10 March 2005
UPDATE: NIF'S ONGOING SUPPORT FOR RADICAL NGOS

Click here for printer friendly version

In 2003, the NGO Monitor examined the NGOs supported by the NIF, including funding for radical anti-Israel groups that were leaders of the demonization campaign at the Durban conference and elsewhere. In 2004, NIF funding demonstrates a change in focus, and an end to the direct support for some extremist political groups such as Physicians for Human Rights - Israel and ICHAD. However, although many of the NGO's that are still receiving money from the New Israel Fund have admirable goals related to civil and human rights on paper, the record demonstrates that the following grantees continue to use the rhetoric of demonization to propagate an extremist anti-Israel agenda.

Adalah

• Website: http://www.adalah.org/eng/index.php
• Founded November 1996.
• Describes itself as "an independent human rights organization" and a "non-partisan legal center."
• Engages regularly in international advocacy, particularly at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the EU.

In an ad published in Ha'aretz on 16 July 2004 and reproduced on its website, Adalah accuses Israel of "grave human rights violations and war crimes" in Rafah. This ad was co-sponsored by many of the most anti-Israel ideological NGOs, such as PHR-I, Al Mezan, I'lam and HaMoked.

In its May 2004 Newsletter, Adalah draws Durban-like false parallels between Israel and South African apartheid, and strips the context of terrorism from the analysis of Israeli policies. The text refers to "massive human rights violations in the Occupied Territories: the killing of Palestinians, assassinations, the demolition of homes and neighborhoods, the imposition of closures and curfews, the establishment of roadblocks and checkpoints that isolate villages, the land confiscation, and the construction of the Apartheid Wall and Bantustans".

Linked to this issue is an article titled "The Racist Separation Wall in the West Bank." The article accuses the Israeli army of, among other things, "war crimes" in Jenin and Nablus, and calls Israel's protective security fence "the most comprehensive, colonial and racist project undertaken since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967".

Arab Center for Alternative Planning (ACAP)

• Website: http://www.ac-ap.org/
• Established in December 2000.
• Claims to represent "the genuine needs and interests of the Arab citizens of Israel on issues of planning, land, housing, and development." In reality, often engages in very hostile attacks on Israel, including anti-Semitic language.

In 2001, 2002, and 2003 reports, NIF is listed as a donor organization. In addition, ACAP mentions having "successfully established relationships" with "organizations that share similar goals and priorities," including the European Union.

Linked to its site, in an article titled, "The Unrecognized Villages, A Struggle for Survival or Planning the Reality," Dr. Rassem Khamaisy states that the "Zionist movement and subsequent Israeli Governments" have aimed "to Judaize the space, by owning and controlling the land, planning it in order to serve the aims of Zionism. In order to achieve these aims it is necessary to formulate strategies that seek to destroy Palestinian continuity. This entails the use of planning theories and means borrowed from military ideology, which can be summarized as the strategy of surrounding and infiltration."

Association of Forty

• Website: http://www.assoc40.org/
• Established December 1988 as a "grassroots non-governmental organization" committed to "the promotion of social justice in the Arab sector in Israel."
• The group works in the legal arena, both domestically and internationally, "to obtain basic human rights for Arab citizens."
• Funded by the NIF.

The Association of Forty played an active role in the escalation of the conflict in October 2000, citing "massacres committed against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories", the "racist structure of the state," and "Israeli policy" that amounts to "killing and murder."

According to this NGO's propaganda, "(Since 1948) all instruments of the State have acted in concert to expel, exclude, dispossess, suppress and in all manner discriminate against the Palestinian Arab people, beginning with the mass ethnic cleansing of the 1948 Palestine refugees. For over 50 years the Israeli Supreme Court remained silent in the face of the perpetration of the war crimes and the crimes of apartheid perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people."

The Association advocates the return of all Palestinian refugees to within Israel, noting in their Statement that Israel will only "become democratic when it is transformed to the state of all its citizens as well as its 'absentees', the 1948 Palestine refugees". (See 'The Right of Return' - NGOs Promote Palestinian Position)

HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual

• Website: http://www.hamoked.org.il/index_en.asp
• Founded by Dr. Lotte Salzberger in 1988, HaMoked claims to be "an Israeli human rights organization whose main objective is to assist Palestinians of the Occupied Territories whose rights are violated due to Israel's policies."
• Works in the legal and governmental domains to fight for detainee rights, family unification and residency rights, freedom of movement, and against violence committed by security forces and settlers.
• Donors include: The European Commission, British, Finnish, Norwegian Embassies; Canadian, Irish, and Netherlands Representative Offices; International Commission of Jurists - Sweden; Federal Department of Foreign Affairs - Switzerland; The Ford Foundation; Global Ministries - Netherlands; Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Netherlands; New Israel Fund; and various charitable organizations in England and Germany.

Links to websites include a report accusing Israel of war crimes in Rafah.

In its 2003 report on "Violence Committed by the Security Forces," HaMoked blames Israel for all of the Palestinian deaths (2,289) and injuries (6,274) by gunfire in the previous three years, and criticizes the police for failing to investigate. There is no mention of Palestinian terror or violence.

Noah Liben