Warning over threat of demonisation facing Israel

AJN STAFF

PROFESSOR Gerald Steinberg rates the “soft-power” threat against Israel as high as the military threat posed by Iran, or by Hamas and Hezbollah.

The danger, which he called “the threat of demonisation and delegitimisation”, has become more visible since the release of the Goldstone Commission Report in September last year.

“It’s like a virus that is spreading and it is an enormous concern in Israel,” Prof Steinberg told The AJN, adding that the Goldstone report was the trigger that “made Israelis wake up”.

The president of NGO Monitor — a group that holds non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to account over their stance towards Israel — said he had noticed an increase in soft-power tactics by Israel’s enemies for a number of years.

Soft power includes propaganda, information campaigns and measures such as optional boycotts by trade unions, which attempt to influence outcomes without resorting to a military, or hard-power, campaign.

The Bar-Ilan University politics professor said increasingly it is NGOs that are leading the way on these type of campaigns.

He highlighted organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Oxfam -— some of the world’s most reputable global lobbyists —- as the worst culprits of bias and slander against Israel.

“These are very serious, professional operators and they have very clear agendas,” he said. “It is not just about Israel, but Israel is the dominant focus.”

NGO Monitor, he said, is able to highlight the inaccuracies put forward by these groups very easily — “Google is a wonderful thing”.

One investigative campaign by NGO Monitor last year showed that HRW has employed anti-Israel activists in senior Middle East-focused roles.

Steinberg also spoke about links between NGOs that push liberty and freedom while at the same time maintaining relations with Arab dictatorships.

He decried the focus of these groups, claiming none had written about kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. “They don’t care about Israelis,” he said. “They care about politics, radical politics.”

Prof Steinberg was in Australia as a guest of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. In addition to delivering the Hans Bachrach Memorial Oration, during his visit he met with incoming Australian ambassador to Israel Andrea Faulkner and several federal politicians.