Press Release
November 26, 2014

Contact: Melody Coven
NGO Monitor
+972.54.453.4866
melody.coven@ngo-monitor.org

Adalah's Misleading Charges of Racism

Jerusalem - Today, NGO Monitor released a report on the Israeli NGO Adalah
and its misleading database that mischaracterizes Israeli laws as "racist."
The report, "Imagining Racism to Demonize Israel," highlights the
exploitative charges in Adalah's "Discriminatory Laws in Israel" database.
According to NGO Monitor's analysis, Adalah brands all Jewish aspects of
Israel as racist, ignores laws that specifically protect ethnic minorities,
misquotes laws, and deceptively includes fringe proposals that never became
law.

Adalah's database, launched in March 2013, lists 101 laws and proposed
pieces of legislation that it considers to "discriminate against Palestinian
citizens of Israel in all areas of life." The database has been cited
numerous times by pro-Palestinian activists as proof of supposed Israeli
discrimination in publications as diverse at BET and the New York Times,
despite its distortions and radically anti-Jewish political agenda.

"Adalah's law database promotes the false and demonizing allegation that
'Zionism is racism', and labels all references to the Jewish connection to
Israel, including use of the Hebrew calendar or menorah symbol, as 'racist'.
This is part of the political warfare strategy Adalah helped formulate at
the 2001 UN Durban Conference," said Professor Gerald Steinberg, president
of NGO Monitor. "Adalah also strips away the comparative context, treating
Israel's status as the nation-state of the Jewish people as if it were
unique among democratic societies."

Many of the laws and proposed laws in Adalah's database are entirely
unrelated to Israeli Arabs or other minorities. In addition, Adalah claims
that laws benefiting those who completed military or national service
discriminate against Arabs, ignoring the fact that thousands of Arabs,
including Bedouin and Druze, serve in the Israeli armed forces and national
service programs, and are allotted the same benefits package as other
veterans.

The database, published in English, also repeatedly misquotes and
misconstrues laws, while failing to provide translations of the laws to
facilitate independent evaluation by readers who cannot access the original
texts. Furthermore, 44 of the 101 items in Adalah's database are Knesset
proposals that never passed, obscuring Israel's vibrant democratic process.

"It is disconcerting that European governments, along with the New Israel
Fund, continue to support Adalah," said Professor Steinberg. "Its efforts to
deny the legitimacy of Israel and its democratic processes are incompatible
with the stated goals and guidelines of its funders. There is an urgent need
for due diligence on the part of those who continue to fund Adalah and
similar NGOs."

See also: http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/adalah

NGO Monitor, an independent research institution, was founded in 2002 in the
wake of the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa. At this
conference, 1,500 NGOs formulated the "Durban Strategy" which aims to
isolate Israel through measures such as boycott, divestment and sanctions
(BDS) campaigns, lawfare, delegitimization and demonization.

NGO Monitor (www.ngo-monitor.org), is the leading source of expertise on the
activities and funding of political advocacy NGOs involved in the
Arab-Israeli conflict. NGO Monitor provides detailed and fully sourced
information and analysis, promotes accountability, and supports discussion
on the reports and activities of NGOs (non-governmental organizations)
claiming to advance human rights and humanitarian agendas.

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