NGO Monitor

Legal activities

Rashid Khalidi has called NGO Monitor an organisation that opposes legal means against Israel and at the same time a proponent of the use of legal means against those who criticise Israel. Sabine Lang writes that NGO Monitor has focused on the use of legal means to limit funding to NGOs.

Neve Gordon, writing in Law & Society Review, describes the term as part of a campaign to portray human rights as a national security threat and to impede organizations that expose human rights abuses, using NGO Monitor's activities as one of its main examples.

In January 2010, Steinberg brought a case before the European Court of Justice arguing that it was wrong of the European Commission to withhold some of the contents of over 200 financial documents that NGO Monitor had requested regarding the funding of Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. In November 2012, the court said that NGO Monitor could not receive the financial documents regarding 16 projects of human rights organizations in Israel, calling it "in part, manifestly inadmissible and, in part, manifestly lacking any foundation in law". The EU said "that the Middle East is an unstable region, and therefore such information may pose a danger to human rights groups".

In 2013, NGO Monitor issued a report on the findings of the 2011 Israeli law requiring Israeli non-governmental organizations to disclose financial contributions from foreign donors and governments. The report assessed that foreign funding of Israeli NGOs totalled NIS 34,355,579 in 2012. Steinberg called the new law an "international model for transparency". He also said, "the amount of foreign funding going to NGOs involved in polarizing activity in the context of the Arab–Israeli conflict [is] alarming." The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) spokesman Marc Grey said that ACRI's donors were already listed on its website, making the law "redundant", and that the donations allowed organizations to protect human rights and freedoms, adding, "the basis for Israel's relations with democratic countries is shared values – democracy and human rights above all – the State of Israel itself is a recipient of funds from these very same countries, in the framework of trade agreements, investments, loans, and donations." A spokesman for B'Tselem said the information had been published on its website for years and that NGO Monitor is a group of "Israeli government apologists masquerading as an objective watchdog. They do not even practice what they preach in terms of their own transparency and their sloppy, third-rate research."

Criticisms of NGOs

NGO Monitor criticized the Ford Foundation for funding the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. The Ford Foundation has modified its policies regarding funding of NGOs. It also has taken exception to such accusations and says its involvement in the Palestinian territories reflects its belief that a just solution to the conflict is vitally important to the region and the peoples directly affected and that it also funds groups such as the New Israel Fund.

NGO Monitor also criticized B'Tselem, "The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories".