Thank you, Ms. Lalonde.
I want to begin by saying that there are legitimate concerns about the demonization of Israel at the United Nations. I've worked with the United Nations for ten years, and 80% of the resolutions are against Israel. Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Zimbabwe--they all escape scrutiny. But I think organizations like NGO Monitor have gone too far. They have gone too far because they are suppressing all dissent. The chair, Mr. Braun, had unsuccessfully attempted, against the opposition of board members, to invite Mr. Steinberg to address the board. We know that one of the first articles that came out after the death of Mr. Beauregard was that of Mr. Steinberg, published in The Jerusalem Post and in the National Post. He had access to internal documents of the board. The repudiation of these grants by Mr. Matas, in his 15-page memorandum, is based entirely on reports of NGO Monitor, so the link is clearly there.
I want to share with you what Yossi Alpher, who's a former adviser to the present defence minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, and a former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said. This is what he has to say about NGO Monitor. He says that NGO Monitor “seems dead set on eliminating human rights monitoring of Israel entirely and smearing anyone who supports this vital activity.” This is a former adviser to Ehud Barak saying this.
Within Israel itself, where I have many friends and colleagues, NGO Monitor is seen as a blatantly political far-right organization. I'm baffled as to how this organization can have so much influence over an institution like Rights and Democracy.
I also want to add that some of the representations that have been made... Never mind the example of B'Tselem, which is an Israeli organization, but the chair says it's Israeli in name only. This is the language of the far right in Israel, which is basically saying that unless you're blindly obedient, you're a traitor to Israel.
Even if we look at Al Mezan, the organization in Gaza, which incidentally has also issued reports condemning the Palestinian Authority, condemning Hamas, calling for an investigation of Hamas rocket attacks against southern Israel as well, which is not mentioned at all, it's interesting that on February 13, 2007, because of the lawsuit that was brought against NGO Monitor before the Israeli courts by the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem, a defamation and libel lawsuit, Mr. Steinberg issued the following retraction. He said, “I regret having called Al Mezan an organization that 'justifies violence'.” This is Mr. Steinberg, as a result of an Israeli court proceeding, admitting that Al Mezan does not justify violence.
Now, Al-Haq is also interesting. The Israeli courts have never convicted Mr. Shawan Jabarin of terrorism. What they have said is that there is a travel ban against him, and this is what the U.S. State Department country report recently said about this Israeli court decision. This is the United States State Department human rights report for 2009:
On March 11, the Israeli High Court barred human rights defender Shawan Jabarin, director of Al-Haq, a Palestinian Human Rights NGO, from traveling outside the West Bank without holding a hearing.
This was an ex parte hearing. There was no chance to contest the evidence.
It goes on:
Based on evidence that Jabarin and his lawyer were not allowed to see, the court refused to lift the travel ban imposed on him by military order in 2006.
I just want to end by saying that in a conflict zone one will always encounter people who have had all sorts of different pasts. Mr. Ariel Sharon was accused by the Kahan commission in Israel of war crimes in Lebanon, and he became Prime Minister.
The accusation of Shawan Jabarin, who was until 1987 a member of the PFLP, is interesting, because our own foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, met with Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, in December 2008, I believe. Mr. al-Maliki was a senior member of the PFLP for many years, yet this government pledged to give $300 million to the Palestinian Authority.
So the problem here is that there is a legitimate concern about the demonization of Israel, one-sided attacks, but I think that NGO Monitor and other organizations have gone too far. We are more extreme in Canada than people are in Israel.
I have a student who's an Israeli air force pilot who flew bombing runs over Lebanon. He seems to be more reasonable about these issues.