NGO Monitor on eliminating human rights monitoring of Israel entirely and smearing anyone who supports this vital activity". The 2013 Menachem Begin Prize was awarded to NGO Monitor, "a leading organization defending the State of Israel and the Jewish people." The Begin Prize is awarded for “extraordinary act(s) for the benefit of the State of Israel and/or the Jewish People.” Natan Sharansky said, “NGO Monitor is the leading organization defending the State of Israel and the Jewish people.” Leonard Fein, writing for "The Forward" in 2005, said that NGO Monitor is "an organization that believes that the best way to defend Israel
Natan Sharansky becoming a refusenik, Sharansky became a human rights activist, working as a translator for dissident and nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, and spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Group and a leader for the rights of refuseniks. On 15 March 1977 Sharansky was arrested on multiple charges including high treason and spying for Americans. The accusation stipulated that he passed to the West lists of over 1,300 "refuseniks", many of whom were denied exit visas because of their knowledge of state secrets, which resulted in a publication by Robert C. Toth, "Russ Indirectly Reveal 'State Secrets': Clues in Denials of Jewish Visas".