Gerald M. Steinberg, a professor of politics at Bar Ilan University, is an Israeli academic, political scientist, and political activist. He is founder and president of NGO Monitor, a policy analysis think tank focusing on non-governmental organizations.
Gerald Steinberg was born in the United Kingdom. [1] He completed a joint bachelor's degree in physics and Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973 and a master's degree in physics at the University of California, San Diego, in 1975. He obtained his doctorate in government from Cornell University in 1981. [2] He began teaching at Bar Ilan University in 1982, and is a professor of political science. [3] [2]
Steinberg has served as a consultant to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to the Israeli National Security Council. [4] [5] He also served as a legislative adviser to Likud Knesset Member Ze'ev Elkin. [6]
Steinberg is founder and president of NGO Monitor, a right-wing non-governmental organization based in Jerusalem that reports on international NGO activity from a pro-Israel perspective. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Steinberg has been a longtime critic of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Oxfam, and other organizations he says have "contributed to the hatred, rather than supporting peace". [12] In a 2004 Jerusalem Post article [13] he wrote, "HRW's press statement exposes it as a biased political organization hiding behind the rhetoric of human rights." Later he accused HRW of "exploiting the rhetoric of human rights to delegitimize Israel". [14] HRW accused Steinberg of "sleight of hand" in his reporting of its activities, and of ignoring its condemnations of Palestinian militant actions. [15]
In 2014, former Associated Press journalist Matti Friedman said that AP reporters had been banned from interviewing Steinberg and NGO Monitor. [16] The AP denied the claim. [16]
In January 2010, after the European Commission refused to release documents on NGO funding, Steinberg initiated legal action under the EU's Freedom of Information statutes. The court ruled that instability in the Middle East and the prospect that "such information may pose a danger to human rights groups" justified the refusal. [17] The court further found that Steinberg's petition was "manifestly lacking any foundation in law". [18] [19]
Of Steinberg's failed legal action, Israeli attorney Michael Sfard said: "Steinberg invents demons and then chases them. On the way, he convinces the Europeans that the fears for the welfare of Israeli democracy are justified. All the data about the donations of foreign countries to Israeli human rights organizations are published on the Web sites of the organizations, as required by law." [20]
Yehudit Karp, a former Israeli deputy attorney general, charged that Steinberg published material he knew to be wrong "along with some manipulative interpretation". [21]
Reporter Uriel Heilman said that Steinberg played "fast and loose" with the facts by repeating comments about the New Israel Fund that Steinberg knew were untrue. In response, Steinberg acknowledged that some of his reports were poorly phrased and promised to correct them. [22]
In The Jerusalem Post, Kenneth Roth wrote that Steinberg shows a "disregard for basic facts" when writing about human rights. [23]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization headquartered in New York City that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policymakers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants, and political prisoners.
HaMoked is an Israel based human rights organization founded by Dr. Lotte Salzberger with the stated aim of assisting "Palestinians subjected to the Israeli occupation which causes severe and ongoing violation of their rights." HaMoked states that it works for the enforcement of the standards and values of international human rights and humanitarian law.
Marc Garlasco is an American military advisor for the Dutch non-governmental organization PAX. Early in his career, Garlasco served for seven years at the Pentagon, as a mid-level intelligence analyst, later becoming chief of high-value targeting. Garlasco left in 2003 and joined Human Rights Watch (HRW) as a senior military expert, where he investigated human rights issues in a number of different conflicts zones. He resigned from HRW in February 2010 and has since worked as a specialist on civilian protection, war crimes investigations, identification of weapons and civilian harm mitigation for – among others – the United Nations, the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), before starting at PAX in 2020. Garlasco lives in New York.
Kenneth Roth is an American attorney, human rights activist, and writer. He was the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) from 1993 to 2022.
The international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been the subject of extensive criticism from a number of observers. Critics of HRW include the national governments it has investigated, the media, and its former chairman Robert L. Bernstein.
Michael Sfard is a lawyer and political activist specializing in international human rights law and the laws of war. He has served as counsel in various cases on these topics in Israel. Sfard has represented a variety of Israeli and Palestinian human rights and peace organizations, movements and activists at the Israeli Supreme Court.
The anti-Israel lobby is a term used by some to refer to organizations with the purpose of opposing relations between the United States and Israel.
Sarah Leah Whitson is an American lawyer and the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). She previously served as director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.
Shawan Rateb Abdallah Jabarin is the general director of Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization in the West Bank. From 2005 to 2009, Jabarin was a member of the board of directors of Defense for Children International – Palestine, the national section of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, an NGO established in 1979.
Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel is a human rights organization and legal center.
NGO Monitor is a right-wing non-governmental organization based in Jerusalem that reports on international NGO activity from a pro-Israel perspective.
B'Tselem is a Jerusalem-based non-profit organization whose stated goals are to document human rights violations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, combat any denial of the existence of such violations, and help to create a human rights culture in Israel. It is currently headed by Yuli Novak, who took over in June 2023 from Hagai El-Ad, who had served as its director-general since May 2014. B'Tselem also maintains a presence in Washington, D.C., where it is known as B'Tselem USA. The organization has provoked sharp reactions within Israel, ranging from harsh criticism to strong praise.
Al-Haq is an independent Palestinian human rights organization based in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. Founded in 1979, Al-Haq monitors and documents human rights violations committed by parties to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, issuing reports on its findings and producing detailed legal studies. It is in special consultative status with ECOSOC since 2000.
Yesh Din: Volunteers for Human Rights is an Israeli organization working in Israel and in the West Bank. The organization was founded in 2005 by a group of women who previously worked with the organization Machsom Watch. The purpose of Yesh Din, as reflected in its publications, is to work "for structural, long-term improvement to human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)".
Machsom Watch, or Checkpoint Watch, is a group of Israeli women who monitor and document the conduct of soldiers and policemen at checkpoints in the West Bank. Its members also observe and document the procedures in military courts, and aid Palestinians crossing through IDF checkpoints. The self described "politically pluralistic" human rights organization is composed entirely of Israeli women, who tend to have a "liberal or leftist background". The word machsom is Hebrew for "checkpoint", referring to Israeli Defense Forces checkpoints which control movement between different parts of the West Bank and between the West Bank and Israel.
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) is a group opposed to Israeli settlements, which describes itself as "an Israeli peace and human rights organization dedicated to ending the occupation of the Palestinian territories and achieving a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians."
The Electronic Intifada (EI) is an online Chicago-based publication covering the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It describes itself as not-for-profit, independent, and providing a Palestinian perspective.
Im Tirtzu is a Zionist non-governmental organization based in Israel. Its name is derived from an epigraph appended to the frontispiece of Theodor Herzl's novel Altneuland, 'if you wish it, it is no fairy-tale,' rendered into modern Hebrew in Nahum Sokolow's translation in 1903, as Im tirtzu ein zo agadah.
Regavim (רגבים) is a pro-settler Israeli NGO that monitors and pursues legal action in the Israeli court system against any construction lacking Israeli permits undertaken by Palestinians or Bedouins in Israel and in the West Bank. It sees its own mission as one of ensuring "responsible, legal, accountable and environmentally friendly use of Israel's national lands and the return of the rule of law to all areas and aspects of the land and its preservation".
Addameer, or Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, is a Palestinian Non-Government Organization (NGO), based in Ramallah.
Right-wing organizations Im Tirzu and NGO Monitor ...
Transnational NGOs usually do not become a conflict party and are less likely to be associated with one of the conflict parties-although, to pick but two examples, as the campaign of the right-wing NGO Monitor in Israel against the involvement of "external actors"
Several other right-wing Israeli NGOs follow the same approach, including NGO Monitor
With their multi-million-dollar budgets, global superpowers such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Oxfam and dozens of smaller allied groups have contributed to the hatred, rather than supporting peace.
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