Introduction

  • The NGO network actively promoted the Goldstone inquiry, supported claims of a “balanced” mandate, and attacked Israel for not cooperating. In turn, Goldstone bolstered NGO credibility by relying on their publications, ignoring biases and false claims, praising their “high professional standard,” and defending them against “repression” from the Israeli government.
  • The report includes more than 500 direct citations from politicized NGOs that lack credibility, as well as 120 references to or citations from UN agencies, such as OCHA, which often repeat NGO claims.
  • The reliance on statements, publications, and submissions from highly politicized and biased NGOs is inconsistent with the claim to have conducted a “fact finding mission.” By adopting the flawed methodologies and false claims from the NGOs, Goldstone renders his entire report and its conclusions invalid.
  • Conflicts of Interest: Goldstone and other members of the commission have close links to HRW, Amnesty International, PCHR and other politicized NGOs. Staff researchers Sareta Ashraph has been involved with pro-Palestinian NGOs and “lawfare” campaigns.
  • Goldstone, following many NGO publications, ignored the international legal prohibition against incitement to genocide, and the evidence submitted that included many examples of Hamas and Iranian incitement against Jews.
  • The report cites to a PCHR report condemning the closing  of Hamas “humanitarian organizations” as a “flagrant violation of the right to association.”  This is in direct opposition to the international legal obligation to fight terrorism and its financing.
  • The report duplicates HRW and other NGO allegations regarding the Abed Rabbo family, describing family members as “credible and reliable witnesses.” In contrast, NGO Monitor found more than 14 different recorded versions of the family’s story.
  • The radical NGO affiliations of some witnesses were hidden.  For instance, Jonathan Pollak, referenced on 5 occasions, is a leader of Anarchists Against the Wall, and has ties to the International Solidarity Movement which provokes violent confrontations with the Israeli military.

Contents

  1.  Number of NGO citations in the report
  2.  NGO Conflicts of Interest among Goldstone Mission Staff
  3.  Adoption of NGO Interpretations of International Law
  4.  Distortion of NGO statements that did not fit Palestinian narrative
  5. NGOs and Factual Claims
  6. NGO quotes in the section on “Repression of dissent”
  7. Quid pro quo: The symbiotic relationship between NGOs and Goldstone
  8. Appendix 1: Listing of NGO statements of support for Goldstone

Number of NGO citations in the report

Note: The following data are based on systematic analysis of the preliminary Goldstone report, published September 15, 2009. Additionally, we note that in places, the report refers to NGO officials without mentioning their affiliation to a particular organization. These ambiguous references may not be reflected in our analysis.

The information below includes direct and indirect mechanisms by which NGO allegations are reflected in the report. In the category of direct reliance, we include NGO publications, as well as interviews with and testimony from officials. The report includes than 500 such references. The category of indirect reliance includes 120 references to or citations from UN agencies, such as OCHA. Many of their reports and information provided are based solely or primarily on NGO claims.

The direct references to the most frequently cited NGOs include:

Thus, it is clear that the report relies overwhelming on the allegations of these political NGOs, and does not constitute an independent fact-finding mission.

NGO Conflicts of Interest among Goldstone Mission Staff

Several members of the Goldstone Mission have had significant links to NGOs, including HRW, Amnesty International, and PCHR.  These same NGOs were among the most cited in the Goldstone report.  These connections, which were not disclosed by the Mission, call into question the ability of panel members and staff to objectively evaluate information submitted by these organizations. These conflicts are in clear violation of the International Bar Association’s London-Lund Guidelines for Fact Finding Missions.1

  • Three members of the Mission – Goldstone, Hina Jilani, and Desmond Travers – signed a March 2009 letter initiated by Amnesty International  and widely publicized, stating that “events in Gaza have shocked us to the core.”
  •  The fourth member, Christine Chinkin, who declared Israel’s actions to be a “war crime” and delegitimized Israel’s right to self-defense while the fighting in Gaza was still underway, was also previously a consultant to Amnesty International.
  •  Goldstone mission staff researcher, Sareta Ashraph, is a UK lawyer and amember of Amnesty International who has a history of anti-Israel political activity.  For instance, in 2003, she was an organizer for a Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights “lawfare” lecture given by Raji Sourani, head of PCHR, and chaired by Daniel Machover, the attorney responsible for filing PCHR’s 2005 case against Doron Almog and a leading proponent of lawfare.  Ashraph also worked in the West Bank on “investigations of allegations of violations of international humanitarian law following ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ in 2002.”
  •  Francesca Marotta, Head of the Secretariat UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, is a long-time employee of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights as Coordinator of the Methodology, Education and Training Unit, Research and Right to Development Branch and the “UNHCHR officer responsible for the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”  In 1997 and 1999, she held meetings with PCHR.
  • As previously reported by NGO Monitor, Goldstone was an HRW board member at the time of his appointment.  Although he stepped down after NGO Monitor pointed to this conflict of interest, his mission has been vigorously promoted by both HRW and Ken Roth.  Goldstone’s September 17, 2009 oped in the New York Times closely echoed language from a September 16, 2009 HRW press release. (In this time frame, HRW was forced to suspend and open an investigation of “senior military expert” Marc Garlasco, who co-authored a number of reports targeting Israel.)2

Adoption of NGO Interpretations of International Law

Throughout the Gaza conflict, NGOs issued more than 500 statements alleging Israeli violations of international law. In many cases, the legal standards invoked by the NGOs do not exist, represent an extreme minority position, or were manipulated and inconsistently defined in order to encompass a wide definition of Israeli “violations,” while minimizing obligations of Hamas.

Goldstone adopted many of these distorted NGO claims and standards verbatim, without independent verification or investigation, thereby providing further evidence of the dominant role played by NGOs within this one-sided framework. Additionally, the inclusion of “legal findings” and recommendations in the report are in violation of UN Rules on Fact-Finding (GA Res. 46/59, rule 17) and the standards upon which Goldstone claimed to base his inquiry (para. 158), which require that reports “should be limited to a presentation of findings of a factual nature.”

This process is reflected in the following illustrations:

  • The report echoes the PLO/NGO fictions (such as that promoted by HRW, Gisha, and B’Tselem) that Gaza remains “occupied” and that Israel is engaging in “collective punishment” (paras. 187, 277, et al.).  These arguments are used in order to impose humanitarian obligations under the Geneva Conventions on Israel.  For more on this issue, see NGO Monitor’s report, HRW’s Letter to President Bush on Gaza: The “Collective Punishment Hoax”.
  • Significant Reliance on the ICJ Advisory Opinion “Against the Wall.”  Goldstone repeatedly references the ICJ majority opinion even though, as an advisory opinion only, it is not legally binding, and Israel did not recognize the legitimacy of the proceedings.  The report supports the absurd claim (promoted by Al Haq and Diakonia) that Israel does not have a right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter because “as specified in the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Wall from 2004,” Hamas launched rockets from Gaza, “an occupied territory, rather than from another state.” The attempt to use this legal distortion to erase Israel’s unequivocal right to self-defense in the wake of attacks on its civilian population is fundamentally immoral.
  •  The report refers to a 2007 petition brought to the Israeli Supreme Court by Gisha and eight other Israeli NGOs, which claimed that Israel is obligated under international law “to allow free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital objects, food and clothing”  (para. 325, et al.) to Gaza under Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and that it is “denying sustenance to the civilian population.”3
  • Goldstone, like most NGOs, ignored the international legal prohibition against incitement to genocide – a cornerstone of human rights law.  There is no mention of the nine-page annotated submission by Dr. Elihu Richter, head of the Genocide Prevention Program at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine and associate director at Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, detailing many examples of Hamas and Iranian incitement against Jews. Other submissions on this issue were similarly ignored.
  • Goldstone also relies on NGO reports to attack Israel and the Palestinian Authority for denying funds to Hamas “charities” and affiliates (paras. 90-1, 100-02, 242).  The report cites to a PCHR report (n. 113) condemning the closing  of Hamas “humanitarian organizations” as a “flagrant violation of the right to association.”  By promoting the PCHR position (an organization that advocates for a so-called “right to resist”), Goldstone is in direct opposition to the international legal obligation to fight terrorism and its financing (e.g Security Council Resolution 1373.) See the analysis of law professor Avi Bell in a post by Prof. David Bernstein on the Volokh Conspiracy blog for more details.

Distortion of NGO statements that did not fit Palestinian narrative

Although the Goldstone Commission received several submissions from NGOs containing exculpatory and documentary evidence that contradicted the Palestinian claims, this information was systematically ignored or distorted to fit Goldstone’s pre-determined conclusions.  In contrast, Goldstone accepted outrageous NGO claims at face value without further research (such as the absurd and unsourced allegation by Palestinian NGO, Addameer, that since 1967, 750,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel [or 18,000 unique detainees each year]). Sources directly affiliated with the Hamas terrorist regime were given credibility by the Mission unless the evidence stated therein corroborated Israeli claims of wrongdoing:

  • Goldstone received detailed research from Jonathan D’choach HaLevy (published by the JCPA) regarding the combatant status of almost 90% of the Hamas “police” forces.4 The report devotes over 30 paragraphs (paras. 390-420, et al.) trying to discredit HaLevy’s research while crediting unverified claims made by NGOs such as Amnesty International, B’Tselem, PCHR, and Al Mezan. Similarly, Goldstone claims that terror websites, showing video and documentary evidence of “police” involved in military operations with the Al Qassam brigades and Islamic Jihad, are unreliable based upon information alleged by Palestinian NGO, Al Mezan (n. 283).
  • Goldstone distorted HaLevy’s research (paras. 344, 724) regarding an incident involving the al-Samouni family.  As HaLevy notes, while Goldstone accepted testimony that “all the people in [their] house were ordinary civilians”, the evidence shows that “at least three were affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”  HaLevy further notes that “Meisa al-Samouni did not tell B’tselem that her husband, Tawfiq Rashad Hilmi al-Samouni, who was killed on January 5, was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist operative.”
  • Goldstone cites testimony from Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) to reject claims that Hamas successfully commandeered Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) ambulances. However, the mission ignored documentary evidence from MDA that Hamas did attempt to steal PRC vehicles and abuse the red crescent symbol. Additionally, MDA did not testify about non-PRC ambulances;5  the Mission failed to adequately pursue this issue, in order not to exculpate Israel.
  • While discrediting NGO evidence that did not support the Commission’s a priori indictment of Israel, Goldstone repeatedly cites and credits many Hamas officials and affiliates, such as Hamas-established NGO, the Central Commission for Documentation and Pursuit of Israeli War Criminals (referred to by the acronym TAWTHEQ) (16 citations).

NGOs and Factual Claims

  • The report refers to Yesh Din (para. 221) as a reliable source of statistical data regarding the Israeli military court system.  Yet, systematic analyses of Yesh Din’s reports have shown that its methodologies involve non-representative sampling, inconsistent conclusions, double counting, and reliance on outdated regulations.
  • The report duplicates NGO allegations regarding the Abed Rabbo family, describing family members as “credible and reliable witnesses” (p174).  This incident was the first and primary case presented in HRW’s “White Flags” indictment of Israel.  NGO Monitor found more than 14 different recorded versions of the story, and Goldstone also omitted news reports revealing that the family are “Fatah loyalists [and] their land was taken over by Hamas for tunnels, arms caches, and rocket attacks.”  An analysis of Palestinian casualties also reveals several combatants with the same surname were killed a few days later in the area, raising additional questions about the veracity of his story.
  • The radical NGO affiliations of some witnesses were hidden.  Jonathan Pollak, for instance, referenced on 5 occasions, is a leader of Anarchists Against the Wall and has ties to the International Solidarity Movement which provokes violent confrontations with the Israeli military.
  •  The claims of Defence of Children International – Palestine Section (DCI-PS) that the “abuse of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities is systematic and institutionalized” are repeated. DCI-PS is a highly politicized NGO whose publications lack credibility.
  •  The “statistics” on alleged “civilian and cultural” demolitions were provided by Al Dameer, a Palestinian NGO with a strong political agenda including calls for “lawfare” against Israeli officials.
  • Goldstone repeats, without independent evidence, the allegations of Bimkom that the Israeli Civil Administration applied “a deliberate and consistent policy in Area C with the goal of restricting Palestinian construction and development and limiting its spatial dispersion.”
  •  Based on statements by the radical NGO known as ICAHD, Goldstone asserts that the war in Gaza was Israel’s attempt at “getting rid of Gaza in order to consolidate its permanent hold on the West Bank,” and that “Israeli control over the movement and access of the West Bank Palestinians is necessary to maintain control over the West Bank’s land and natural resources.” (para. 1541)
  •  Goldstone repeats Gisha, HRW, and other NGO claims that Al-Haq’s General Director Shawan Jabarin, was denied a travel visa as “punishment” (p327) yet fails to mention that Jabarin’s visa was denied due to “reliable evidence” that he is “among the senior activists of the Popular Front terrorist organization.”

NGO quotes in the section on “Repression of dissent”

A section entitled “Repression of dissent in Israel, right to access to information and treatment of human rights defenders” (XXV) accuses Israel of violating the “rights of freedom of association and expression for individuals and groups.” These issues are entirely tangential to the context of the fighting in Gaza. Additionally, the conclusions are speculative; the report does not provide any concrete evidence of violations of international law or failure to fulfill legal obligations by Israel.

Rather, the section seeks to defend NGOs and NGO activists, and promote their narrative regarding friction between these groups and the Israeli government.  Although the NGOs, in general, were the subjects of the alleged Israeli restrictions, and therefore constitute “interested parties,” Goldstone accepted their versions and interpretations of events unquestioningly.

  • The report claims that “the perception that the Israeli authorities, by denying access to the media and human rights monitors, sought to prevent investigation and reporting of the conduct of the operations by the Israeli military seems warranted.”
    • Since, Israel is under no obligation to permit access to fighting zones (with the exception of the Red Cross), these allegations are prejudicial and outside the mandate of investigation potential violations. This also ignores the long-standing biases of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (who are championed by the report) in their publications on military conflicts involving Israel.
    • The tendentious conclusion – “The burden of dispelling such a perception rests on the Government of Israel.” – presumes Israeli guilt.
  • Shir Hever, an activist with the Alternative Information Center (a self-proclaimed radical NGO), was invited to testify about “detention” and “repression of dissent.” Relying on his testimony raises serious questions about the evidentiary standard of the hearings.
  • As noted, in referring to the travel restrictions on Al Haq director Shawan Jabarin, the report implies that the restrictions are linked to his association with “Al-Haq, the West Bank’s oldest human rights organization,” and repeats Jabarin’s false claim that the ban is “punishment”, while ignoring his links with the PFLP.
  • The Israeli police investigation of Israeli NGO New Profile for illegal “incitement to draft dodging” is mentioned in a number of paragraphs. The investigation of New Profile began before the war in September 2008, and is not linked to the mission’s mandate.  The sympathetic treatment of this group can be attributed to the prejudice against the Israeli government.
  • Goldstone also cited an interview with Haggai Matar without identifying him as a New Profile activist.
  • In another peripheral issue, Goldstone defends Breaking the Silence against allegations of Israeli government efforts “to interfere with the funding of Breaking the Silence” by foreign governments. The report repeats a Breaking the Silence statement accusing the Israeli government of a “witch-hunt”, and ignoring the context and details.  Additionally, the assumption that Breaking the Silence and other NGOs that claim a human rights mandate are “human rights defenders,” and not political groups, is unfounded.

Quid pro quo: The symbiotic relationship between NGOs and Goldstone

Since April 2009, when Goldstone was appointed to lead the fact-finding mission, international, Israeli, and Palestinian NGOs promoted Goldstone and his Commission, urging Israel to cooperate with the investigation and supporting the claims that the mandate was “balanced.”

In turn, Goldstone bolstered the credibility of these groups by relying heavily on their publications, repeating their claims uncritically, calling NGO activists to “testify,” praising their “high professional standard” while working in “extremely difficult circumstances,” and defending them against “repression” from the Israeli government.

Finally, since the initial publication of the Goldstone report (September 15, 2009) and throughout the proceedings at the UN Human Rights Council, the NGOs have once again supported Goldstone, and are lobbying the US, the EU, and others to endorse the report’s prejudicial conclusions and recommendations.

Given the preponderance of NGO contributions to the final product, the mutual support is particularly absurd and disingenuous; these NGOs are, in fact, promoting their own material.

See Appendix 1 for more details.