Tuesday, May 18, 2010
[The following is a guest post by Hawkeye of CiF Watch.]
Israel faces a multi-pronged attack from a variety of state and non-state actors that seek to delegitimize her very existence. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of the NGOs where the likes of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International use the cover of the halo effect from their human rights activities to pursue an anti-Israel agenda.
Up until a few years ago, there was no organization in existence that would hold these groups to account and ask all important questions such as why is it that there is a disproportionate focus on purported human rights abuses by Israel, who is funding these organizations, who sets the policies and what goals do these organizations seek to achieve.
It is for this reason that the work of NGO Monitor and its estimable founder and President, Professor Gerald Steinberg, is invaluable. Accountability and transparency are the hallmarks of the democratic nations in which we live in so why should NGOs, some of which wield extraordinary influence and power, not be held to the same or similar standards?
Last Thursday I took a couple of hours off in the middle of the day to hear Professor Steinberg speak to a packed-out audience at an event organized by the World Jewish Congress in midtown Manhattan.
Beginning with Durban I, Steinberg described how this anti-Israel hatefest was used by the NGOs as a platform in which to brand Israel as a racist apartheid state. The NGO Declaration, a formal though unofficial document adopted by the NGO Forum called in no uncertain terms for "the international community to impose a policy of complete isolation of Israel as an apartheid state".
In tracing the events that succeeded Durban I including investigations into the so-called Jenin massacre that never was, the ICJ advisory opinion on Israel's security barrier, the BDS movement, the Goldstone report and most recently, interference on the status of Jerusalem, Steinberg discerned what he called the "NGO Durban Strategy". This involves a sophisticated campaign of using the mass media as a channel in which to propagate accusations of Israeli human rights abuses and breaches of international law which in turn are used to influence the machinations of the United Nations and academia.
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the work of NGO Monitor is its focus on "following the money", that is, researching and exposing the funding sources of NGOs, an endeavor which according to Steinberg is fraught with challenges due to the lack of transparency. By shining a spotlight, it allows important questions to be asked, for example, why is it that EU and other foreign money is being used to fund Israeli NGOs that pursue openly anti-Zionist agendas and why is it that the New Israel Fund, a group that purports to actualize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, funds groups that are committed to the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
As a resource for researching NGOs, I can personally attest to the fact that NGO Monitor performs an invaluable role in providing much needed, and otherwise unavailable, background data on NGOs that are quoted as the source of purported human rights abuses by Israel. As is often the case, when one scratches a little deeper, one begins to discover the flaws in the claims being made.
All in all Professor Steinberg provided an informative and insightful presentation that provided the attendees with some much needed background to the ongoing delegitimization campaign against Israel and the role of NGOs.
It turns out though that not all the attendees walked away with the same impression that I did.
Unbeknownst to me, the event was graced with the presence of a certain "righteous Jew" of Mondoweiss fame, Philip Weiss. In an account of the event lacking completely in substance you hear how Professor Steinberg looks "tall and professorial, gray with rounded shoulders". How he has "an American accent and has spent many years at a lectern at Bar Ilan University, maybe too many years". How the event was attended by "all old people" (which is news to me!). How some of them had come for the "free oldfashioned food". And how "the old people reminded [him] of the old people you see in West Jerusalem, walking around with American accents." This he then juxtaposed with the scene of "young attractive Jews" at a New Israel Fund event that he later attended. "Its like the difference between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and it speaks to the cultural chasm between J Street and the old Israel lobby."
Struck by Weiss' monumental inability to challenge the substance of Steinberg's talk (oh and where was Mr. Weiss during the Q&A?), I was reminded of a poignant observation made by Yaacov Lozowick not so long ago:
One of the oddest things a regular reading of Mondoweiss demonstrates is that the Mondoweiss community has not the slightest interest in the Israelis as human beings. There is never any honest attempt to understand who they are, how they see their world, and how this understanding informs their actions. Yet odder, however, the exact same thing holds also for the Palestinians. The Mondoweiss community loves the Palestinians, automatically sees them as beautiful people and wonderful, but never sees them as human beings. There is no slightest interest in who they are, how they see their world, and how this understanding informs their actions.
The Israelis are cardboard figures of evil, devoid of any real life. The Palestinians are cardboard figures of virtue, devoid of any real life. It's weird.
In our dealings with the likes of Antony Lerman and Seth Freedman, the Guardian equivalents of Philip Weiss, we have developed a rule of thumb, a moral compass so as to speak, that says that if you reach the opposite conclusion on a particular issue to Lerman or Freedman you're generally on the right track. The same holds true here. I take comfort in the fact that Philip Weiss hates everything that NGO Monitor stands for. It tells me that NGO Monitor is doing something right.
Thanks to both NGO Monitor and to CiFWatch for their heroic work!
