Press Release:
NGOs and UN Arab Bloc Team-Up for Next "Goldstone" Mission
Jerusalem – Tomorrow, Wednesday, July 23, the UN Human Rights Council is scheduled to hold a special session on the conflict in Gaza. The Council, in partnership with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), will meet and vote to create another immoral “Goldstone” pseudo-investigation, warned Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor.
“The Arab bloc and allied dictatorial regimes that control the UN Human Rights Council are poised to adopt the agenda of the NGO network in forming a ‘fact-finding’ inquiry into Israel’s response to terror from Gaza,” said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “As with Goldstone in 2009 and other UN ‘investigations,’ all indications point to another NGO-UN kangaroo court.”
Powerful international NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and FIDH, alongside Palestinian NGOs Al-Haq, Al Mezan, Badil, Defence for Children International- Palestine Section, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, have initiated a campaign to replicate the discredited “Goldstone process” of political warfare against Israel. In addition to many statements falsely accusing Israel of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity,” these groups have campaigned for a UN fact-finding mission as a vehicle for repeating their allegations and generating more condemnations of Israel.
“The Goldstone report on the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict was largely based on ‘cutting and pasting’ from unsourced, unverified, and highly biased NGO claims,” continued Steinberg. “We anticipate that NGOs and their accusations will once again play a central role in UN political warfare against Israel.”
As in the past, a group of Israeli-Arab NGOs, which includes Adalah and Mossawa, has offered to provide “information, assistance, materials or advice” to a fact-finding investigation. Their donors, including many European governments and the New Israel Fund, share responsibility as enablers for these campaigns.
Many political advocacy NGOs are also lobbying the International Criminal Court (ICC) to pursue “war crimes” cases against Israeli officials and for an arms embargo. Both these measures are designed to deprive Israel of necessary and entirely legitimate self-defense capabilities against missiles and terror.
Click here for detailed reports and analyses on the NGO role in the Goldstone report.
For NGO Monitor’s analysis of NGO statements during the current fighting:
Political NGOs Push for Another “Goldstone” Pseudo-Investigation, July 17, 2014
B’Tselem’s Expanding Credibility Gap, July 16, 2014 (Updated July 17, 2014)
Analysis of NGO Agendas and Distortions on the Gaza Conflict, July 9, 2014 (Updated July 22, 2014)