NIF-Funded NGOs: Goldstone's Building Blocks

NGO Monitor
09 February '10

The New Israel Fund (NIF) and its grantees have been widely criticized for their involvement in the Goldstone report. This preliminary report presents an overview of how NIF-funded NGOs contributed to and endorsed the Goldstone process. Also included are brief summaries of the activities of 20 NGOs funded by NIF.

The Goldstone report referenced B’Tselem more than 56 times; Adalah, 38; and Breaking the Silence, 27.

Many of these citations referred to speculative issues unrelated to the conflict in Gaza, seeking to brand Israeli democracy as “repressive” and to widen the scope of the condemnations.

Since the initial publication of the Goldstone report on September 15, 2009, NIF-funded NGOs – including B’Tselem, ACRI, Gisha, PHR-I, and Yesh Din – have continued to support Goldstone and lobby the governments of the United States, the European Union, and others to legitimize the report’s extreme biases and endorse its recommendations.

In response to the controversy over their support for Goldstone, these NGOs and the NIF launched an offensive against critics. NIF supporters accuse NGO Monitor of “silenc[ing] expression,” and being “extremist,” “incendiary,” the “rotten fruit of Israeli democracy,” and “McCarthyite.”

In addition to involvement with Goldstone, several NGOs funded by NIF, including Adalah, campaign against the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish democratic state. Others, such as Mossawa and Coalition of Women for Peace, are active in worldwide boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns targeting Israel.

The political impact of NIF-supported NGOs, based on NIF’s annual budget of $32 million, is bolstered by additional funds from European governments and church groups that allocate funds to the same recipient organizations.

Click here to read the full report.

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