By Yves Engler

NGO Monitor seeks to demonize groups opposed to apartheid and genocide and cut off government funding for any groups or individuals who dare challenge its pro-Israel narrative.

Ironically, this extremely anti-Palestinian organization receives government subsidies through the tax system to help pay for its anti-free speech bullying. This should end.

Recently a formal complaint was submitted to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) regarding donations to NGO Monitor. While it doesn’t have charitable status in Canada, NGO Monitor grants tax receipts to donors through the Foundation for Public Policy Development and Canada Charity Partners. It has received over $900 000 in Canadian tax receipted donations since 2020.

Founded in Jerusalem in 2002, NGO Monitor attacks organizations opposing genocide and apartheid. After its inception founder Gerald Steinberg wrote that the organization was responding to NGOs that “Make War on Israel” and groups that exploit human rights as a “weapon against Israel”.

NGO Monitor publishes articles and reports on non-governmental organizations and other groups defending Palestinians. They also feed sympathetic politicians and media information to undercut groups challenging Israeli crimes. 

In Israel, NGO Monitor maligns the small peace movement and demonizes Palestinian civil society.

One of their most common tactics is to claim that Palestinian and other NGOs are tied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which Israel, Canada and European Union countries list as a terrorist organization. 

NGO Monitor claimed that the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network was tied to the PFLP. Their efforts contributed to the Vancouver-based grassroots group’s listing as a terrorist organization for alleged ties to the PFLP.

Soon after they helped get Samidoun listed as a terror organization, NGO Monitor became more aggressive in seeking to have the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) “banned from operating in Canada” due to its “many links to the PFLP terror group.” 

The claim against PYM is made in a recent NGO Monitor report headlined ‘The NGO Network Driving Antisemitism in Canada’. 

The report lists “111 groups” and devotes significant attention to criticizing Independent Jewish Voices, which it claims is at the center of the network “partnering with 76 out of the 111 groups.”

NGO Monitor is close to the Israeli regime. Steinberg was previously part of the steering team of the Prime Minister’s Office and an advisor to the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council. 

While its finances are opaque, NGO Monitor has received some money from the Israeli parastatal Jewish Agency. Its board has many former Israeli officials (former chief military prosecutor in the West Bank Maurice Hirsch and former director general of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs Yosef Kuperwasse). 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs helps it organize international lobby meetings, which sometimes include Israeli diplomats.

In 2017 Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon explained, “We work closely together with them (NGO Monitor). There is a level of coordination and we share information.”

NGO Monitor should be investigated as part of Canada’s foreign interference inquiry. Foreign interference is problematic largely based on the nefariousness of its aims as well as its form. Is there any more odious aim than interfering to promote an apartheid state’s holocaust?

NGO Monitor clearly has close ties to a foreign government and promotes its interests. It does so by seeking to intimidate Canadian civil society from opposing genocide. Incredibly, its donors get tax credits from the Canadian government to do so.

By what standards are NGO Monitor’s actions in the public interest, let alone worthy of charitable status?

At a bare minimum Canadian taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing an organization aligned with a genocidal state intimidating civil society.

 – Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and a number of other books. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit his website: yvesengler.com.