Israel’s GONGOs: Upholding Zionism and Fighting Human Rights NGOs

Abstract

Non-governmental organisations have been playing a significant role in international relations for a long time. When observing the Israeli NGOs, we see that those organisations who have gained prominence on the world stage to date are the NGOs that advocate for Palestinian rights and oppose the occupation. However, the role of pro-government NGOs (GONGOs) in Israel has also increased over the past ten years, both in defence of settlers’ rights and in defence of public interests. Given that the topic of Palestinian rights has been regularly on the agenda of UN bodies for a significant period of time, the activities of such NGOs could easily have been overshadowed by Israeli human rights organisations. This article focuses on GONGOs and examines their repertoire of collective action, with an emphasis on social movement theory. The main roots of GONGOs lie in the settlement movement established in 1974, but the main catalysts for their establishment, as reflected in the article, were the implementation of the unilateral disengagement plan in 2005 and the intensification of the call for a boycott of Israel. With objectives such as: preserving Israel’s image as a Jewish and democratic state and protecting the rights of settlers, GONGO has succeeded in reducing anti-Israeli rhetoric, a fact that is also reflected at the legislative level.