ODIOUS NGO MONITOR SMEARS ELECTRONIC INTIFADA

NOVANEWS

Odious NGO Monitor smears Electronic Intifada, tries to cut funding

NGO Monitor was captured perfectly in The Forward by liberal jewish thinker

Leonard Fine who said it was “an organization that believes that the best way

to defend Israel is to condemn anyone who criticizes it.” But now, no longer

satisfied with its McCarthyite efforts to not just condemn, but actually

take down respected human rights organizations, it is seeking to stop critical

funding of the Electronic Intifada, a key media source for information and

analysis about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Electronic Intifada (EI) is a pioneering online news outlet that has been an

essential resource for activists, scholars and journalists since its inception

in 2002. Its coverage is unapologetically sympathetic to the Palestinian str-

uggle for human rights, grounded in an understanding of international law

and universal human rights. Years before the current proliferation of blogs

and alternate news sources, EI was there first, providing a much needed an-

tidote to one-sided mainstream news coverage of Israel and Palestine.

And they continue to provide original reporting and news and analysis you

still can’t get anywhere else.

Which perhaps is why NGO Monitor has made the preposterous claim that

EI is “an anti-Semitic website,” stunningly based on the fact that one staffer

is a supporter of the BDS movement and executive director, Ali Abunimah,

in his non EI-related speaking engagements, “calls for a one-state solution

to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and routinely uses false apartheid rhetoric.

” Really? This is what they’ve got? (They’d have to start throwing a lot of Jewish

Israeli government officials into the anti-Semite dungeon if invoking ‘apartheid”

is officially verboten… and Abunimah’s one state is different in substance but

certainly similar in form to an increasing number of Israeli right-wingers who

also push for a “one state solution”. And then there’s the entirely reasonable

observation that we seem to already have a de-facto one state after 43 some

years of occupation.. but I digress) Yet another of thousands of such a ridiculous

claims would be laughable if NGO Monitor didn’t have a card up its sleeve–EI gets

about one third of its funding from a Dutch government-funded aid organization.

According to the Jerusalem Post, NGO Monitor’s unsubstantiated charges.

“prompted Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal to say on Thursday to

the Post, “I will look into the matter personally. If it appears that the

government subsidized NGO ICCO does fund Electronic Intifada, it will

have a serious problem with me.”

As EI has documented in this must-read report, NGO Monitor has very close

ties to the far-right. They use the language of NGO (non-governmental organization)

transparency to go after funding of Israeli and other human rights groups and

funders (including the New Israel Fund and Amnesty International) while remaining

completely silent on Israel’s funding-dependent and law-breaking settler groups.

EI writes:

NGO Monitor is an extreme right-wing group with close ties to the Israeli

government, military, West Bank settlers, a man convicted of misleading

the US Congress, and to notoriously Islamophobic individuals and organ-

izations in the United States….

NGO Monitor’s attack on The Electronic Intifada is part of a well-financed,

Israeli-government endorsed effort to silence reporting about and criticism

of Israel by attacking so-called “delegitimizers” — those who speak about

well-documented human rights abuses, support boycott, divestment and

sanctions (BDS), or promote full equality for Palestinians. Last February,

The Electronic Intifada reported that a leading Israeli think-tank had

recommended a campaign of “sabotage” against Israel’s critics as a matter

of state policy

(”Israel’s new strategy: “sabotage” and “attack” the global justice movement,”

16 February 2010).

NGO Monitor has already been at the forefront of a campaign to crush

internal dissent by Jewish groups in Israel that want to see Israel’s

human rights record improved. The Jerusalem-based organization

poses as a project concerned with accountab- ility for nongovernm-

ental organizations (NGOs), but as Israeli human rights activist and

journalist Didi Remez has stated, “NGO Monitor is not an objective

watchdog: It is a partisan operation that suppresses its perceived

ideological adversaries through the sophisticated use of McCarthyite

techniques — blackli- sting, guilt by association and selective filtering

of facts” (”Bring on the transparency,” Haaretz, 26 November 2009).

There is good news here- thus far EI reports that no action has been taken

thus far to end their funding. Presumably anyone who does so would have

to actually subst- antiate NGO Monitor’s spurious charges. Good luck with

that.

NOVANEWS

NGO Monitor was captured perfectly in The Forward by liberal jewish thinker

Leonard Fine who said it was “an organization that believes that the best way

to defend Israel is to condemn anyone who criticizes it.” But now, no longer

satisfied with its McCarthyite efforts to not just condemn, but actually

take down respected human rights organizations, it is seeking to stop critical

funding of the Electronic Intifada, a key media source for information and

analysis about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Electronic Intifada (EI) is a pioneering online news outlet that has been an

essential resource for activists, scholars and journalists since its inception

in 2002. Its coverage is unapologetically sympathetic to the Palestinian str-

uggle for human rights, grounded in an understanding of international law

and universal human rights. Years before the current proliferation of blogs

and alternate news sources, EI was there first, providing a much needed an-

tidote to one-sided mainstream news coverage of Israel and Palestine.

And they continue to provide original reporting and news and analysis you

still can’t get anywhere else.

Which perhaps is why NGO Monitor has made the preposterous claim that

EI is “an anti-Semitic website,” stunningly based on the fact that one staffer

is a supporter of the BDS movement and executive director, Ali Abunimah,

in his non EI-related speaking engagements, “calls for a one-state solution

to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and routinely uses false apartheid rhetoric.

” Really? This is what they’ve got? (They’d have to start throwing a lot of Jewish

Israeli government officials into the anti-Semite dungeon if invoking ‘apartheid”

is officially verboten… and Abunimah’s one state is different in substance but

certainly similar in form to an increasing number of Israeli right-wingers who

also push for a “one state solution”. And then there’s the entirely reasonable

observation that we seem to already have a de-facto one state after 43 some

years of occupation.. but I digress) Yet another of thousands of such a ridiculous

claims would be laughable if NGO Monitor didn’t have a card up its sleeve–EI gets

about one third of its funding from a Dutch government-funded aid organization.

According to the Jerusalem Post, NGO Monitor’s unsubstantiated charges.

“prompted Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal to say on Thursday to

the Post, “I will look into the matter personally. If it appears that the

government subsidized NGO ICCO does fund Electronic Intifada, it will

have a serious problem with me.”

As EI has documented in this must-read report, NGO Monitor has very close

ties to the far-right. They use the language of NGO (non-governmental organization)

transparency to go after funding of Israeli and other human rights groups and

funders (including the New Israel Fund and Amnesty International) while remaining

completely silent on Israel’s funding-dependent and law-breaking settler groups.

EI writes:

NGO Monitor is an extreme right-wing group with close ties to the Israeli

government, military, West Bank settlers, a man convicted of misleading

the US Congress, and to notoriously Islamophobic individuals and organ-

izations in the United States….

NGO Monitor’s attack on The Electronic Intifada is part of a well-financed,

Israeli-government endorsed effort to silence reporting about and criticism

of Israel by attacking so-called “delegitimizers” — those who speak about

well-documented human rights abuses, support boycott, divestment and

sanctions (BDS), or promote full equality for Palestinians. Last February,

The Electronic Intifada reported that a leading Israeli think-tank had

recommended a campaign of “sabotage” against Israel’s critics as a matter

of state policy

(”Israel’s new strategy: “sabotage” and “attack” the global justice movement,”

16 February 2010).

NGO Monitor has already been at the forefront of a campaign to crush

internal dissent by Jewish groups in Israel that want to see Israel’s

human rights record improved. The Jerusalem-based organization

poses as a project concerned with accountab- ility for nongovernm-

ental organizations (NGOs), but as Israeli human rights activist and

journalist Didi Remez has stated, “NGO Monitor is not an objective

watchdog: It is a partisan operation that suppresses its perceived

ideological adversaries through the sophisticated use of McCarthyite

techniques — blackli- sting, guilt by association and selective filtering

of facts” (”Bring on the transparency,” Haaretz, 26 November 2009).

There is good news here- thus far EI reports that no action has been taken

thus far to end their funding. Presumably anyone who does so would have

to actually subst- antiate NGO Monitor’s spurious charges. Good luck with

that.

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