Currently before the Israeli Knesset is a bill demanding greater transparency from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) about their sources of funding. The bill has generated controversy in Israel and led the American press to invoke comparisons with Russian and Turkish regulations intended to crush political dissent. Not only do these comparisons miss the mark by a wide margin, writes Gerald Steinberg, but the bill is in fact necessary to preserve Israel’s functioning as a democracy:

The legislation proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, . . . would designate NGOs whose income is largely from external governments as foreign agents. Presented as an extension of existing transparency regulations, it would require a note in NGO publications, letters to public officials, and protocols of testimony in Knesset committees listing foreign government funders. . . . The most important aspect of the bill is the symbolism conveyed by the “foreign-agent” designation, particularly in Israel, where sovereignty and self-determination are taken seriously.

In this sense, the proposed legislation is similar in spirit and purpose to the U.S. Foreign-Agent Registration Act (1938), and the rules adopted last year by the House of Representatives. . . .

Although NGOs have always been significant actors in Israeli politics and society, in the past fifteen years a network of about 30 groups claiming to promote human rights and peace have received large grants from the European Union and individual governments. The scale of this funding, with annual budgets upward of $1 million, as well as [these organizations’] extreme secrecy and impact, are unique; there are no parallels in relations among democracies.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.