April 2009 Digest (Vol. 7, No. 8)
2009-05-14
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Focus: Durban II NGO participation – Rolling back 2001
In sharp contrast to the NGO Forum at the 2001 Durban conference, radical NGO activity at the April 20-24 Durban Review Conference in Geneva was limited. Although a small number of anti-Israel NGO activists gathered at venues outside the UN facilities and Durban Strategy leaders Badil, Al-Haq, and Ittijah were present at the conference, their impact at official UN-sanctioned side events was marginal. (Since there was no NGO Forum in Geneva and NGOs were only allowed to speak on the final days of the conference, “side events” were the primary vehicle for formal NGO participation within the UN.)
There were a number of factors that led to the important difference between the two Durban conferences. These include the decisions by major NGO funders such as the Ford Foundation and the Canadian government not to provide support for the large-scale demonization of Israel, as occurred in 2001. NGO Monitor’s reports on this and related issues also influenced UN officials, preventing radical NGOs from again exploiting this framework for singling out Israel and antisemitic attacks.
According to Ittijah, a coalition of Israeli-Arab NGOs, "The Zionist NGO Monitor has issued several detailed reports about the activities of the international and Palestinian organizations that are supporting joint Palestinian rights in the conference, and this is in the framwork of the efforts to blackmail the secretariat of the conference preventing the existence of those organizations and their several side events in the conference” (translated from the original Arabic). Similarly, the Muzzlewatch blog accused NGO Monitor and others of impeding the “struggle against racism”: “The UN Watch/NGO Monitor right wing Israel lobby types seem to really want to destroy the UN, and at this conference they generally don’t mind taking everyone else down with it.”
The only side event with a clear goal of demonizing Israel was a sparsely-attended meeting organized by Libya-linked Nord-Sud XXI, “on language concerning ‘occupation' in the outcome document of the DRC.” One panelist, Curtis Doebbler, labeled “Palestinian suffering” as “apartheid.” The keynote speaker, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, promoted a “one-state solution.” In previous UN forums, Nord-Sud XXI accused Israel of "genocide," "apartheid" and "atrocities."
Additionally, two events ostensibly on “Islamophobia” and discrimination against Muslims after 9/11 provided platforms for anti-Israel presentations and comments. In one, Michael Warschawski of the Alternative Information Center (AIC – funded by Diakonia, Christian Aid, and Associazione Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII, which is funded in turn by the European Commission) reportedly espoused “conspiracy theories about a group of white Europeans seeking world domination...asserted that the purpose of Israel’s security barrier is actually to ‘re-colonize Palestine and the Arab World,’” and referred to the Israeli Prime Minister as a “fascist.” In another NGO meeting chaired by Charles Graves of Interfaith International, an anti-Israel activist who denies the antisemitism of the 2001 NGO Forum, the Q&A session featured a moment of silence in memory of the “victims of the massacre in Gaza”; Graves told a reporter that he did not “condone[] the call” and only stood to “figure out what was going on.” However, an Israeli student claimed that Graves mocked her for challenging him and encouraged an anti-Israel atmosphere.
 
Radical Israeli NGOs dismiss IDF investigation on Gaza – their minds are made up
Ten NIF- and European government-funded Israeli NGOs – B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights, Gisha, Adalah, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Yesh Din, Hamoked, Public Committee Against Torture, Bimkom, Rabbis for Human Rights – dismissed IDF investigations into the January 2009 fighting in Gaza, alleging “[t]he only way to investigate violations of human rights committed in Gaza is by establishing an external, extra-military investigation mechanism.” Specifically, these groups lobbied for Israeli cooperation with the UN investigation, led by Richard Goldstone.
The NGOs assert that “[i]f the military claims that there were no major deficiencies in its conduct in Gaza, it is not clear why Israel refuses to cooperate with the UN investigation team.” Yet, the key members of the “team” are signatories to a tendentious Amnesty International letter, reflecting their determination to condemn Israel for alleged “war crimes” violations and “rais[ing] serious ethical issues for investigators.” Also, although Goldstone claims he will investigate violations on “all sides,” the official mandate from the HRC limits the investigation to “all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people.”
Moreover, Goldstone is a member of HRW’s Board of Directors, and may be involved with setting the organization’s research and reporting agendas in Gaza. HRW has been a leader in disseminating false claims about Israel’s conduct during the fighting, as well as leveling pre-determined charges of “war crimes.” Given HRW’s role active at the HRC and with UN investigations, it is likely they will attempt to influence Goldstone’s team.
B’Tselem also independently rejected the IDF investigation as “based on...partial information [that] cannot reach an understanding of the truth,” since the IDF did not interview “Palestinian witnesses who were harmed by the military’s conduct” – and “welcome[d]” Goldstone’s investigation. However, given the inherent bias and the foundation for the Israeli concerns , there is good reason to expect that Goldstone’s conclusions will also be incomplete and unable to accurately assess Israeli actions.
 
Lawfare Update: CCR/PCHR case against Avi Dichter thrown out of court
On April 16, 2009, the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the lawfare case against Avi Dichter, former Director of Israel’s General Security Service, initiated by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). The case sought civil liability against Dichter for his alleged involvement in the planning of the 2002 IDF airstrike killing Salah Shehadah, founder of Hamas’ military wing and responsible for the murder and wounding of hundreds of Israeli civilians. The case was filed in December 2005 and had been dismissed by a lower court in May 2007. PCHR has attempted to litigate this case in many courts throughout the world including the US, the UK, New Zealand, and Spain. CCR is funded by the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. PCHR is funded by the European Union, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Holland, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and Christian Aid.
In 2006, the European Commission awarded PCHR and Oxfam Novib a three-year, €349,000 grant which, as NGO Monitor research has shown, is used to promote anti-Israel lawfare. One of the central goals of the program is to “[c]ontribute to the abolition of the death penalty in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, applied by . . . the Israeli military via extrajudicial executions.”
For more on PCHR’s involvement with anti-Israel lawfare, see:
Amnesty revs up campaign denying Israel’s right to self-defense
In April 2009, Amnesty International escalated its campaign for an arms embargo against Israel. This follows its February 2009 report that equated aggression and defense and artificially focused on very narrow aspects of international law.
An April 1 press release (“Shipment reaches Israel, President Obama urged to halt further exports”), which revealed that Amnesty tracked a vessel carrying arms across the Atlantic Ocean and through the Mediterranean Sea, claimed that “evidence show[s] how military equipment and munitions of this kind were recently used by the Israeli forces for war crimes.” Amnesty-USA accompanied this report with a call for “action”: letters to Secretary of State Clinton labeling Israel a “grave violator of human rights” and demanding to know the “reason behind sending these arms now.” This is a transparent and tendentious imitation of the actions by the coalition of states committed to prevent the illegal smuggling of arms from Iran to Hamas.
Amnesty’s obsession with Israel may have backfired. Amnesty USA was criticized for its double-standards and denial of legitimate self-defense, and others condemned the lack of evidence behind its allegations. As NGO Monitor has demonstrated, Amnesty publications on Israel promote the political agendas of Amnesty officials, often at the expense of human rights and the organization’s credibility.
HRW on Sri Lanka compared to Gaza: Double-standards
Since January 2009, the conflict between the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) and Sri Lankan government forces has escalated. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has issued 21 publications on the fighting, roughly equal to the number of HRW publications on the January 2009 Gaza war. (This attention to Sri Lanka by HRW is unprecedented and was apparently taken in response to NGO Monitor’s reports showing the disproportionate focus on Israel.) As during the Gaza conflict, HRW has accused “both sides” of “war crimes” violations, including “indiscriminate” attacks by the government forces, and called for “independent international investigations.”
However, although the LTTE and Hamas are considered terror organizations by the US, the EU, and others, and commit similar offenses of international humanitarian law, HRW does not use the same rhetoric for both groups. For instance HRW alleged that “the LTTE has deployed their forces close to civilians, thus using them as "human shields"...and recruited children for their forces” (emphasis added). But, in Gaza, HRW refused to label the same tactics as “human shields” and claimed (without credibility) that it “found no evidence of Hamas using human shields in the vicinity at the time of the attacks,” despite detailed evidence to the contrary.
Similarly, HRW condemned the LLTE for:
“utter disregard for the international laws of war, they have scooped up civilians to be used as combatants, provide labour to build trenches and bunkers, and now to serve as human shields. These are Tamils, the people that the LTTE claims to represent and protect - yet, it is deliberately putting them in danger. “
The same condemnation is appropriated for Hamas, including its “reckless and cynical use” of civilian infrastructure as a primary fighting tactic (as stated by UN official John Holmes): the firing from populated areas, placing women and children on the roofs of targeted buildings, storing weapons in schools and mosques, hiding in bunkers beneath hospitals, and other activities that endanger the civilians of Gaza. Yet, HRW does not direct this type of language at Hamas, instead blaming Israel alone for “disproportionate and indiscriminate” civilian deaths and providing further evidence of the biases of HRW’s Middle East division and advisory board, as documented by NGO Monitor.
PCHR’s Gaza casualty claims discredited (again)
An in-depth report by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzilya) has exposed the false the casualty claims of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) regarding the Gaza fighting (January 2009). According to the report:
"by checking the names on the PCHR list against Hamas websites, we found that many of those claimed by PCHR to be ―civilians were in fact hailed as ―militant martyrs by Hamas. Others listed by PCHR as ―civilians killed in Israeli raids later turned out to be Fatah members killed by Hamas, some of them in ―execution style killings. While both PCHR and ICT consider civil policemen to be noncombatants, our researchers found that many of the civil policemen killed also held operational ranks in the Hamas ―military wing. In fact, due to the structure of the Hamas ―military, it was difficult to draw a clear dividing line between purely civilian police functions and activity in support of ―military operations."
Independent research by bloggers and Jonathan Dahoah Halevi confirm these findings, which follow criticism of PCHR from NGO Monitor and CAMERA.
PCHR claims that only 236 out of 1,417 fatalities were combatants (16.6%). The IDF figures contrast sharply with these numbers: 709 affiliated with terror organizations, 295 classified as "uninvolved [in hostilities]," and 162 not-yet-identified.
PCHR’s “statistics” have been widely cited as authoritative by NGOs and the media.
Also, on April 29, 2009, PCHR “Call[ed] upon the PNA [Palestinian National Authority] to announce an immediate moratorium on the use of [the] death penalty,” after a Palestinian court sentenced a defendant to death for “treason and selling Palestinian lands to Israel.” While not commenting on the issue of the alleged “crimes,” PCHR also condemned Palestinian penal codes that “violate[] international standards of fair trial and do[] not include fair and independent mechanisms of appeal.”
NGO Monitor in the Media: Durban II Impact
Geneva walkout isn’t enough, Diane Meskin, Ynetnews.com, April 26, 2009
Beyond the Left-Right diatribe, Gerald Steinberg, Jerusalem Post, April 26, 2009
The U.N.'s Anti-Antiracism Conference, Gerald M. Steinberg, Wall Street Journal Europe, April 22, 2009
Analysis: Ahmadinejad buries the Durban process, Gerald Steinberg, Jerusalem Post, April 21, 2009
Told you so, Harper says as Iran stirs UN uproar, Oakland Ross, Toronto Star, April 21, 2009
Durban II: Canada did the right thing, Gerald Steinberg, Canadian Jewish News, April 21, 2009
Inside Story: Bureaucracy and hypocrisy in Geneva, Gerald Steinberg, Jerusalem Post, April 20, 2009
Ahmedinedschad: Eklat bei "Konferenz der leeren Stühle," Jan Dirk Herbermann, Suedkurier (Germany), April 20, 2009.
Why the US will boycott global racism conference, Michael J. Jordan, Christian Science Monitor, April 19, 2009
Bühne frei für Ahmadinedschad, Jan Dirk Berbermann, Der Tagesspiegel (Germany), April 17, 2009.
Durban II: la présence d'Ahmadinejad menace une conférence au lourd passé, Samuel Gardaz, Le Point (France), April 17, 2009.
Shrugging off Iranian demand, diplomats reach UN racism deal,
AFP, April 17, 2009
‘Occupation’ Is Back in Durban II Text, Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com, April 16, 2009
UN to tackle racism at politically-charged summit, Laura MacInnis, Reuters,
April 16, 2009
Jewish groups ready to 'fight the good fight' in Geneva, Abe Selig, Jerusalem Post, April 16, 2009
Analysis: A theater of the absurd, Gerald M. Steinberg, Jerusalem Post,
April 16, 2009
Analysis: Will 'Civil Society Forum' repeat 2001's anti-Semitism?, Gerald Steinberg, Jerusalem Post, April 12, 2009
Pro-Israel activists set to do battle at Durban II, Michael J. Jordan, JTA,
April 07, 2009
Human rights groups should advocate for Schalit, Gerald Steinberg, Canadian Jewish News, April 2, 2009.
NGO Monitor Blog posts
Civil Society Forum organizer complains of Jewish conspiracy against DRC, April 30, 2009
Two moments of silence, April 22, 2009
Ahmadinejad shunned at the UN, what about NGOs with the same message?, April 21, 2009
Durban II Update: Anti-Israel parallel events garner minimal attention, April 20, 2009
Durban II update: NGOs plan Israel-related parallel events, April 7, 2009
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