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[Excerpt:]

"At the end of the first day, at the gala dinner at which Princeton University political philosopher and public intellectual Michael Walzer was to speak, I found myself standing a few feet away from the two figures who are, if anyone is, the celebrities of this event: Gerald Steinberg, the fierce critic of Israeli human rights and civil rights groups, and Naomi Chazan, president of the liberal New Israel Fund, one of Steinberg’s primary targets. Yes, both can put “professor” in front of their names. Steinberg is at Bar-Ilan University, and Chazan wrote and taught about African politics. But their standing here has to do with their roles as political actors and, recently, antagonists. As disheveled-looking professors and eager graduate students milled about and sipped red wine outside the gala dinner, Chazan paced, nervously chain-smoking through a plastic filter. A few feet away stood Steinberg, a tall, mustachioed man who has an uncanny resemblance to Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist (and, according to his detractors, a deceptively congenial personality). Each scholar was surrounded by a group listening to them expound on the most discussed session of the day: “Human Rights, the Politics of Advocacy and Israel’s Security.” Steinberg had used the session to justify his work as president of NGO Monitor — an organization devoted to exposing what he sees as the nefarious influence of nongovernmental organizations supposedly concerned with upholding international law and human rights."