Over the years, we have been following utterances, insinuations and rumors that Benjamin Netanyahu is so troubled by human rights organizations that he dedicates a significant portion of his time and energy to fighting them. That struggle has been documented on this blog and on another blog,
0139, in detail. This week, working on a tip, we found
Gerald Steinberg’s resume from 2004, two years after he established NGO Monitor. In it, under “additional activities,” Steinberg testifies that he served as a “consultant [to the] Government of Israel,” and as a member of the “Steering Committee, Forum on Antisemitism, Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Israel.” On his
Hebrew-language profile on the NGO Monitor website, Steinberg describes himself as a “consultant to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” (His English profile is missing that information.)
In a profile attached to a 2006 op-ed, he is described as a consultant to the National Security Council, which is a part of the Prime Minister’s Office.
In other words, Gerald Steinberg claims that he works — or at least has worked — for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, and that is long after he founded NGO Monitor. Why is that important? It is necessary to explain, first of all, what Steinberg and his organizations are trying to accomplish. We’ll start by defining an NGO: a non-governmental organization, which carries out work that governments have difficulty performing, or don’t want to perform. Such organizations are called “civil society organizations” in Israel, or sometimes, human rights organizations, according to their respective functions. They do the work the government cannot do, precisely because one of their central roles is to levy criticism against, or to reveal crimes committed by the government.
What is NGO Monitor’s connection to the Israeli government? | +972 Magazine
NGO Monitor (
Non-governmental Organization Monitor) is a
non-governmental organization based in
Jerusalem, which analyzes and reports on the output of the international NGO community from a pro-Israel perspective.
[1] It has been characterized as being pro-Israel
[4][5] and as right-wing.
[6] NGO Monitor says in its
mission statement that it was founded "to promote accountability, and advance a vigorous discussion on the reports and activities of humanitarian NGOs in the framework of the Arab–Israeli conflict."
The organization was founded in 2001 by
Gerald M. Steinberg under the auspices of the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
[7] NGO Monitor became a legally and financially independent organization in 2007.
[8]
The organization has been criticized by academic figures, diplomats, and journalists who have said that NGO Monitor's research is not objective,
[9] that it does not examine right-wing NGOs,
[10] and that it puts out information that it knows is wrong
NGO Monitor - Wikipedia
