Canadian government using pro-Israeli sources to make policy and unduly silence Canadian civil society.

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For some, the problem with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international and humanitarian law is that it sets the same international standard for all.Powerful states prefer to beexempt from these provisions which were intended to create a more level playing field between the powerful and the weak. The powerful resist the dictates of higher moral and legal codes and use their power in various ways to act with impunity and above the law.

When confronted with legitimate criticism of its policies and actions based on universal international standards and principles, Israel chose to maintain its policies and launch a war against all organizations that expose the violations ignore the message, kill the messenger. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has instructed his officials to seek ways to change the laws that he finds constricting.The Israeli choice endangers civil society as a whole and returns us to the law of "might is right.' In this, Israel has many little helpers. Beside the Reut Institute and the Israel Project, watchdog groups, "monitor" and "watch" human rights organizations and academia, "report" on the media and claim that justifiable criticism of Israel policies "de-legitimizes' the state of Israel and is therefore antisemitic.

The Canadian government has relied on some of these groups, in particular the self-appointed international regulator called NGO Monitor (NGOM), as sources of information in order to sever long-term working partnerships with respected Canadian and international organizations. Some information regarding NGOM and one of its parent organizations may aid in understanding their impact on our political establishment, and why Canadians should care.

NGOM is the brainchild of the top brass of two Israeli organizations which have been presenting Israel's case, the Jerusalem Center for Political Affairs (JCPA) and B'nai Brith. It was formed because the vast array of already existing pro-Israel organizations seemed unable to contain the worldwide criticism of Israeli extremist policies. Organizations that had no partisan stake in the Palestine/Israel conflict were hard to discredit and since they based their criticism on human rights and international law, they were deemed dangerous.

As JCPA put it, "[T]he challenges that Israel faces today are not only military. They extend to the United Nations, the mass media, foreign universities, and non-governmental organizations." The United Nations itself was covered by UN Watch, but NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other well-respected human rights organizations were producing damning reports that needed to be neutralized. And so NGOM was created as a JCPA project, another spoke in the well-oiled Hasbara spin machine which, along with JCPA, NGOM, and UN Watch, includes various other "think tanks" that cross-pollinate both in terms of information, researchers and/or board members.

The machine's success is achieved through relations with an extensive network of media policy makers and academics, and its focus on two central policy objectives: making sure that Middle East policy remains favorable to Israel and that Arab and Muslim communities, both in Western democracies and in Arab and Muslim states, remain on the fringe, at once powerless and feared as an evil threat to Western values. Wildly negative, piggy-backing commentaries and reports whip up anti-Arab sentiment and Islamophobia to draw out support for the ultimate insider, Israel.

"Who's Who at the Jerusalem Center[JCPA]" includes a long list of "Israel's experts", almost half of them military brass with strong connections to the right-wing Israeli government, alongside academics and politicians who push the Israeli version of facts from different angles.

Also on the list are the names of eight Canadians, including Liberal MP Irwin Cotler (Cotler is also on the Advisory board of the JCPA Global Law Forum and a board member of UN Watch) and Irving Abella, two prominent members of the Canadian political, judicial and academic elites. Do they endorse - contrary to Canadian policy which "does not recognize Israel's unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem" - the political positions of the JCPA as it undertakes to "continue its work to preserve Israel's control of its capital and oppose efforts which seek to divide Jerusalem"?

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:

(1) The UN as Enemy #1 - because it is the only international forum where all states meet as equals. It sets the standards of acceptable norms of behaviour and gives voice to less powerful countries in international affairs.

As Israel's foot soldiers, UN Watch and NGOM want the UN either to abide by their definition of the rule of law or damage the UN's international legitimacy while advancing their pro-Israel agenda. The ongoing vicious attacks by Israel and friends on Justice Richard Goldstone, himself a Zionist, illustrates the persistence and ruthlessness of the shock-and-awe propaganda troops. His crime? Producing a report that found evidence of war crimes by both sides during the Israeli war on Gaza in December 2008 - January 2009.

Peter Kent, Canada's Minister of State of Foreign Affairs (Americas), and member of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA), decided to attack the credibility of the UN Human Rights Council, instead of addressing the contents of the Goldstone report, by asserting that "theso-called fact-finding commission was the creation of one of the United Nation's most flawed bodies, the Human Rights Council, which includes some of the UN's least democratic states."

(2) Donors and partners of NGOs hypocritically accusing Human Rights NGOs of having a political agenda and conducting anti-Israel, if not anti-Semitic, activities when the NGOs are fulfilling their mandates.

The aim is to have agencies and foundations, such as the, sever their working relationships with NGOs and avoid using them as partners on projects, as New Israel Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Institute Canada did with KAIROS and UNRWA. Steinberg's voice is magnified in Canada, because he has access to the sympathetic ear of the government.

(3) Civil society itself - by making criticism of Israeli practices taboo, thereby inhibiting society's normally existing plurality of opinion.

Steinberg's group claims that civil society should endorse the government's policy and that it poses a danger to the state when it does not. In "The Trojan Horse", a report co-sponsored by the Institute for Zionist Strategies (Chairman Yisrael Harel is himself an illegal settler and a founder of the extremist Gush Emunim settler movement), Israeli NGOs are accused of being a fifth column because they receive funds from abroad. There is no criticism of ultra-nationalist groups receiving foreign funding from controversial sources in the report. NGOM itself receives funds from US-based family foundations, so by their own reasoning JCPA and NGOM themselves were and may become again Trojan horses, considering that although their position towards Israel/Palestine aligns with the current Israeli extremist government, it would not under a government that seeks a land-for-peace resolution of the conflict. Since donations through foundations are tax deductible, NGOM is in fact funded by the US taxpayers.

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So how does this affect Canada? The ideological insertion of Israel into our institutions and the politicization of human rights have a negative impact not only on the institutions themselves, but on our democratic rights as it makes impossible any pragmatic understanding of issues, and stifles the necessary strong debates that underpin democracies.

On August 31, 2009, NGOM made a submission to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-semitism (CPCCA). CPCCA is not an official parliamentary body but a multi-party voluntary association of Parliamentarians who are holding an inquiry into antisemitism because "The extent and severity of anti-semitism is widely regarded as at its worst level since the end of the Second World War." The aim of CPCCA is valid as racism continues to be an issue that needs to be addressed. However, seeking to equate criticism of a foreign government (Israel) with antisemitism is a dangerous trend. The witnesses that are called do not seem to represent the wide variety of opinions in Canadian society or in the submissions. Cotler and Jason Kenney are the driving force behind the CPCCA and are listed as ex-officio members. Kenney, who gave KAIROS' de-funding as an example of how the Canadian government dealt with antisemitism, is slated to appear as a witness on February 8, 2010. Interestingly, there is no indication of how the CPCCA is funded. This information should be posted on the website, for the sake of transparency and accountability.

Just as the extreme right in North America has moved the political center towards the right, the pro-Israeli organizations have been instrumental in tilting the discourse in favor of Israel, through intimidation and various other tactics, along with its attempts to conflate criticism of Israeli policies with anti-semitism.

While contributing nothing but a potential divide within our multicultural society, NGOM has also created a chill within civil society. In fact, its attacks based not on first hand research since they do not visit Gaza have shut down any possibility of a thoughtful dialogue about the role of civil society, the role of NGOs in Canadian (or other) society, and fair and equal access by NGOs to decision makers and government. It is to be noted that since its ascent to power, the current government has not met with national organizations that deal with Arab-Canada issues in spite of repeated requests.

Israeli propaganda draftees may find fault with human rights NGOs who hold that the law is universal and have been producing reports pointing at the different ways Israel violates the rule of law against Palestinians, both in Israel and in the Occupied Territories. But these NGOs are not the problem. The problem is Israel's refusal to abide by the human rights and humanitarian laws of the various treaties to which it is party. Instead of urging Israel to fulfill its legal responsibilities, the propagandists find it easier to shoot the messengers and browbeat governments and institutions into accepting that Palestinians should not and do not have the same rights they enjoy.

"The only democracy in the Middle East" is a rogue state. Since the fateful General Assembly partition resolution, the Security Council has passed scores of resolutions, the first of which, Resolution 57 of September 18, 1948, expressed "deep shock at the assassination of the UN Mediator in Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, by Zionist terrorists."

No, the UN is not irrationally fixated on Israel. It is the duty of the world body to keep reminding us that the Palestine file is still open because Israel has implemented no UN resolution fully, including the Partition resolution, which divided Palestine into two states, and the resolution accepting Israel as a UN member. Should the UN stop its scrutiny as Steinberg and friends wish, it will have betrayed the spirit in which it was created. It will also indicate that non-respect of international law is rewarded given time, a dangerous message considering all the abusers and potential abusers around the world.

NGOM may have its place within Israeli civil society, but not within Canadian society. Its heavy-handed tactics are deeply anti-democratic, and go counter to the plurality of thought and expression within our society. The Orwellian view that "some are more equal than others" cannot be allowed to prevail in Canada.

Authors Bio:
Bahija Reghai is a Canadian Human Rights activist and a former president of the National Council on Canada-Arab relations(NCCAR).