One Year Later, NGOs Recycling the Gaza Myths

Marking the first anniversary of the Gaza war, many NGOs are publishing reports that repeat allegations based on unverifiable evidence and often false claims. NGO Monitor is revisting some of the more blatant examples.

• Before the war, many NGOs ignored the 8000 rocket attacks from Gaza, the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, and internal Palestinian violence. In contrast, during the Gaza war over 50 NGOs released more than 500 statements, the vast majority which condemned Israel for alleged “violations of international humanitarian law.” 
• NGO superpowers like HRW and Amnesty published numerous statements and reports making allegations against Israel, while denying the evidence that Hamas had used the population of Gaza as human shields.  
• HRW’s report, entitled ‘Precisely Wrong’ (June 2009), accuses Israel of using highly accurate drones to deliver Spike missiles in six cases, and failing to take action which could have prevented the deaths of civilians. NGO Monitor has shown that HRW provides no substantive evidence for these claims. 
• Many NGO reports classified members of Hamas forces as “civilians,” and accused Israel of “deliberately” targeting civilians. For example, Nizar Rayan, a senior Hamas military commander responsible for numerous suicide bombings inside Israel, was classified by PCHR as a civilian. 
• On December 31, 2008, B'Tselem accused the IDF of committing “war crimes” by “targeting” police personnel who were not “directly participating in the hostilities.” B’Tselem repeated Palestinian claims that at the time the police were targeted, they were undergoing a “training course” on issues such as “human rights”.  B’Tselem failed to reveal its criteria for classifying these Hamas operatives as “civilians” nor did the organization appear to do any in-depth research as to the affiliations of individual “police.” Similar allegations were made by numerous other NGOs.
• The NGO network, largely funded by European governments, has been centrally responsible for advancing “war crimes” cases against Israeli officials in the UK, Spain, and other countries. The objective of these “lawfare” campaigns is to brand Israelis as “war criminals” and prevent Israel from taking measures necessary for defending its population from attack.
• NGOs were central to the Goldstone Report (the content of which was “cut-and-paste” from these publications) which calls for United Nations and International Criminal Court action against Israel.