Leonard Fein, writing for
The Forward in 2005, said that NGO Monitor is "an organization that believes that the best way to defend Israel is to condemn anyone who criticizes it."
[61]
Yehudit Karp, a member of the International Council of the New Israel Fund and a former deputy attorney general of Israel, said that NGO Monitor has released information "it knew to be wrong, along with some manipulative interpretation".
[62]
The New Israel Fund said in May 2011 that NGO Monitor "knowingly published false information in its newsletter", regarding the NIF funding of
Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP). NIF stated that NGO Monitor's director was provided with the correct information verbally in advance.
[63] NGO Monitor responded by asserting that its report was based on NIF grant information.
[64] NIF's rejoinder stated that its public records lag the end of the reporting year by several months, but reiterated that updated information was provided to NGO Monitor verbally. NIF also stated that it asked CWP to remove mention of NIF's name from the CWP website.
[65]
In July 2009, HRW issued a statement saying, "NGO Monitor ... conducts no field investigations and condemns anyone who criticizes Israel".
[66]
Uriel Heilman, a managing editor for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and a senior reporter for
The Jerusalem Post, wrote in an online opinion column that there were a "couple of disingenuous (read: inaccurate) elements" in the May 2009 digest of NGO Monitor. Heilman rhetorically asked whether the situation itself was "enough for Steinberg and NGO Monitor's followers without Steinberg having to stretch the truth?" Gerald Steinberg, head of NGO Monitor, later conceded the phrasing was confusing and revised the statement.
[67]
Kathleen Peratis, a member of the board of Human Rights Watch, called into question the research methodology underlying an op-ed by NGO Monitor's Steinberg for not saying specifically where or when HRW statements have been unverifiable.
[68] In 2006, she criticized NGO Monitor for accusations against Human Right Watch and its "executive director, whose father fled Nazi Germany". Peratis took issue with an op-ed by NGO Monitor's Gerald Steinberg titled "Ken Roth's Blood Libel",
[69] and argues those like NGO Monitor "who want selective exemption of Israel from the rules of war" may not "have faced the implications of getting what they wish for".
[68]
In 2009, David Newman criticized NGO Monitor for concentrating "almost entirely with a critique of peace-related NGOs and especially those which focus on human rights, as though there were no other NGOs to examine". He said that NGO Monitor, which he describes as a right-wing organization, had consistently refused requests to investigate the activities and funding of right-wing NGOs, many of which, Newman said, were facilitating illegal activity in the West Bank.
[70] In response, NGO Monitor wrote that it is "an independent research organization, providing detailed, systematic, and source-based analysis and publications regarding the activities of NGOs in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The ideological label employed by Newman, 'right wing', is neither accurate nor relevant".
[71] Newman also criticized NGO Monitor again in 2009, as well as in 2010 and 2012.
[72][73]
In January 2010, thirteen Israeli human rights organizations released a common statement describing NGO Monitor and
Im Tirtzu as "extremist", and criticised an "unbridled and incendiary attack" by them against human rights groups.
[74]
Ambassador Andrew Stanley, the EU representative to Israel, took issue with NGO Monitor's description of EU policy as operating in secret, writing that "as Prof. Steinberg is fully aware from the various conversations we have had with him, funding of projects by the European Union worldwide is carried out by open and public calls for proposals published on EU websites, including the website of the Delegation of the European Union to the State of Israel."
[75]
Michael Edwards lists NGO Monitor among a group of organisations who use deficiencies in NGO accountability as a pretext for politically motivated attacks to silence views with which they disagree. Edwards states that they "single out liberal or progressive groups for criticism while ignoring the same problems, if that is what they are, among NGOs allied with conservative views".
[14] According to Joel Peters, NGO Monitor's activities include "high profile campaigns with the aim of delegitimizing the activities of Israeli civil society and human rights organisations, especially those advocating the rights of Arab citizens of Israel and/or address the question of violations of human rights in the Occupied Territories",
[13] to which NGO Monitor responded by saying, "Our aims and objectives (holding political advocacy NGOs accountable, providing checks and balances, researching and publishing on these issues) are clearly spelled out."
[76]
According to
Naomi Chazan, NGO Monitor is closely linked to a "tightly knit, coordinated set of associations" whose goal is to undermine liberal voices in Israel and entrench a negative image of them by means of having "continuously hammered away at their key message—in this instance, the abject disloyalty of certain civil society organizations and their funders and their collusion with Israel's most nefarious external detractors". Chazan states the aim is that "by reinforcing this mantra by every available means, innuendo could be transformed into fact".
[17]
In an editorial published by
The Forward,
J.J. Goldberg termed the organization "one of the smoothest left-bashing operations."
[77]
Ilan Baruch, Israel's former ambassador to South Africa, said in a report by the Policy Working Group (PWG), published in September, 2018 that the organization "disseminates misleading and tendentious information, which it presents as factual in-depth research". NGO Monitor's efforts were designed to "defend and sustain [Israeli] government policies that help uphold Israel's occupation of ...the Palestinian territories".
[15][78] The Dutch government has also criticised NGO Monitor, singling out the unreliability of their accusations against human rights defenders. Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said "the government is familiar with the accusations by NGO Monitor against a broad group of Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations, as well as with criticism of the conduct of NGO Monitor itself", citing the PWG report. "This research shows that many of NGO Monitor's accusations are based on selective citations, half-facts and insinuations, but not necessarily on hard evidence", Minister Blok added.
[79]
