Criticism[edit]
Yehudit Karp, a member of the International Council of the New Israel Fund and a former deputy attorney general of Israel, said that NGO Monitor has released information "it knew to be wrong, along with some manipulative interpretation".[49]
The New Israel Fund said in May 2011 that NGO Monitor "knowingly published false information in its newsletter", regarding the NIF funding of Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP). NIF stated that NGO Monitor's director was provided the correct information verbally in advance.[50] NGO Monitor responded that its report was based on NIF grant information, which is public.[51] NIF's rejoinder stated that its public records lag the end of the reporting year by several months, but reiterated that updated information was provided to NGO Monitor verbally. NIF also stated that it asked CWP to remove mention of NIF's name from the CWP website.[52]
In July 2009, HRW issued a statement saying, "NGO Monitor ... conducts no field investigations and condemns anyone who criticizes Israel".[53]
Uriel Heilman, a managing editor for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and a senior reporter for The Jerusalem Post, wrote in an online opinion column that there were a "couple of disingenuous (read: inaccurate) elements" in the May 2009 digest of NGO Monitor. Heilman rhetorically asked whether the situation itself was "enough for Steinberg and NGO Monitor's followers without Steinberg having to stretch the truth?" Gerald Steinberg, head of NGO Monitor, later conceded the phrasing was confusing and revised the statement.[54]
Kathleen Peratis, a member of the board of Human Rights Watch, called into question the research methodology underlying an op-ed by NGO Monitor's Steinberg for not saying specifically where or when HRW statements have been unverifiable.[55] In 2006, she criticized NGO Monitor for accusations against Human Right Watch and its "executive director, whose father fled Nazi Germany". Peratis took issue with an op-ed by NGO Monitor's Gerald Steinberg titled "Ken Roth's Blood Libel",[56] and argues those like NGO Monitor "who want selective exemption of Israel from the rules of war" may not "have faced the implications of getting what they wish for".[57]
In 2009 David Newman criticized NGO Monitor for concentrating "almost entirely with a critique of peace-related NGOs and especially those which focus on human rights, as though there were no other NGOs to examine". He said that NGO Monitor, which he describes as a right-wing organization, had consistently refused requests to investigate the activities and funding of right-wing NGOs, many of which, Newman said, were facilitating illegal activity in the West Bank.[58] In response, NGO Monitor wrote that it is "an independent research organization, providing detailed, systematic, and source-based analysis and publications regarding the activities of NGOs in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The ideological label employed by Newman, 'right wing', is neither accurate nor relevant".[59] Newman also criticized NGO Monitor again in 2009, as well as in 2010 and 2012.[60][61]
In January 2010, thirteen Israeli human rights organizations released a common statement describing NGO Monitor and Im Tirtzu as "extremist", and criticised an "unbridled and incendiary attack" by them against human rights groups.[62]