B’Tselem Goes to Washington - Politics first
9 July 2007 — In an email to subscribers, Jessica Montell, Executive Director, announced that B’Tselem is establishing an office in Washington,
Among the many NGOs active in this field, B’Tselem has been somewhat less biased, particularly after important personnel changes, and took the lead in condemning Palestinian attacks from Gaza and other violations of Israeli human rights. This NGO was also the first to call for the release of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, noting that the holding of hostages is a “war crime”, and the denial of access by the International Red Cross is “a blatant violation of international law.” But many of its reports and activities are overtly political and lack credibility. In a study of B’Tselem’s reports on Palestinian casualties, CAMERA has demonstrated the NGO’s tendency to use inflated and unreliable information from Palestinian sources. And a detailed analysis of a recent B’Tselem report by the Israeli Ministry of Justice details numerous “mistakes, groundless claims and inaccuracies. … The report was based upon a non-representative sample that seems to have been deliberately chosen which distorts the reality.”B’Tselem, which is already generously funded by the Ford Foundation, European governments, the New Israel Fund, and other donors, notes that one of its goals for a “presence in Washington is to insert human rights into the Washington debate on Israel-Palestine.”
Based on the organization’s track record, however, skeptics might conclude that the real goal is to promote the political agendas of B’tselem’s officials in Washington. And far from becoming the only such Israeli organization “to have a presence in Washington”, as claimed in Jessica Montell’s email, they will join Peace Now and others enlisting American help in imposing these private agendas on Israeli democracy. In this situation, as in many others involving political NGOs, the use of human rights rhetoric is simply a façade.
