Canada Charity Partners, NGO Monitor, and the tax-receipted Zionist lobby
Did you know that for decades, registered charity status in Canada has been used as a tool for Zionist political groups to fund war crimes in Palestine and related Zionist political interests? If not, we don’t blame you. With deceptively vague names like Canada Charity Partners (CCP) and the Foundation for Public Policy Development (FPPD), these organizations solicit tax-deductible donations that they claim will be used for charitable purposes, but instead fund genocidal activities. CCP, for instance, funds a number of illegal settlement organizations: Jewish Community Hebron, Ateret Cohanim, Geula Titnu Larets, and the Temple Institute, among others.
CCP and FPPD also funnel donations to Israeli political lobbies – including ones that have close ties to the Israeli government.
One of the most egregious examples of how donations are funneled from Canada to Zionist political interest groups is NGO Monitor.
NGO Monitor was created in Jerusalem in 2002 with the explicit intention to attack or delegitimize NGOs critical of Israel. Its founder, Gerald Steinberg, stated he wanted to target groups that use human rights “as a weapon against Israel.” Widely discredited, NGO Monitor is even banned as a source on Wikipedia.
While NGO Monitor doesn’t have charitable status in Canada, since 2020, it has received over $900 000 in tax-deductible Canadian donations through the FPPD and CCP.
According to NGO Monitor’s 2023 Annual Report, it appears that the Foundation for Public Policy Development’s sole purpose is to raise funds for NGO Monitor.
Academic Neve Gordon described NGO Monitor as:
“The first Israeli organization to voice its criticism of liberal human rights organizations . . . claiming that they constitute a national security threat to Israel.”
Lawyer Michael Sfard outlined NGO’s most common tactics:
“[NGO] Monitor sticks to anti-occupation civil society organizations, following their activity and their fundraising efforts and exerting great efforts to harm their ability to raise money. In order to realize this goal, NGO Monitor has created an industry of articles, data sheets, and posts which circularly cite one another and slander these organizations.”
While NGO Monitor has attacked many Israeli civil society organizations it views as sympathetic towards Palestinian human rights, it has also set its sights on international groups that receive funding from the Canadian government. These targets include World Vision, Islamic Relief Canada, Oxfam and CARE.
NGO Monitor’s own 2017 annual report laid out a mandate to begin the “naming and shaming” of BDS supporters, in an attempt to attack their funding sources.
NGO Monitor also smears pro-Palestinian groups for their affiliations. This has included the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a group that NGO Monitor aggressively lobbied to be listed by Canada as a terror organization over unproven allegations.
They are currently focusing similar lobbying efforts on 111 other groups, including the Palestinian Youth Movement and Independent Jewish Voices.
Gerald Steinberg, who remains NGO Monitor’s president, was once on the steering team of Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office, and was an advisor to the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council. NGO Monitor’s board includes former Israeli officials like Maurice Hirsh (former chief military prosecutor in the West Bank) and Yosef Kuperwasse (former director general of Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs.)
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has touted a strong collaborative relationship with NGO Monitor, who assist them in info-sharing and international political lobbying efforts. The report Shrinking Space, compiled by civil society and human rights organizations within Israel, discusses these damning government ties:
“[NGO Monitor] publicly boasts of close ties with the government and relies on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to facilitate lobby meetings . . . sometimes attending them along with Israeli diplomats. NGO Monitor plays a key role in providing Israeli ministries and diplomatic missions with misleading information to defame Israel and Palestinian human rights organizations, and mobilizes the government to pressure European counterparts to stop funding them.”
Present and Past Canadian NGO Monitor board members include Vivian Bercovici (who worked for Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube, Michal Cotler-Wunsh (former Knesset member, and daughter of former Attorney General Irwin Cotler) and former senator Linda Frum. Frum was on NGO Monitor’s international advisory board during her time as senator and also while presentations were being made at the Senate on the Canada Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA) in 2019.
In 2014, Stephen Harper led a “fireside chat” organized by B’nai Brith Canada and NGO Monitor – a tax-subsidized event featuring the Prime Minister, promoting the political interests of another country.
Why is Canada funding NGO Monitor, a pro-genocide, pro-apartheid organization that:
– Retains close ties to a foreign government
– Promotes the political interests of a foreign government
– Exists only to attack both political speech and civil society?
A complaint has been filed with the Canada Revenue Agency demanding an investigation into NGO Monitor regarding the illegitimate status of its government tax-subsidized donations. Support that complaint through the link in bio, or via this QR code:
