The New Israel Fund (NIF) and its grantees have been widely criticized for their involvement in the Goldstone report. This preliminary report present an overview of how NIF-funded NGOs contributed to and endorsed the Goldstone process. Also included are brief summaries of the activities of 20 NGOs funded by NIF.
- The Goldstone report referenced B’Tselem more than 56 times; Adalah, 38; and Breaking the Silence, 27.
- Many of these citations referred to speculative issues unrelated to the conflict in Gaza, seeking to brand Israeli democracy as “repressive” and to widen the scope of the condemnations.
- Since the initial publication of the Goldstone report on September 15, 2009, NIF-funded NGOs - including B’Tselem, ACRI, Gisha, PHR-I, and Yesh Din - have continued to support Goldstone and lobby the governments of the United States, the European Union, and others to legitimize the report’s extreme biases and endorse its recommendations.
- In response to the controversy over their support for Goldstone, these NGOs and the NIF launched an offensive against critics. NIF supporters accuse NGO Monitor of “silenc[ing] expression,” and being “extremist,” “incendiary,” the “rotten fruit of Israeli democracy,” and “McCarthyite.”
- In addition to involvement with Goldstone, several NGOs funded by NIF, including Adalah, campaign against the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish democratic state. Others, such as Mossawa and Coalition of Women for Peace, are active in worldwide boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns targeting Israel.
- The political impact of NIF-supported NGOs, based on NIF’s annual budget of $32 million, is bolstered by additional funds from European governments and church groups that allocate funds to the same to the same recipient organizations.
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/nif_funded_ngos_goldstone_s_building_blocks
