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This article is a response to Naomi Chazan’s "Critical Currents: War, human rights and democracy" (Jerusalem Post, January 8, 2009)

[Excerpt:]

"We have known each other for many years, as both academic colleagues and debating partners, but I was surprised at the virulence and deeply personal nature of your attack on me and on NGO Monitor’s reports and analysis (UpFront, January 9). Instead of a factual defense of the powerful New Israel Fund (of which you are now the president – a point you neglected to mention in your article [though Chazan did point it out to the editors]), your diatribe included numerous inventions and blatantly false claims. I can understand your intense desire to protect the NIF from an open analysis and debate that will show donors how the $200 million it has provided over the years was actually spent. But this does not justify you putting thoughts into my head or words into my mouth which I have never said or written. Nor does this excuse the hysteria used to portray NGO Monitor’s detailed and fully referenced research as part of a dangerous right-wing conspiracy. The language that you use (‘Steinberg and others of his ilk’) is a symptom of the attempt to prevent discussion through ad hominem attacks and senseless hatred which are inconsistent with the image NIF aspires to project. On the substance, while some NIF funds go to nonpolitical organizations that provide important services, and other recipients have names and mission statements that sound perfectly reasonable, their actual activities often go in an entirely different direction. NIF provides millions of dollars to the leaders of anti-Israel campaigns in the media, the United Nations and other venues. As shown in detail by NGO Monitor, and summarized in the following paragraphs, these organizations frame the conflict through the Palestinian narrative of victimization – one of the main weapons in the ‘soft power war’ which justifies terror and condemns Israeli self-defense."