Activities

• Claims to be “politically independent but not a politically neutral organization” that takes “clear positions in important social debates.”

Funding to Terror Affiliated Groups

• Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), an NPA partner organization, is identified by Fatah as an official PFLP “affiliate” and by USAID as the “agricultural arm” of the PFLP.
• In April 2018, NPA settled a civil fraud case with the US Department of Justice and NPA was charged with violating the US False Claims Act for providing material support to Iran and Palestinian terror groups. According to Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman:  “For years, Norwegian People’s Aid obtained grant money from USAID by falsely representing that it had not provided, and would take reasonable steps to ensure that it did not knowingly provide, material support to prohibited parties under U.S. law.”
  • NPA “funded numerous workshops attended by young people in the Gaza Strip and senior officials from the partner political parties, including Hamas, PFLP, and DFLP. Hamas, PFLP, and DFLP used information that they obtained from these workshops to alter their behavior in order to become more attractive to youth and, thereby, benefit from increased youth support.”  The project in question, “Youth of the Day Leaders of Tomorrow,” was supported by NPA and the Palestinian Institute for Development Studies beginning in 2010, and claimed to provide “provided practical support to strengthen partner organisations that organise activities, including training in planning.”
• In the settlement NPA agreed to a fine of $2.025 million. USAID funding was used for a project in South Sudan, and NPA claims that it misunderstood the US anti-terror waiver and believed that it applied only to the South Sudan project, and not to its work in Gaza and elsewhere.

Anti-Israel Advocacy

• Promotes allegations of Israeli “apartheid,” “collective punishment,” “war crimes,” and “violations of international law and human rights,” as well as supporting a Palestinian “right of return.”
• Publishes numerous highly emotive blogs that present an entirely biased view of the conflict, omit Hamas rocket attacks, and deny Israel’s right to self-defense.
• In April 2017, NPA hosted Al-Haq General Director Shawan Jabarin, who has alleged ties to the PFLP terrorist organization and as such has previously been denied exit visas by Israel and Jordan.
• Funded a 2015 photo exhibit in Lebanon, which included maps that erase the State of Israel and replace it, in entirety, with “Palestine.”
• During the 2014 Gaza war, Secretary General Liv Tørres called on the “international community to immediately put pressure on Israel to stop the war crimes and killing of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip.” NPA also refers to the 2014 Gaza war as “Israel’s extensive bombing.”
• In an April 2014 lecture, Finn Erik Thoresen, head of the NPA board of trustees, repeated the thoroughly discredited conspiracy theory that “Palestinians are not allowed to use red roof tiles on their houses in the West Bank” in order to make it “easier for the Israeli bombers to identify Palestinian houses when they bomb them, while they avoid hitting the Jewish houses.”

BDS

• NPA is a leader and mobilizer of anti-Israel BDS (boycotts, divestments, and sanctions) campaigns.
• Played a central role in lobbying the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) to divest from Israeli companies “involved in building activities in the illegal settlements,” promoting distorted factual and legal claims.
• In June 2016, NPA worked with the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees (Fagforbundet) to publish a second draft of its May 2012 document, “Dangerous Liaisons,” which falsely alleged that Norwegian companies, through financial investments in Israel, are participating in international law and human rights abuses. The original document was cited as a central resource for the GPFG campaign, as well as other Norwegian BDS efforts.
• The document relies heavily on the Israeli BDS NGO Who Profits. According to submissions to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits, Who Profits received approximately NIS 200,000 from Fagforbundet.
  • Claimed that owing to the update of this report and lobbying by NPA and Fagforbundet, “One important result was that KLP excluded two companies from its portfolio: Heidelberg Cement and Cemex, both of which extract nonrenewable natural resources on the West Bank.”
• In October 2014, NPA, in cooperation with Fagforbundet, began a campaign against G4S demanding that “G4S withdraws from all activities on occupied Palestinian land, and stop all deliveries to Israeli prisons where Palestinian prisoners are imprisoned in violation of the Geneva Conventions.”
• Initiated a 2013 campaign, together with Fagforbundet, to implore Staples Norway to stop selling SodaStream products due to the company’s supposed “support for the illegal occupation of Palestine.”
• On October 30, 2012, Norwegian People’s Aid and 21 other NGOs released a report, “Trading Away Peace: How Europe Helps Sustain Illegal Israeli Settlements.” The report called on the EU and national governments to wage political warfare through various forms of economic sanctions against Israel.
• In 2012, claimed its “advocacy-work and pressure” led the Norwegian Ministry of Finance to exclude the pro-Israel “Karmel-instituttet” from the list of Norwegian organizations eligible to receive tax-deductible donations, due to the organization’s alleged “financial support to Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.”
• Together with the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees, lobbied the Norwegian retail chain VITA to stop selling Ahava products, “providing VITA and VITA’s owners with information about Ahava and their production in the Mitzpe Shalem settlement.” According to a March 2012 notice posted on the BDS website, activists will “now launch a new campaign to have other stores follow VITA’s example.”