Saturday, August 15, 2009
Spain funds NGO's that undermine Israeli sovereignty by rebuilding illegal homes, while at the same time spending billions to tear down illegal housing at home: Bashing Israel Still Popular with Spanish Voters, Why is Spain helping to rebuild illegal homes in Israel?
The Spanish government is paying for 40 activists from Spain to travel to Israel in August to help rebuild two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem that the Israeli government deemed illegal and tore down in 2008. The volunteers will be working with a left-wing non-governmental organization called the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
The Jerusalem-based ICAHD, which is holding its seventh annual summer "rebuilding camp" from August 2-15, signed up 80 activists this year, 60 of whom are from abroad. Of those, 40 are from Spain. The Spanish government is providing full sponsorship for the activists to participate in the camp.
The money is coming from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), which is part of the Spanish Foreign Ministry. During 2009, AECID has allocated approximately €80,000 ($110,000) to support ICAHD's activities.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry says it is "very strange" that the government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero would "finance political activities" in another country, especially one with a democratically elected government like Israel.
Stranger still that the Israeli government is letting them get away with it. It gets better:
But what seems equally strange is that Zapatero would be rebuilding illegal homes in Israel while he himself has been on a demolition spree all across Spain.
The Zapatero government recently unveiled a €5 billion plan to demolish thousands of illegally built coastal homes and hotels. The Spanish Environment Ministry says it wants to protect Mediterranean and Canary Island shorelines. By some estimates, there could be as many as 100,000 houses in Spain that have been built illegally. Homes built illegally after the 1980s, when laws to protect the coast came into force, face demolition with no compensation...
Spanish house demolitions have not been limited to the coastal regions. In Madrid, the Orwellian-sounding Urban Discipline Service has been busy tearing down hundreds of illegal homes belonging mainly to Gypsies and Moroccan immigrants. The Madrid municipality is presumably using criteria similar to those used by the Jerusalem municipality for tearing down illegal structures...
This sounds like a job for Bibi and Lieberman. The rest.
I think the answer is obvious: Israel should fund NGO projects to rebuild illegal housing in Spain.