Hospitals in Gaza are running out of medical stock, creating a ‘near catastrophe’ in care. Human rights groups urged to act, the Israeli blockade and the continuing stand-off between Hamas and Fatah are blamed
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NGO monitor has been the scourge of human-rights NGOs in Israel, accusing them indiscriminately of being anti-Israel, antisemitic, in the forefront of the campaign to delegitimise Israel and much else beside. It’s role in encouraging the Knesset to go the assault against these NGOs is also clear. The threat to Israeli NGOs is shaping up with the demand, now likely to become law, that all Israeli non-profit associations, including NGOs, human-rights organisations and peace groups, as well as charitable corporations such as theatres and cultural organisations, report within 30 days to the Registrar of Associations on every sum of funding they receive from a foreign government or government-funded donors. Right-wing and settler groups, not funded by foreign governments but by private funds, will not be exposed to this increased scrutiny and bureaucratic harassment… Shir Hever argues that we are witnessing A DARK TIME IN ISRAEL: “a new trend has been developing rapidly in the past four years of extreme measures taken against political dissenters, particularly against citizens of Israel (as opposed to non-citizen Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who were never permitted freedom of expression). This trend threatens to eliminate the relative safety of Israelis, and especially Israeli Jews, to voice their opposition to government’s policies…lines are being crossed, and there is no way of telling where it will stop [...]“ Ben Caspit ups the ante in Maariv: “It is OK to attack the policy of the government of Israel in every place and in every way. It is possible and even commendable to hold vigils next to checkpoints in the territories and to make sure that the Palestinian population is treated properly. It is OK to think that Netanyahu’s rejectionist policy is leading us to disaster (I think words to that effect are written here weekly). It is allowed, in fact, to do everything. Except for undermining the foundations of the existence of the only Jewish state. It has a right to exist, it has a right to defend itself. A large number of the extremist organizations funded by the NIF do exactly that. In a very poisonous way, very skillfully and with generous funding by donors, most of whom are unaware of who and what they are funding [...] “The vicious, McCarthyite attack on the New Israel Fund (Nif), which uses philanthropic funds to foster and support Israeli non-profit, civil society organisations, did not come out of the blue. The ultra-nationalist group, Im Tirzu, which blamed Nif for the Goldstone report, falsely claiming, as Jonathan Freedland showed, that more than 90% of the report’s information came from groups funded by the Nif, was exploiting a climate of vilification of such groups created by the Netanyahu government since it came to power a year ago [...] Jeremiah Haber writes: The Israeli government’s endorsement of proposed legislation “will require human rights NGOs in Israel (e.g., B’Tselem, Machsomwatch, Breaking the Silence, Adalah, etc.) to publicize contributions from foreign governments, not only in an annual report (they all do that anyway), but every single time they host an event, have a meeting, publish a report, issue a news release, whether they have received outside funding for that particular occasion or not [...]“ We wanted to quickly update you on the prominent ad (attached) we published this morning on the front page of Ha’aretz, calling for a credible and independent Israeli investigation of operation Cast Lead. Today (Feb. 4) is the final day allotted for Israel (and Hamas) to respond to the Goldstone report [...] Didi Remez writes on Coteret: Maariv, Israel’s third-largest newspaper, has been a primary instrument for the dissemination of the recently launched anti-NIF smear campaign. To its credit, however, the newspaper has hosted dissenting opinion on a daily basis… Merav David and… Maya Bengal (two senior reporters on the paper) published a particularly incisive criticism of the campaign and related Israeli policies in the paper yesterday [...] The New Israel fund responds vigorously to the attack made on it ads in the Israeli press a few days ago (see http://jfjfp.com/?p=10007). The group behind these attacks turns out to be “funded by the same abundant money that flows to extremist settlers’ organizations, including a sizable contribution from John Hagee’s “Christians United for Israel” [...] Canada is now wading in to attack critics of Israel: the Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy, a not-for-profit organization created by Canada’s parliament in 1988 to encourage and support human rights around the world, recently voted, with substantial objection, to repudiate grants given to Al Haq and Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, two reputable and well-known Palestinian human rights organizations located respectively in the West Bank and in Gaza. The reason: “”their accusations against Israel’s human rights violations…” |
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