More and more, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become one of the most powerful — and controversial — pressure blocs in the global arena. In recent weeks, Israel’s parliament established a commission of inquiry into NGO funding from Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Algeria. Well-heeled NGO advocates have criticized the investigation for being heavy-handed, but in fact, an accurate understanding of the finances behind NGOs is desperately needed. Not only are these groups bankrolled by Israel’s enemies, but the funds are used for the express purpose of conducting “soft” warfare against the country from within. This nexus must be exposed.
According to Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident who was pivotal in the creation of the famous NGO Human Rights Watch, many of these organizations are currently being used by dictatorships to fight democracies. NGOs have become crucial in biased reports against Israel submitted at the United Nations, like the Goldstone Report on the Gaza War. Their “humanitarian” lamentations are often generously funded by the European Union, which supports many anti-Israel enterprises.
NGOs fueled the legal battle to shut down Guantanamo Bay, which the former president of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, has shamefully called “the Gulag of our time.” The power of NGOs was discussed also in recently released WikiLeaks cables, with the revelation that Muslim “charities” are still playing a decisive role in financing terrorism.
Last year, a Turkish NGO called Insane Yardim Vakfi (IHH) sparked an unprecedented crisis in relations between Israel and Turkey. These organizations are also playing a role in the ongoing legal indictments against Israeli politicians and the country’s military. Israel has canceled “strategic dialogue” with London to protest a British law that allows judges to arrest members of the Israeli government for alleged “war crimes” if they set foot in the UK. Many Israelis cancelled UK trips out of fear of being arrested.
NGOs are promoting campaigns for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the Jewish State. Some openly advocate “the abolition of Israel through the creation of a single state” in Palestine. The “soft war” against the Jews was born at the Durban UN Conference in 2001, at which 3,000 NGOs convinced the UN to condemn Israeli “racism.” Well-known NGOs such as Amnesty International and Save the Children attached their names to the conference. Israel was declared an “apartheid” and “criminal” state, and the Jews, inveterate racists.
NGOs at the conference supported the request of the Tanzanian minister of foreign affairs, Jakaya Kikwete, for immediate cash compensation to Africa for Western slavery. This fabricated colonial sense of guilt has become jet fuel for the humanitarian agenda. Encouraged by these NGOs, the genocidal Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe proclaimed that the Jews were responsible for all the ills of Africa. Some NGOs distributed leaflets with a portrait of Hitler and the inscription: “What if Hitler had won? There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed.”
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I guess silencing your "enemies" is your democratic solution…
Democracy, as Ben Franklin famously said, is two wolves and one sheep voting what to eat for dinner. I do not believe Israel should continue upholding this suicide pact. My vision in the interim (until HaShem anoints the descendant of David, soon amen) is that Israel shall become a Jewish Republic. In the Jewish Republic, a plurality of opinions shall be allowed, but only within the constraint of agreeing with the right of the Jewish people to exclusive sovereignty in Palestine–in other words, contingent upon compatibility with Zionism (thus, ruling both Marxism and Islam out).
It will be a well-armed sheep contesting the results. Thank you, Mr. Franklin. There were a host of good ideas that went into the founding of the United States of America; I hope this downward spiral into Marxism we see now is only an aberration.
This is a use of "soft power" that differs from the usual definition, ie diplomacy, sanctions etc. as an alternative to armed conflict. What they are really talking about is plain old propaganda and public relations.
It can be decisive. The US got run out of VietNam by propaganda, where militarily we held all the cards. But a bunch of skeevy a-holes in the streets together with complicit media trumped our aces.
getting old.
In a serious democracy, even a nazi should have the right to speak and write his crap! What makes a democracy healthy is the ability to label the nazi as a nazi, as an enemy of humanity and democracy. The more he speaks the more the immune system of serious democracy will get stronger. Instead in a weak democracy (go to europe) the crap is allowed to flow without anyone having the intelletuctual honesty and moral balls to stand up and say with unambiguous and crystalline clarity that it is crap. The end result is that the immune system gets numbed; i.e. people get used to the crap and even start liking it. Meotti is an exception: he has the honesty and the balls to say whay should be said by many. But the rest are midgets and speak with a forked tongue.
Actually, very similar to the same way that the UN was hijacked, co-opted and turned into a weapon of mass destruction to be used against Israel, America, and indeed the West by the Islamic world, leftwing NGOs and leftwing self-proclaimed human rights activists and organizations have also been hijacked, co-opted, and turned into weapons of mass destruction by the Islamic world for the same purposes. This phenomenon provides a clear example of the stealth and deceptive non-violent jihad via the use of the oil money weapon in action and illustrates how the Islamic world is able to successfully dupe useful idiot Leftists to their advantage and turn them into proxies in order to wage jihad for them against their adversaries, and in this specific case, against Israel.
Virtually every Islamic state in the world is totalitarian and in virtually every one of those Islamic totalitarian states non-Muhammadans and women are systematically persecuted and often violently oppressed when not outright murdered. Yet, these leftwing NGOs and self-proclaimed human rights organizations completely ignore the obvious human rights violations taking place in virtually every Islamic state, while at the same time they focus all their vitriol on demonizing and vilifying the only true democratic state in the Middle East in order to incite hatred and violence against it. Of course, these leftwing NGOs and self-proclaimed human rights organizations that are being used as useful idiot proxies by the Islamic world to wage stealth and deceptive non-violent jihad against the infidel state of Israel can’t bite the hands that feed them.
This same hijacking and co-opting by the Islamic world via the oil money weapon has also occurred with respect to most European governments and with respect to America’s own government as well, which explains the unhinged policies of these governments, as these governments have been turned into proxies used as weapons of mass destruction by the Islamic world to attack the only democratic state in the Middle East.
Most people are only fixated on violent jihad for obvious reasons, but the stealth and deceptive non-violent variety of jihad, which is exponentially far more prevalent and takes place unseen behind the scenes via the oil money weapon, in the long run is far more dangerous to the preservation of freedom.
Indeed, the Islamic world can’t defeat us via force or terrorism, but via stealth and deceptive non-violent jihad such as demographic conquest, which is currently in the process of slowly Islamizing the West through mass immigration and high reproduction, it most certainly can. In fact, by the middle of this century, much of Europe and Russia will become Islamic.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced about six months ago that we would give 150 millions dollars to the Palestinian Authority when she held talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit a day before her scheduled meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York. I guess she meets with Israel's enemies first. Clinton said that she and her Egyptian counterpart discussed several issues here in Washington, ranging from Israeli-Palestinian issues. What the hell did the Egyptians have to do with Israel-Palestinian talks? And oh, yes, Obama snubs Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he comes to Washington, but rolls out the red carpet for Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority (read terrorist)!
"Not only are these groups bankrolled by Israel’s enemies, but the funds are used for the express purpose of conducting “soft” warfare against the country from within. This nexus must be exposed."
Now don't get mad,but there might be yet another explanation,one maybe slightly more unpleasing then the one presented here.Maybe,just maybe,the NGO's are right.When so many good reputable people and groups say the same thing,over and over again,maybe they're not fools nor being fooled.At the very least,they have something important to say,and only a fool would totally ignore or completely dismiss them.muchiboy.
Sorry NAZI-Boy Ronald Grant, but you are wrong again. The NGO's who criticize Israel are neither good nor reputable.
Just look at Human Rights Watch which has a long history of ignoring anti-semitism and promoting Arab Oil interests. The Anti-Defamation League cited HRW for blatant anti-Israel reporting and anti-semetism. Even the anti-Israel New York Times reported that the vast majority of HRW's Middle East department staff "have activist backgrounds." The article went on to state that "t was typical that one newly hired researcher came to HRW from the extremist anti-Israel publication Electronic Intifada — unlikely to reassure anyone who thinks that human-rights organizations should be non-partisan."
Remember it was Marc Garlasco, a senior HRW investigator for the Middle East, who was fired after it was discovered he had an odd fetish for collecting Nazi. In fact, Helena Cobban, a fellow Middle East analyst of the HRW Middle East advisory board, noted that Garlasco engaged with "people who clearly do seem to be Nazi sympathizers," something she called "extremely disturbing."
And lest we forget how HRW requests and accepts donations from Saudi Arabia. It is well documented that the donations from the Saudis are contingent on HRW criticizing Israel and its supporters.
Even Robert Bernstein, one of the founders of HRW, criticized the organization's policy in the Middle East that supports the oppressive Islamist Saudis and its blatant anti-Israel bias.
But go ahead Ronald Grant and keep swallowing the neo-Nazi and Islamo-fascist propaganda of HRW and similar NGO's.
"When so many good reputable people and groups say the same thing,over and over again,maybe they're not fools nor being fooled."
In the emphasis I have added, lies the fatal flaw that invalidates the entire argument.
"Sadly, those who mount the "humanitarian" onslaught against Israel are supported by many American Jews, who think that demonstrating their "one world" outlook will enhance their acceptance by a largely anti-Semitic world. They are wrong. They will remain infidels, and be identified as Jews, regardless of their stance."
You are wrong here about those America Jews who speak out against a vile Israeli occupation of the Palestinian homeland and the victimization of the Palestinian people.Unfortunately Jews may always be outsiders,partly by choice,but to force Jews to choose between truth and acceptance is unacceptable to the morality and intelligence of any good,thinking person.Such examples of your own people as you cite only proves how intelligent and fine a people you are and humanity must do all in its power to protect you.But that does not mean we cannot criticize or protect others from any excesses of Jewish nationalism i.e.Zionism. muchiboy
At the root of this situation is fundamental (quasi genetically and viscerally rooted) Western and Muslim antisemitism: the only other 2 "monotheist" religions. STRANGE!!!!
One should wonder why China and India have no problems with Jews!
My case rest. Most of the rest is BS.