www.ngo-monitor.org

Digest Vol.4 No.5 - 17 January 2006:
Additional Items of Interest

• ”There has been a steady outflow of pro-Palestinian NGO personnel from the Strip, some out of panic, some from a realization that the Palestinian revolution, so called, is animated by bloodlust. According to The Times of London, one British aid worker who was recently held hostage by gunmen for three days told her kidnappers, ‘I came to work with these people and I feel like I've been stabbed in the back.’ Is this the future of Palestine?”
  Martin Peretz, “Mayhem in Gaza and the Future of Palestine: Warning Shots”, The New Republic, January 3, 2006
  
  
• “Non-governmental organizations that justify their campaigns on the basis of moral claims have adopted this false morality. Amnesty International, which was founded during the Cold War to press tyrannical regimes to release political prisoners, has lost its way entirely.”
  Gerald Steinberg, “Understanding when weakness is not a virtue”, The Jerusalem Post, January 1, 2006
  
  
• “Normally, international aid reaches the Palestinians directly, but also through myriad international NGOs. … I found Ramallah was crawling with do-gooders of all nationalities. Being kind to Palestinians is now a big industry …The Palestinians are today the largest per capita recipients of foreign aid in the world. According to the 2004 World Bank report, they are suffering ‘the worst economic depression in modern history’.”
  Ghada Karmi, “With no Palestinian state in sight, aid becomes an adjunct to occupation”, The Guardian, December 31, 2005
  
  
• As demonstrated by previous NGO Monitor analyses (“Asleep at the Wheel”, August 26, 2004), the NGO community has given the situation in Sudan relatively limited attention, compared to headline-generating areas. In “A failure of purpose”, which appeared in The Guardian on January 3, 2006, Jeevan Vasagar asks whether well-meaning western aid agencies are what Africa really needs. "Aid work in Africa often seems to be a story of misunderstandings and disappointments. What exactly are the NGOs trying to achieve? If the purpose of aid work is to diminish poverty, the past decade looks like a dramatic failure. … Ending poverty appears to have little to do with overseas aid or the activities of NGOs."
  
  
• Gisha is an NGO focusing on issues related to freedom of movement for Palestinians. Their main tool in pursuing that goal is through legal channels (such as petitioning Israel’s Supreme Court), and in the process, downplay the context of terror. The resulting implication is that Israel is imposing restrictions on Palestinians without cause.
  
  Past activities have included cooperation with other NGOs, such as Physicians for Human Rights – Israel. According to their website, they receive support from such sources as the Foundation for Middle East Peace, the Robert L. Bernstein Fellowship in International Human Rights at Yale Law School, the New Israel Fund, the Dorot Fellowship and the Center for the Legal Defence of the Individual (Jerusalem).

  • Michele Chabin, “Paying The Price For Idealism”, New York Jewish Week, December 30, 2005
  • Amira Hass, “Despite pledge, Israel still denying Gaza students permits to study in West Bank”, Ha’aretz, December 5, 2005
    
    
• On December 27-30, Nonviolence International and the Holy Land Trust held a conference in Bethlehem entitled “Celebrating Nonviolent Resistance”. The conference included the involvement of such radical NGOs as Sabeel, ICAHD, ISM and CPT. The conference also featured a speech by Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who, according to reports, “did not shy away from directly linking human and animal suffering, and said that ‘to allow one form of violence to exist while asking for the eradication of the other is painfully hypocritical.’ … ‘Every day, millions of animals, who pledge allegiance to no flag, and who have done nothing to provoke aggression, are the victims of the longest running undeclared war in human history: the war on the animal nations’."

  • Dan Bentsur, “Animal rights group addresses Mideast conflict”, Yedioth Ahronoth/YNetNews, January 4, 2006
  • Eileen Fleming, “Eye Witness Report from Bethlehem: 12/30/05 Holy Land Trust's Solidarity Walk to The Wall”, OpEdNews.com, December 31, 2005