Coalition lawmakers called for the UN to stop giving funds to NGOs that give legal aid to terrorists, this week.
The remarks followed a letter by bereaved families to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, reported by The Jerusalem Post, in which the families demanded that the UN stop funding Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual and Arab legal aid organization Adalah.
The families' letter is based on a study by right-wing organization Im Tirzu, based on Justice Ministry documentation, finding that the UN gave about NIS 11 million to organizations that Im Tirzu considers to be delegitimizing Israel in 2012-2017, including NIS 1,921,640 to Hamoked and Adalah.
MK Merav Ben-Ari of Kulanu said that not only do the organizations in question defend terrorists in court, but they "bully bereaved families in the court and cause them additional psychological harm, after they already lost what is most precious to them."
Likud MK Amir Ohana expressed support for the "noble families" and outrage that "instead of going to educational means that will provide a better future to the whole region, the money is going to help terrorists who took innocent lives.
"That's called encouraging terror," Ohana argued.
Bayit Yehudi lawmaker, Shuli Moallem-Refaeli, said that the UN has management standards that make it unlikely that they do not know where their money is going.
"Therefore, and in light of the UN's biased behavior towards Israel over the year, I do not think it is accidental that millions of dollars are sent to organizations that support terror," Moallem-Refaeli posited. "The secretary-general should clean out the gutters in his territory before he preaches to Israel."
MK Oded Forrer of Yisrael Beytenu expressed hope that Gutteres will bring a new atmosphere to the UN.
"I expect him to act on humanitarian matters like bringing back Hadar [Goldin], Oron [Shaul] and the civilians being held by Hamas in Gaza," Forrer added.
More than 40 bereaved families signed the letter during Guterres' visit to Israel last week, including Rena Ariel, mother of Hallel Yaffa Ariel, who was murdered in her Kiryat Arba bedroom in June 2016; Tzvika Mark, brother of Rabbi Miki Mark who was murdered near Hebron in a drive-by shooting in July 2016; Merav and Herzl Hajaj, parents of Shir Hajaj who was murdered in a car-ramming attack in Jerusalem in January 2017 and Dvorah Gonen, mother of Danny Gonen who was murdered while hiking near the village of Dolev in June 2015.
The families wrote that only people who attacked Israelis received this kind of legal aid from the UN. “Is the purpose of the UN treasury to lay the groundwork for the next murder of Israelis? The blood of our parents, children, brothers, sisters and other loved ones, cries out from the earth,” they wrote.