Press Release:
Blacklisting of Advisory Board Member Einat Wilf Leads to Defamatory and Misleading Statements
A number of statements attempting to justify the blacklisting of former MK Dr. Einat Wilf, a member of our International Advisory Board, from a Peace Now conference, portray NGO Monitor in a highly distorted, selective, and misleading manner. These tweets by Americans for Peace Now, falsely suggesting that we seek Peace Now’s destruction, are defamatory.
Regardless of ideological agendas, such statements by Peace Now, Americans for Peace Now, and their supporters are entirely unprofessional and should be corrected.
NGO Monitor notes that this type McCarthyism and intolerance for free speech are inconsistent with the principles of democracy and human rights that Israeli civil society should be upholding.
Most egregiously, all of these statements omit the most relevant point – our visible condemnation of a personal attack against one of Peace Now’s officials (“Incitement and Attacks on NGO Offices Are Totally Unacceptable,” November 8, 2011).
Additionally, there have been a number of blatant misrepresentations of NGO Monitor’s work, in particular as relates to Peace Now.
1) Most of our reports and statements criticize governments for funding NGOs that undermine a “two-state” framework for the Arab-Israeli conflict – in direct contradiction to their stated foreign policies.
2) NGO Monitor rarely discusses Peace Now; this group does not appear on our Index of over 100 NGOs. NGO Monitor’s mandate is to focus on groups that claim to promote human rights and humanitarian aid, thus excluding Peace Now. Indeed, nearly all the references to Peace Now on our website come under one of the following three categories:
- Parenthetical references to a former employee of Peace Now or a member of Americans for Peace Now;
- On lists of political advocacy NGOs funded by European governments, usually based on lists provided by those governments.
- In examples delineating European government efforts to manipulate Israeli democracy. As our reports make clear, this is a criticism of the government funders, not the NGOs. Pointedly, we describe Peace Now as “an openly political organization,” as distinct from NGOs that make claims to be apolitical.