Norwegian Governments approach to Israeli-Arab Conflict increasingly influenced by politicized NGOs
According to the Norwegian press, the Norwegian embassy in Tel Aviv appealed to Oslo to act on reports of torture of Palestinians, based on claims by three Israeli human rights groups — The Public Committee Against Torture, HaMoked and B’tselem. NGO Monitor has documented the serious deficiencies and lack of credibility in previous reports published by these politicized NGOs (whose many donors include European governments and the New Israel Fund), and the Israeli Foreign Ministry urged Oslo to ignore such reports that lack credibility.
In a related development, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), an NGO funded by the Norwegian Government, has issued its August 2007 report, “Israel: Multiple patterns of internal displacement affect several ethnic and religious groups”, which accuses the Israeli government of widespread “discriminatory planning policies” toward Israel’s Bedouin population. As documented by NGO Monitor, the IDMC regularly relies on the research and cooperation of radical or politicized NGOs, which promote a political bias that regularly ignores Israel’s right to security in its human rights analyses. Norway’s continued funding of the IDMC is further evidence that its approach to the Israeli-Arab conflict is in danger of being distorted by the anti-Israel NGO narrative.