www.ngo-monitor.org - The Amuta for NGO Responsibility, R.A. 58-0465508
Nine-Seven-Two (+972) Magazine
NGO Monitor
September 29, 2014
- Website: http://972mag.com/
- Founded in August 2010, +972 Magazine “is an independent, blog-based web magazine” that is “jointly owned by a group of journalists, bloggers and photographers whose goal is to provide fresh, original, on-the-ground reporting and analysis of events in Israel and Palestine.” It is affiliated with a registered non-profit, 972 – Advancement of Citizen Journalism.
- The name of the magazine “is derived from the telephone area code that is shared by Israel and Palestine.”
- While the publication claims that it “does not represent any organization, political party or specific agenda,” the first paragraph of “About” section of website states: “we oppose the occupation.” In addition, the blog presents highly biased perspectives on the Arab-Israeli conflict and promotes the Durban strategy to demonize and delegitimize Israel.
- The publication is in English, reflecting the NGO’s main objective of influencing perceptions of Israel among non-Israelis.
- Funding: 2013 budget of NIS 340,984 (accessed September 29, 2014).
- 2013 donors include: Heinrich Boell Stiftung (affiliated with Germany’s Green Party), Moriah Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The NIF/Social Justice Fund provided funds in 2011-2 (See chart below.) The Boell Foundation explained funding for +972 Magazine as a form of “critical solidarity with Israel.”
- Based on financial information submitted to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits, in accordance with the Israeli NGO transparency law, +972 Magazine received NIS 24,000 from the Heinrich Boell Stiftung (Germany) in the first quarter of 2014, NIS 48,000 in 2013 and NIS 60,000 in 2012 (accessed September 29, 2014).
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- Political Advocacy: Writers and contributors regularly invoke the Durban vocabulary, accusing Israel of “apartheid”, “ethnic cleansing,” “racism,” “land confiscation,” “discrimination,” “displacement,” “fail[ing] to prosecute violence against Palestinians,” “perpetrating another “Nakba,” and deride “American Jewish hypocrisy.”
- Founding members include: Lisa Goldman, Joseph Dana, Yuval Ben-Ami, Ami Kaufman, Dimi Reider, Dahlia Scheindlin, Noam Sheizaf.
- In a June 24, 2013 article, “The fall of the house of Herzl: Israel as a horror flick,” Yuval Ben-Ami compared Israel to horror films in which a house first “appears as a safe haven, an outpost of normality, where threatened characters may seek refuge from strange forces,” but later “turns out to be the perfect hiding place also for the monsters, or even a monster in and of itself.”
- In a February 2012 interview in The Nation, Noam Sheizaf, +972’s then-editor-in-chief, referred to Jerusalem as an “apartheid city.” In September 2012, Sheizaf used his twitter account to refer to critics as “the Jewish KKK” and “fascist.”
- In May 2012, +972 published a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raping President Barak Obama and eating his limbs.
- On July 25, 2011, columnist Yossi Gurvitz published an article, “This sick glee in the face of a terrorist attack,” claiming that Israelis were full of “glee” over terrorist attacks in Norway, in which Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people. Gurvitz wrote that, “It is not, in fact, at all surprising that a neo-Nazi would support Israel,” blaming the “de-humanizing effects of Jewish Orthodox education” and alleging that “Israel was South Africa’s best friend during Apartheid.”
- In a 2011 interview posted on the website of anti-Israel NGO Just Vision, columnist Joseph Dana made the untenable comparison between “the Palestinian struggle that’s going on now for human rights” to “the rights of black people in the American south during Jim Crow, and the anti-apartheid struggle.”
- +972 published a positive review of “Once Upon a Land,” a 2010 “tour book”, published by the fiercely anti-Zionist NGO Zochrot, of “Palestinian neighborhoods and villages whose inhabitants were expelled by Israel during the Nakba.”
- Involvement in Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign: Columnist Uri Horesh defended a 2012 BDS event held at the University of Pennsylvania against criticism by what he dismissed as “local Jewish-Zionist circles.” He also defended Ali Abunimah, the conference’s keynote speaker who heads Electronic Intifada and a central leader of anti-Israel demonization.
- Writer Itamar Mann wrote glowingly of the 2012 “One State Conference” at Harvard, calling it “one of the most informed, nuanced, creative, and responsible discussions on Israel-Palestine.”
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