JERUSALEM, Israel - Ben & Jerry’s recently made a decision that put the BDS Movement back in the headlines. The ice cream makers stopped doing business in what they called the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” otherwise known as the West Bank.

The decision gave a boost to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement and raised questions about where it gets its funding.      

Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President of Research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies tells CBN News the source of the BDS Movement’s cash is “very murky.”

“You have a lot of groups operating on what appears to be shoestring budgets and yet we see the BDS movement flourish and thrive across college campuses. I think what it means is this is a very de-centralized funding network,” he said.

In 2016, Jonathan Schanzer testified before Congress and shared his research into the funding of the BDS Movement. 

“We finally stumbled on one group called American Muslims for Palestine and as it turns out, many of them worked for charities that were previously shut down by the US government for supporting Hamas,” says Schanzer. “This, of course, came as a surprise to us. The more we dug, the more we realized that there was a network, a relatively small one but apparently influential that was active on campus … I think ultimately that, even if this group is not engaging in anything illegal, and I think it’s important to stress that, their background is important. It’s not just simply a social justice movement motivated by very ideological reasons.”

Schanzer tells CBN News the network is doing now what it did in 2016. In a related development, Israel recently targeted six NGO’s for allegedly aiding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a terror organization by the US.

“The PFLP has a number of charities that have been active here, NGO’s rather, that have been active here in the United States and in Israel and in the Palestinian territories that have been pushing a very negative narrative in regards to Israel and been advocating for BDS,” says Schanzer.

Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum, says “a number of these so-called charities and NGOs are really a front for terror groups like the PFLP to funnel money that ultimately goes towards carrying out terrorist actions and promoting boycott activities.” 

Ostrovsky says boycott activities go back 20 years to the movement’s beginning at a UN conference in South Africa designed to fight racism.

“Instead of the international community coming together to fight racism, it ended up coming to promote racism and against one state and one state only, the Jewish state Israel,” says Ostrovsky.