Do they agree with the JCPA that the Israeli settlements are not illegal? Except for Israel and possibly one or two South Pacific islands, all states consider settlements a violation of international law defined by the "Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War". In 2004, the International Court of Justice confirmed this in an advisory opinion. More recently, Hillary Clinton insisted that the US not consider the settlements "legitimate", and that this has been, and will continue to be, the US government's policy for the years to come.
American-born Dore Gold is the main JCPA voice. He contends that one should not use the phrase "occupied Palestinian territories" because it denies any Israeli claim to the land. He also insists that Israel's interests take primacy. A former Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) fellow, he represented Israel at the UN and served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon. He was also on the American Enterprise Institute's payroll as a scholar. As president of the JCPA and publisher of NGOM, Gold's work is the continuation of his involvement with neo-cons Netanyahu and Sharon in that he continues to do the bidding of the Israeli extremist parties.
British-born Gerald M. Steinberg, also a JCPA board member, is a former Research Fellow at the United States Institute for Peace, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT. His work flows seamlessly from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Security Council, and the Israeli Prime Minister's Office (The Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism) to the NGOM. He has been on the attack for years, including through the JCPA, and NGOM gives him a privileged podium from where he is able to accelerate the war against respected human rights organizations. In so doing, he benefits from the clout that JCPA and NGOM international board members enjoy.
Steinberg's militancy is all about keeping Israel outside the reach of international law, and silencing critics as Israel evades its legal responsibilities as an occupier. Israel's diktat trumps all, even the law.
Why should Canadians care? Undue access to influential decision-makers by Israeli ultra-nationalists such as Steinberg has resulted in the Canadian government taking ideological decisions. These include withdrawing funds from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)--offering humanitarian relief; severing long-term satisfactory working relationships with certain Canadian NGOs - not on the basis of the quality of their work, but for the irrelevant and self-defeating proposition that standing up for Canadian values of fairness and justice means being anti-Israel; and stacking boards of Canadian institutions with pro-Israel individuals whose task is to unduly import Middle East politics, as happened in the case of Rights and Democracy (R&D).
It is worth noting that the current Rights and Democracy chair,Aurel Braun,is an ally of, and sits on a least one board, and another with NGOM's Steinberg a well-known pro-Israel propagandist, Daniel Pipes (Campus Watch). Disregarding R&D's twenty-year history of supporting human rights and democracy in countries like Burma, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Braun's dogged and unapologetic approach was clearly about protecting Israel, and blocking any attempt at providing support for human rights in the Palestinian Occupied Territory.
How does NGOM fulfil its objective "to end the practice used by certain self-declared 'humanitarian NGOs' of exploiting the label 'universal human rights values' to promote politically and ideologically motivated anti-Israel agendas"?
It targets:
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