Coteret

Not.

But that’s what Haaretz seems to think. A front-page investigative report in this morning’s edition (December 1 2009) finds that Machanaim a US 501c3 tax exempt charity is funding the Task Force to Save the Nation and the Land (aka SOS Israel)

the organization that offered every soldier refusing to evacuate a settlement, and the Kfir Brigade soldiers who publicly demonstrated their opposition to evacuation, NIS 1,000 for every day they spend in military prison

After asking Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, why he has not asked the US government to desist from indirectly funding sedition in the IDF and questioning why an NGO engaged in blatantly illegal activity enjoys a “clean bill of health” from the Registrar of Associations, the article ends with

The Knesset will hold a discussion on the subject of transparency of contributions that non-profit organizations receive from abroad. The event, which will be hosted by Improvement of Government Services Minister Michael Eitan, is being organized by the NGO Monitor organization, which is based in Jerusalem.

Stunning. Gerald Steinberg is not the partisan hack I claimed he was. The Knesset conference will demand transparency for all NGOs. Perhaps we can also expect that the agenda will also include a discussion of the sovereignty-threatening instance of right-wing NGO “lawfare” reported in this morning’s Jerusalem Post, the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel’s High Court of Justice petition against the settlement “freeze.”

A quick look at the Hebrew version of the report, however, reveals that hell has yet to freeze over. It questions NGO Monitor on what action it has taken on Machanaim/SOS Israel and gets a vague response.

Disappointing but revealing: The night editor at the English edition, forced to abridge the report, actually assumed that the conference would deal with this issue. After all, its organizer is a group calling itself  an “NGO monitor.”

RELATED POSTS: Exposing Gerald Steinberg and NGO Monitor | Israel Harel, Zionist Strategist (on NGO Monitor’s fundamentalist allies) |Globes on the hypocrisy of right-wing “democrats” |