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[Excerpts:]

"Calling a spade a spade is what Bar-Ilan University political science professor Gerald Steinberg, executive director of NGO Monitor, has been trying to do for years, monitoring the work and methodology of HRW and other human rights organizations, issuing reports pointing out faulty methodology and conflicts of interest. But his has largely been a voice in the wilderness, one dismissed by the NGOs themselves – and some in the media – as nothing more than that of a propagandist with a right-wing Zionist agenda." "But Steinberg said there is actually "plenty of evidence" that HRW comes to Israel with "unclean hands," carrying emotional and political baggage it does not bring to other parts of the world. "All the evidence shows that when it comes to Israel, they are not a human rights organization, but a political one using the language of international law to isolate Israel," he said. "To deny that there is a campaign, closely linked to the terrorist campaign, to demonize and delegitimize Israel is to ignore fact, and HRW is central to this." According to Steinberg, who is due to publish an 80-page monograph looking at HRW in the near future, it is disingenuous for Whitson to talk – as she does – of intensive HRW work in other Middle East countries, since the attention Israel gets is way out of proportion to those given those countries, and since much of the work in countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria only really began after 2006 because some of the organization’s key donors earmarked their funds for reporting there. Contrary to what Whitson claims, Steinberg said, his organization points out factual and methodological problems with HRW on a regular basis, only to be dismissed by the group as a Zionist organization with an agenda whose research is not worthy of serious attention. He said there is much to document, and calls HRW’s reports "pseudo-research" passed off to the media as serious investigation. He said HRW does not have the expertise or wherewithal to conduct the types of investigations that it does, in the time frame that it allows. Determining where shots were fired, from what type of weapon, in what circumstances is not something that can be determined using the means at HRW’s disposal, he said. "Human Rights Watch is an organization with a budget of $40 million a year; they are a superpower, and what they are trying to tell you is that they are above criticism," he said. "In the thousands of pages they have written over the years about Israel, they have never admitted a single mistake. They have no problem critiquing democratically elected governments, but they scream and deny everything when they are criticized.""