At the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism’s (ICT) 15th International Conference on terrorism, Arutz Sheva spoke with Professor Gerald Steinberg, President of the NGO Monitor organization.
NGO Monitor was founded following the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban South Africa, where powerful NGOs, claiming to promote human rights, hijacked the principles of morality and international law. NGO Monitor provides information and analysis, promotes accountability, and supports discussion on the reports and activities of NGOs claiming to advance human rights and humanitarian agendas.
Professor Steinberg spoke about a disturbing direct link between so-called “human rights organizations” and terrorist organizations.
“For instance, Amnesty International: [NGO Monitor has found] a second case where one of the heads of their major divisions is connected directly to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and her husband is even more active in these kinds of frameworks,” he said.
“This is not an isolated case,” warned Prof. Steinberg. “We see other cases like that within Amnesty and also groups like Al-Haq, headed by someone’s who connected with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, that everybody accepts as a major terrorist organization.”
These organizations are recognized by the United Nations and the International Criminal Court and are called human rights organizations, despite their link to recognized terrorist groups.
“When you have people directly connected to terror organizations, close to the top or running these kinds of human rights organizations, you need to take another look,” said Steinberg.
One of the responses he receives when presenting his research about these groups around the world is that “they also do good things,” Steinberg noted, “but generally what we hear is that they’re really not involved in terrorism. Maybe they were once involved in terrorism but they’ve seen the light…and of course a lot of that has no basis in fact. It’s wishful thinking at best, it’s willingness to ignore it, it’s things like that that need to be examined.”
“When Amnesty goes around the world saying Israel commits war crimes all the time, kills children and is responsible for terrible things and then it has people connected to terrorism within its structure, that should make everybody who takes them seriously pause,” he added.
