Paul Calvert spoke with Yitzhak Santis from NGO Monitor

NGO Monitor is based in Jerusalem and provides information and analysis and supports discussion on the reports and activities of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) that claim to advance human rights and humanitarian agendas. They aim to end the practice used by certain 'humanitarian NGOs' of exploiting the label 'universal human rights values' to promote politically and ideologically motivated agendas.

Paul Calvert spoke with Yitzhak Santis, the Chief Programmes Officer in the Research Department for NGO Monitor about the de-legitimisation of Israel, bias in the United Nations Human Rights Council and churches and Christian organisations that say they want peace actually becoming partisan in the conflict by taking sides.

Paul: What is NGO Monitor?

Yitzhak: NGO Monitor is a non-governmental organisation that monitors non-governmental organisations that are involved in de-legitimising and demonising Israel and that deny the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination.

Paul: Is there a lot of this going on?

Yitzhak: Let me start with de-legitimisation. When I speak of de-legitimisation, every member of the United Nations and that includes Israel, is legitimised in international law. The purpose of an NGO campaign has been to de-legitimise Israel; to make Israel a pariah state. They want to force Israel into isolation so that Israel will cease to exist. This is a strategy that was formulated in 2001 at the United Nations Durban conference on racism. There was a forum that was called the NGO forum and about 1500 NGOs were there and they came out with a document that explicitly called for the isolation of Israel using boycott divestment sanctions and to isolate Israel in every possible sphere: politically, diplomatically, culturally and militarily; to isolate Israel completely so that all states in the world will have no more relations with the state of Israel. That is the goal of this NGO network. In 2005 there was a call that came out of Ramallah, made up of about 170 Palestinian non-governmental organisations calling for what they describe as BDS: boycott, divestment and sanctions, which is an implementation of the Durban strategy to isolate Israel.

Paul: We saw something like this happen in London at Christmas time, in Piccadilly. At St James' church they built a replica of Israel's West Bank security barrier. Was this a fair representation?

Yitzhak: No it wasn't. It wasn't just the replica of the security barrier, it was everything that surrounded it. It was a programme that lasted almost two weeks and it was a combination of speakers, panellists, art and music and the theme running throughout was - the security barrier is wrong, it's illegal and should be taken down and that Israel is an apartheid state. The whole purpose of that was to de-legitimise Israel. We saw that the whole programme was done in partnership with a number of these anti-Israel NGOs such as The Amos Trust and the Kairos Palestine document, as well as other groups such as the The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, War on Want, the Holy Land Trust and other organisations that are part of the de-legitimisation strategy.

Paul: Was there any mention from the other point of view?

Yitzhak: They brought in a token representative of a Pro-Israel British organisation for one of these discussions, but the overwhelming tenor of this programme was anti-Israel.

Paul: Was the whole lot portrayed as a wall, because not all of it is a wall is it?

Yitzhak: No, about 95% of the security barrier is fencing; only in very specific areas is there an actual cement barrier or wall to keep terrorists out. Some prime examples would be just outside the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Gilo, which is just opposite the valley of Beit Jala. There is a security barrier there, or wall and the purpose of building the wall there was to prevent snipers shooting into Gilo. There were Palestinian snipers that were shooting into private Jewish homes at random and so something had to be done and so we put up a barrier so that snipers would not be able to shoot again into these homes.

Paul: The barrier has helped security hasn't it? There have not been many suicide bombings since it was built?

Yitzhak: Since 2005-6 or so when the security barrier was complete, the number of suicide bombings has dropped dramatically so that now there are virtually none and let's hope it stays that way.