How a piece of paper can become a parliamentary scandal?

Step one: NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem based research institute, publishes a report. The report alleges that Hamas has infiltrated Dutch aid organisations operating in Gaza. The evidence is thin. One example involves a wastewater treatment project that also irrigated fruit trees. NGO Monitor suggested those fruit trees could well be used by fighters to hide behind. Apparently the dappled shade was the threat.

Step two: De Telegraaf runs a page long article. The headline says Hamas has a firm finger in the pie of Dutch aid organisations. The paper does not verify the claims. It simply amplifies them.

Step three: within four days, Groep Markuszower and the PVV file formal parliamentary questions. They demand an immediate investigation of Oxfam Novib. They suggest revoking its charitable status.

Step four: the cabinet answers. The answer contains a single Dutch sentence that does most of the work: “Er is geen informatie voorhanden die de aantijgingen van NGO Monitor steunt.” (There is no information available that supports NGO Monitor’s allegations.)

The demand for an investigation receives a one word answer: “Nee” (No).

Then everyone waits a few months and does it again. This is not a scandal. This is a production line.

The guarantor who filled in forms

What did NGO Monitor actually find? The most concrete allegation concerned a Hamas guarantor system embedded inside humanitarian groups.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the accused organisations, published a statement explaining what the word guarantor actually meant. The term referred solely to staff authorised to submit travel permit applications for foreign colleagues through the relevant electronic platform. The role conferred no authority, access, or influence. Such guarantor roles for travel and visa applicants are required by most governments worldwide.

In other words, NGO Monitor caught Hamas’s terrifying clerical staff in the act of clerking. The travel permit clerk filling in forms for foreign colleagues is not a mastermind of terror. But the allegation travels faster than the correction. That is how the pipeline works.

Other accused organisations issued similar denials. Oxfam told The Jewish Chronicle that a review of independent project audits found no credible evidence. Handicap International said its own investigations indicated no truth in the report’s claims. The Dutch cabinet, after reviewing all due diligence procedures for aid to the Palestinian Territories, found them in order. The cabinet also noted existing criticism of NGO Monitor’s conduct. Ministers do not normally name a source as previously criticised. They named this one.

The EU level: politically undesirable

The same machine operates in Brussels. In June 2025, the European Parliament established a Scrutiny Working Group on NGOs. Its stated purpose was transparency. Its actual purpose was revealed in February 2026 by Dirk Gotink, a Dutch member of parliament and one of the group’s co-rapporteurs.

Gotink told a hearing, and this is a direct quote: The problem that we are pursuing here is not to establish whether things are illegal, it is to establish whether politically it is undesirable.

The quiet part, out loud, on the record. The working group was not looking for crimes. It was looking for things it did not like.

What had official bodies actually found? The European Court of Auditors concluded that the EU’s NGO funding process was opaque on the Commission’s side. It found no wrongdoing, financial irregularities, or misuse of EU funds by NGOs. No evidence of illegality or fraud. A lack of transparency in how the Commission allocates funds, yes. Malfeasance by NGOs, no.

Who is NGO Monitor?

The organisation presents itself as an independent research body. Its founder and president is Gerald Steinberg, a professor at Bar-Ilan University. Steinberg has reportedly worked for the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Office of the Prime Minister while heading NGO Monitor. Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN and adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, served as NGO Monitor’s publisher in its early years. A senior researcher previously worked in the public relations department of the IDF Spokesperson’s Office.

NGO Monitor’s international advisory council includes Elliott Abrams, Alan Dershowitz, Douglas Murray, and James Woolsey, all prominent hawks on Middle East policy. That list tells you who the organisation’s friends are.

In 2024, Wikipedia editors classified NGO Monitor as generally unreliable on all subjects, meaning the source is not normally cited. The classification sits alongside the ADL on Israel-Palestine topics, the New York Post, and the Daily Wire. Not quite banned, but close.

The money trail

NGO Monitor is funded almost entirely through a single nonprofit in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. The nonprofit is called REPORT, which stands for Research + Evaluation = Promoting Organizational Responsibility and Transparency. The name is the sort of thing a consulting firm invents to sound serious.

Over fourteen years, roughly twenty million dollars has flowed through REPORT on its way to Jerusalem. The money comes from anonymous donors. Their names are filed with the IRS but hidden from the public. What is visible is the board that controls the conduit.

The board includes Nina Rosenwald, heiress to the Sears Roebuck fortune. She founded the Gatestone Institute, a hawkish pro-Israel think tank in New York. She has also hosted Geert Wilders in the United States. In 2008 she brought him to New York for a speech warning of a Muslim plot, in his words, “to rule the world by the sword.” In 2012 Gatestone hosted him again at a ten thousand dollar a head event. Wilders publicly called her one of his good friends.

A board member of NGO Monitor’s primary funding conduit is the personal friend and American host of the Dutch politician whose party files the parliamentary questions based on NGO Monitor’s reports. That is not a rumour. That is three documented facts standing next to each other and pretending they have never met.

The board also includes Jehudi Kinar, a former Israeli ambassador to Canada and to Belgium. He has served on the board for more than a decade. A former ambassador governing the American funding vehicle for an organisation that claims no government affiliation is a curious arrangement.

What the evidence does not show

No direct Mossad link appears in any public filing or parliamentary record. No evidence of direct Israeli government funding has surfaced. The organisation denies receiving any. The actual story is not a spy novel. It is a network of pro-Israel donors and former diplomats, channelling money through a Pennsylvania nonprofit, producing research that gets amplified by a friendly newspaper and turned into parliamentary questions by a politician who has dinner with the woman who writes the cheques.

The cost

Humanitarian workers in Gaza already work under drone surveillance, airstrikes, and the threat of assassination. Adding public allegations of terror ties, when ministers, the European Court of Auditors, and Parliament’s own discharge procedure find no evidence, is not a victimless act. The travel permit clerk filling in forms for foreign colleagues is not a Hamas guarantor. But the allegation travels faster than the correction. That is how the pipeline works. Rinse and repeat.