A scathing report released by NGO Monitor on Thursday reveals that the Jerusalem-based United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA oPt) “regularly” misrepresents data to distort perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict against Israel.
OCHA oPt “regularly presents data in a manipulative way that erases the context of terrorism and distorts law and morality,” by not distinguishing between Palestinian terrorists and regular civilians, and by amplifying Palestinian causality claims, NGO Monitor said, adding that the agency also falsely equates between legal Israel self-defence tactics and illegal Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
For example, stated the report, the agency “presents pie charts purporting to show the number of ‘Palestinian fatalities by Israeli forces in the oPt.’ Yet, this data as presented does not provide any information as to how the fatalities took place, including how many of the fatalities occurred while Palestinians were attempting to murder Israeli civilians or engaged in violent confrontations with Israeli law enforcement. As a result, it is impossible to make any meaningful assessments from OCHA’s figures.”
Furthermore, according to the report, “OCHA rarely, if ever, cites relevant Israeli government information, including detailed statistics published by the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israel Defence Forces, or the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs….OCHA’s website also highlights a number of biased videos reflecting the Palestinian narrative.”
David Carden, the head of OCHA oPt, responded to the accusations, saying, “OCHA’s office in the oPt carries out its operations in line with our global mandate to coordinate principled humanitarian assistance and protection to people in need, in line with General Assembly Resolution 46/182. We have just received the report and we are examining its contents. From a preliminary review it appears that OCHA’s work in the oPt is misrepresented.”
