Press Release:
Human Wrongs: The Worst of Amnesty, HRW, and others in 2011
JERUSALEM – With 2011 concluding, NGO Monitor today released a list of the most outrageous and absurd NGO actions from the past year, demonstrating the political nature of NGOs involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, commented, “This shows how the NGO network consistently fails to uphold universal human rights, while also distorting international law beyond recognition.” The list:
1. Amnesty International’s new Israel Researcher, Deborah Hyams, has a history of radical anti-Israel activism.
2. HRW’s Sarah Leah Whitson race-baited American Jews and ignored the embarrassment of having praised Saif-Islam Qaddafi as a human rights reformer.
3. German NGO “Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future (EVZ)” exploited government funding designated for Holocaust reparations and education in order to join the delegitimization campaign against Israel and added to new antisemitism.
4. Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned as “war crimes” the IDF response to the terror attack in Eilat.
5. A number of NGOs attacked Judge Richard Goldstone after he honestly admitted the need to “reconsider” his UN report.
6. HRW appointed to its Middle East Advisory Board an alleged senior activist in the PFLP terrorist organization, and head of Al-Haq.
7. Members of Machsom Watch supported and hugged relatives of the murderers of the Fogel family killers.
8. Amnesty International defended Ittijah head Ameer Makhoul, a convicted Hezbollah spy.
9. Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP) accused the New Israel Fund (NIF) of being an “ally” of NGO Monitor, after NIF was forced to finally end funding to the pro-BDS group.
10. Wikileaks revealed that NIF Associate Director in Israel Hedva Radanovitz believed that “the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.”
11. Itamar Shapira of Breaking the Silence claimed “we are creating the terror against us, basically.”
12. Kathleen Peratis, co-chair of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Advisory Committee, held meetings with Hamas.