ their end-goal of eliminating the State of Israel by hiding behind the façade of ‘legitimate’ human rights NGOs.” In response to the report, Professor Gerald Steinberg, the president and founder of Jerusalem-based NGO watchdog NGO Monitor, called for “cooperation between Israeli government officials and European counterparts,” in order to stop this phenomenon from spreading to more NGOs. The report itself concludes by calling upon the governments of the world and international aid organizations to examine the activities of NGOs which promote the agenda of terrorist organizations to ensure that no ties exist between them and designated terrorist organizations. The report also urges governments and international aid organizations to stop funding NGOs with ties to terrorist organizations until such a time that the funds can be confirmed to not be aiding in the financing of terror.