Photo: Soosim at en.wikipedia, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons¹³

Gerald M. Steinberg

Israeli political scientists and advocate

Gerald M. Steinberg (Hebrew: ג'ראלד שטיינברג) is an Israeli academic, political scientist, and political activist who is a professor of politics at Bar Ilan University. Steinberg is the founder and president of NGO Monitor, a policy analysis think tank focusing on non-governmental organizations.²

From Wikipedia’s article on Gerald M. Steinberg (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born 1952.¹

Companies

NGO MonitorFounder¹²

Early life and education

Date not recordedUniversity of California, San Diego³
Date not recordedUniversity of California, Berkeley³
Date not recordedCornell University³

Career

Occupation: opinion journalist, political scientist, journalist, university teacher.⁶

Date not recordedWorked at Bar-Ilan University⁴
Date not recordedFounded NGO Monitor⁵

Personal life

Born1952, London⁷
CitizenshipIsrael⁸
Children4⁹

Legal issues and controversies

Court case

In January 2010, after the European Commission refused to release documents on NGO funding, Steinberg initiated legal action under the EU's Freedom of Information statutes. The court ruled that instability in the Middle East and the prospect that "such information may pose a danger to human rights groups" justified the refusal. The court further found that Steinberg's petition was "manifestly lacking any foundation in law".

Of Steinberg's failed legal action, Israeli attorney Michael Sfard said: "Steinberg invents demons and then chases them. On the way, he convinces the Europeans that the fears for the welfare of Israeli democracy are justified. All the data about the donations of foreign countries to Israeli human rights organizations are published on the Web sites of the organizations, as required by law."

Yehudit Karp, a former Israeli deputy attorney general, charged that Steinberg published material he knew to be wrong "along with some manipulative interpretation".

Reporter Uriel Heilman said that Steinberg played "fast and loose" with the facts by repeating comments about the New Israel Fund that Steinberg knew were untrue. In response, Steinberg acknowledged that some of his reports were poorly phrased and promised to correct them.

In The Jerusalem Post, Kenneth Roth wrote that Steinberg shows a "disregard for basic facts" when writing about human rights.