An Arab-Israeli research group in Haifa is suing a Canadian non-profit organization to restore funding after its three-year grants were terminated after the second year.
The group, Mada al-Carmel, promotes itself as a 10-year-old Arab-Israeli social research non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Haifa and received two three-year grants from a Canadian group in 2008. The grants, worth a total of some $800,000, were provided by the International Development Research Centre, a corporation funded by the Canadian government.
Mada al-Carmel is suing the IDRC in a federal court in Ottawa to quash the termination for lack of cause. IDRC president David Malone, a former government diplomat, however, told The Globe and Mail that the there was indeed cause, albeit internally-based. The IDRC mandate is to fund research in developing nations, and Israel is considered a high-income country.
He admitted, however, that the issue of the grants had been brought to his attention in the first place by an inquiry from an Israeli advocacy group, the NGO Monitor, whose director Prof. Gerald Steinberg charged Mada al-Carmel with being part of a network of organizations that accuse Israel of sexually abusing Arab women.
Nadim Rouhana, Mada al-Carmel's founding director and a professor at Tufts University in Boston, has denied the charge, and alleges that sources close to Israel's government pressured Canada and the IDRC to cut off funding to the group.
'New Ways of Thinking' or More 'Resistance'?
Mada al-Carmel is a pro-Palestinian organization that states that its mission is to “facilitate links with Israeli, Palestinian and international academics, NGOs, activists and political actors to formulate public policy proposals.”
The group also explains in its mission statement that it means to “generate new ways of thinking and discourses and about Palestinian-Jewish relations in the country” – but the reality appears to be different, unless the 'new way of thinking' is a euphemism for rejecting the Jewish state.
A recent event opened by the organization's director of Gender Studies apparently promoted, among other things, continued “resistance” against Israel and rejection of integration with Israeli society. Posted on the organization's web site is a May 2010 article about the event, which commemorating the “Nakba," the Arabic term that literally means “tragedy, or disaster," a reference to the founding of the State of Israel.
Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian addressed the audience prior to the screening of a film, “Salt of this Sea,” about a young woman born in Brooklyn, New York, who decided to move to the Palestinian Authority, where her parents were born.
“We meet today to commemorate the Nakba, which was waged against our people and has not yet ended, just as the system of persecution, domination, and attempted silencing has not ended... and of our unending efforts to reject and resist it,” Shalhoub-Kevorkian told the audience.
Her statement was made in reference to the imprisonment of Amir Mahoul and Dr. Omar Said, who were jailed by Israel on charges of spying for the Hizbullah terrorist organization.