NGO Monitor is a right-wing organization based in Jerusalem that reports on international NGO (non-governmental organisation) activity from a pro-Israel perspective.
NGO Monitor was founded in 2001 by Gerald M. Steinberg under the auspices of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
NGO Monitor has been criticized by academic figures, diplomats, and journalists for allowing its research and conclusions to be driven by politics, for not examining right-wing NGOs, and for spreading misinformation. A number of academics have written that NGO Monitor's aims and activities are political in nature.
Structure and staff NGO Monitor is the central project of the Organization for NGO Responsibility, an independent nonprofit organization registered in Israel. Its president is Gerald M. Steinberg, professor emeritus of political science at Bar-Ilan University.
Its staff includes: Gerald M. Steinberg, president Naftali Balanson, COO Anne Herzberg, legal advisor
As of 2025, NGO Monitor's advisory council members included Elliott Abrams, Alan Dershowitz, Douglas Murray, and James Woolsey. Steinberg has reportedly worked for the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Office of the Prime Minister while heading NGO Monitor.
Funding The Wechsler Family Foundation is one of NGO Monitor's founding donors. Other acknowledged supporters are Nina Rosenwald and Newt Becker.Founding Donor. NGO Monitor. Archived on 12 April 2008 Since its separation from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and its formation as an independent organization in 2007, NGO Monitor has drawn on a wider range of funding sources. NGO Monitor has said it receives no governmental support and is funded by private donors and foundations, though it did receive some funds, in 2010 and 2011, via the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), a quasi-governmental agency.The Amutah For Financial Responsibility (R.A.) Financial Statements as of December 31, 2010; The Amutah for NGO Responsibility (R.A.) Financial Statements as of December 31, 2011. On the archived website
Other donors include the Center for Jewish Community Studies (part of JCPA),Financial Report 2009 the Orion Foundation, Matan, Peter Simpson, Nir Ben Josef, Real Property Investment DR. Tuchmen,Financial Report 2012 and Jewish Federations of North America.TO MAKE A DONATION. NGO Monitor. Archived on 21 September 2013
According to a February 2012 article by Uri Blau in Haaretz, his examination of NGO Monitor's finances revealed that "the organization sought to block the publication of one contributor and to get hundreds of thousands of Shekels from anonymous sources". The donations in question were channeled through the Jewish Agency for Israel and Matan, and originated with undisclosed donors from outside Israel. In the same article, Jason Edelstein, NGO Monitor's communications director, is quoted as saying "all of our financial information is fully disclosed with the Registrar for Non-Profits as required by law".
A 2015 report published by the Peace Now movement discovered that NGO Monitor failed to file a legally required disclosure regarding the source of its funding, and that many of the group's funding sources are hidden from the public.Peace Now: 95% of funding for right-wing NGOs hidden from public . Jerusalem Post, 14 December 2015Funding Sources and Transparency For Nine Associations Identified with the Israeli Right Wing . Ilan Sheizaf, September 2015
NGO Monitor's U.S. sources of funding, as revealed by U.S. tax filings, have included the Abstraction Fund, American Jewish Committee, Ben and Esther Rosenbloom Foundation, CJM Foundation, Jewish Community Federation, Koret Foundation, Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund, Middle East Forum, MZ Foundation, Network for Good, Paul E. Singer Foundation, Milstein Family Foundation, Newton and Rochelle Becker affiliated charities, Shillman Foundation, Sinder Foundation, Vanguard Charitable Endowment Fund, and the William P. Goldman and Brothers Foundation.
Activities
Legal activities Rashid Khalidi has called NGO Monitor an organisation that opposes legal means against Israel and at the same time a proponent of the use of legal means against those who criticise Israel. Sabine Lang writes that NGO Monitor has focused on the use of legal means to limit funding to NGOs.
Neve Gordon, writing in Law & Society Review, describes the term as part of a campaign to portray human rights as a national security threat and to impede organizations that expose human rights abuses, using NGO Monitor's activities as one of its main examples.
In January 2010, Steinberg brought a case before the European Court of Justice arguing that it was wrong of the European Commission to withhold some of the contents of over 200 financial documents that NGO Monitor had requested regarding the funding of Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. In November 2012, the court said that NGO Monitor could not receive the financial documents regarding 16 projects of human rights organizations in Israel, calling it "in part, manifestly inadmissible and, in part, manifestly lacking any foundation in law". The EU said "that the Middle East is an unstable region, and therefore such information may pose a danger to human rights groups".
In 2013, NGO Monitor issued a report on the findings of the 2011 Israeli law requiring Israeli non-governmental organizations to disclose financial contributions from foreign donors and governments. The report assessed that foreign funding of Israeli NGOs totalled NIS 34,355,579 in 2012. Steinberg called the new law an "international model for transparency". He also said, "the amount of foreign funding going to NGOs involved in polarizing activity in the context of the Arab–Israeli conflict [is] alarming." The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) spokesman Marc Grey said that ACRI's donors were already listed on its website, making the law "redundant", and that the donations allowed organizations to protect human rights and freedoms, adding, "the basis for Israel's relations with democratic countries is shared values – democracy and human rights above all – the State of Israel itself is a recipient of funds from these very same countries, in the framework of trade agreements, investments, loans, and donations." A spokesman for B'Tselem said the information had been published on its website for years and that NGO Monitor is a group of "Israeli government apologists masquerading as an objective watchdog. They do not even practice what they preach in terms of their own transparency and their sloppy, third-rate research."
Criticisms of NGOs NGO Monitor criticized the Ford Foundation for funding the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. The Ford Foundation has modified its policies regarding funding of NGOs. It also has taken exception to such accusations and says its involvement in the Palestinian territories reflects its belief that a just solution to the conflict is vitally important to the region and the peoples directly affected and that it also funds groups such as the New Israel Fund.
NGO Monitor also criticized B'Tselem, "The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories".
NGO Monitor has criticized the New Israel Fund, which says its primary objective is "to strengthen Israel's democracy". Larry Garber, then executive director of the New Israel Fund, and Eliezer Ya'ari, then NIF's Israel director and a retired Israeli air force major, wrote in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post that if Israel accepts Steinberg's premises, then "Israel's credibility—and, more important, the nation's morality—will suffer."
With the stated aim of encouraging critical debate on the role of NGOs in the Middle East conflict, NGO Monitor held a 2006 conference in Jerusalem with 21 humanitarian aid groups in attendance. A panel discussed the pros and cons of NGOs dealing with Hamas. NGOs such as Amnesty International, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights were invited to speak but declined. Amnesty International said the conference did "not give a balanced ground for open and fair dialogue" while another human rights group accused NGO Monitor of "partiality".
In 2007, the Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem (ARIJ) and other NGOs successfully sued NGO Monitor for libel after it said the groups "emphasize external issues including the justification of violence". Steinberg was subsequently forced to apologize.
Editing Wikipedia
In June 2013, NGO Monitor's online communications editor, Arnie Draiman, was indefinitely banned from editing Wikipedia articles about the Arab–Israeli conflict due to biased editing, concealing his place of work, and using a second account in a way Wikipedia policy forbids. Draiman was a major contributor to the articles on NGO Monitor and Gerald Steinberg, and made hundreds of edits on articles about human rights organizations, including B'Tselem, the New Israel Fund, Human Rights Watch, and many others Steinberg opposes.
Reception Political research conducted at Lund University in 2019 rated NGO Monitor poorly for its "counter-democratic activities" and found that the organization was "heavily involved in [the] denunciation" of human rights NGOs by depicting them as "unprofessional and biased". In all of NGO Monitor's reports, it was found to criticize NGOs that "had a perspective of promoting Palestinian human rights and/or taking a critical stance toward Israeli Government policies vis-à-vis Palestinians". The research also found that NGO Monitor appeared to "be promoting pro-Israel views regarding the conflict in a partisan way" and that, organizationally, NGO Monitor "might be less independent" and "tied to strong political interests and actors".
In 2005, Leonard Fein wrote in The Forward that NGO Monitor is "an organization that believes that the best way to defend Israel is to condemn anyone who criticizes it".
Yehudit Karp, a member of the International Council of the New Israel Fund and a former deputy attorney general of Israel, said that NGO Monitor has released information "it knew to be wrong, along with some manipulative interpretation".
The New Israel Fund said in May 2011 that NGO Monitor "knowingly published false information in its newsletter" about the NIF funding of Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP). NIF said that NGO Monitor's director was given the correct information verbally in advance. NGO Monitor responded by asserting that its report was based on NIF grant information. NIF rejoined that its public records lag the end of the reporting year by several months, but reiterated that updated information was given to NGO Monitor verbally. NIF also said that it asked CWP to remove mention of NIF's name from the CWP website.
Yoaz Hendel, a former adviser to Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu who is now a columnist at Yediot Aharonot, called NGO Monitor a "serious voice in the field". image of a clipping from Yediot Acharanot from September 2012
In July 2009, HRW issued a statement saying, "NGO Monitor ... conducts no field investigations and condemns anyone who criticizes Israel".
Uriel Heilman, a managing editor for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and a senior reporter for The Jerusalem Post, wrote in an opinion column that there were a "couple of disingenuous (read: inaccurate) elements" in the May 2009 digest of NGO Monitor. Heilman rhetorically asked whether the situation itself was "enough for Steinberg and NGO Monitor's followers without Steinberg having to stretch the truth?" Steinberg later conceded that the statement's phrasing was confusing and revised it.