“Something good finally came out of the government’s persecution of leftist associations,” Knesset member Tamar Zandberg of Meretz told Al-Monitor. “It made us wake up, stop being passive; it drove us to search where the right-wing NGOs’ budgets, amounting to millions of shekels, actually come from. We were surprised to discover that some of this money came out of the taxpayers’ pockets and was hidden [in the state budget] under the generic heading of 'participation.'”

Zandberg was referring to two recent investigative reports. One was published by the Israeli news website Walla, and the other by the Peace Now movement, both of which add to a 2014 investigative report by Molad. The investigations present a disturbing picture: Public money is finding its way to nongovernmental organizations linked with the far right, without those groups being required to report on their funding sources. After all, Israeli law does not require it of them.

Walla’s investigation, the results of which were released Jan. 13, found that the right-wing organization Ad Kan — which sent undercover activists to infiltrate various watchdog and human rights organizations and document their work from the inside — was funded in part by the Samaria Settlers’ Committee. That group, in turn, receives funding from the Samaria Regional Council — in other words, from public funds.

The Peace Now investigative report published in December examined the financial reports of nine right-wing Israeli NGOs for 2006-2013. In those years alone, some 580 million shekels ($145 million) flowed into the coffers of those organizations. The investigation also found that the total contributions from undisclosed sources came to 445 million shekels ($112 million). The actual sources of these donations were American donors who didn't disclose their identities.