Debunking NGO Mythology
NGO attempts to defile Israel’s moral credibility is a focus of Noah Pollack’s piece in the most recent issue of Azure, a quarterly journal published in English and Hebrew by the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. According to Pollack, a “a dominant culture of opinion shared by human rights organizations, NGOs, Middle East Studies departments and campus groups, the United Nations, “progressive” Christian organizations, and the overwhelming majority of the British and European media and cultural elite,” operate in a state of permanent antagonism towards the State of Israel. Pollack’s conclusions among others are that Israel needs a cadre of the most sophisticated spokespeople working in various ministries to counter the prevailing myths perpetuated by NGOs that surround the State.
The same issue of Azure contains a letter written by NGO Monitor Executive Director Gerald Steinberg, in which he lauds a book review written by Michla Pomerance in Azure’s previous issue. In his review of Jeremy Rabkin’s, “Law Without Nations?” Pomerance criticized the “supposed” moral authority of NGOs and noted their disproportional influence in European policy formation. Steinberg notes how these NGO’s have used their particularistic vision of international law to the detriment of democracy.
Pollack, who agrees with Steinberg’s assessment of NGOs, contends that Israel contributes to its own image problem by not adequately responding to the fallacious claims leveled by NGOs against it. He uses the examples of the June 2006 Gaza Beach explosion (see NGO Monitor’s report on the Gaza Beach incident) in which Israel was blamed for the death of seven Palestinians; the Mohammed al-Dura affair in which France 2 released a video depicting the death of the twelve-year old as Israel’s fault; the myth of the Jenin “massacre” [see NGO Monitor’s report on Jenin]; and Israel’s actions in Lebanon in 2006 [see NGO Monitor on 2006 Lebanon War]to illustrate Israel’s inability to defend itself in the court of public opinion. Despite the fact that Israel was exculpated in each circumstance, it retreated into an apologetic stance issuing “gratuitous apologies and self-criticism,” and “servility in the face of hostile journalists.” In many cases, NGO campaigns and so called “evidence” provided the sources for such journalists.
Beyond adopting a more sophisticated spokesmen strategy, Pollack asks why Israel allows biased NGO’s to operate within its environs. He suggests that NGOs that “provide journalists and the UN with their fig leaf of false objectivity” should have their work visas revoked.
Ultimately, democratic states must begin to understand the critical elements played by NGOs and the role their sophisticated global communication network plays in disseminating false information. Despite consistently uncorroborated evidence evinced by such elements, NGO’s continue to erode Israel’s moral credibility. A strategy for debunking NGO mythology is surely in great demand, and this is one of NGO Monitor’s central tasks, with or without cooperation from the government
