Soft Powers Play Hardball: NGOs Wage War against Israel

Abstract

The campaign of terror that began in late 2000, following the collapse of the Oslo peace process, was accompanied by a full-scale political campaign, aimed at de-legitimizing and isolating Israel internationally. This strategy was articulated at the UN-sponsored World Conference against Racism and Xenophobia that took place in September 2001, in Durban, South Africa. The Durban conference crystallized the strategy of de-legitimizing Israel as ‘an apartheid regime’, through international isolation based on the South African model. This political warfare based on ‘soft power’ 1 has been conducted through a number of frameworks, and in different venues, including the media, the UN, and other diplomatic institutions. In many of these campaigns, powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the main actors, providing the platform, the funds, and the political slogans. The funding is generally provided by governments (particularly in Europe and Canada), as well as philanthropic groups such as the Ford Foundation. Although these NGOs and their patrons generally use the rhetoric of human rights, humanitarian relief, and international law, their actions are primarily political. In contrast to the universality of these norms, in practice the language is exploited to promote particular political and ideological goals. This attack is spearheaded by global NGO ‘superpowers’—Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, the International Commission of Jurists, and Oxfam. The vast resources and large number of employees at their disposal provide access to the media, diplomats (including direct involvement in UN proceedings) and other public relations channels for pursuing their anti-Israel agendas. In addition, hundreds of smaller pro-Palestinian NGOs, often linked together in associations such as PNGO (the Palestinian NGO Network), and closely tied to the PLO political leadership, have formed partnerships with the global NGOs. This provides the smaller local NGOs (often consisting of not much more than a website and a few employees) with funds, credibility