By Samuel Sokol and David Bedein
5 Towns Jewish Times
Thursday, July 02, 2009
“The soldiers are the grandchildren of the Nazis’ victims, the Nazis’ survivors. They have come here to consume food quickly and consume life quickly. This is the true image of Israel.” So goes a news story posted on the website of the Nazareth-based NGO, I’lam: Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel (www.ilamcenter.org/publications/naffaa01.shtml). Founded by freshman Arab Israeli Knesset legislator Hanin Zoabi of the Balad party, I’lam does not hide its agenda: to question the legitimacy of Israel in the court of world opinion.
In the aftermath of the October 2000 riots, Zoabi, a self-described Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, co-founded the NGO I’lam, where she later served as director. Under her guidance, I’lam issued press statements, engaged in lobbying over policy, led tours for foreign correspondents, provided information on Israeli-Arabs to Jewish journalists, and ran Arabic language courses in journalism.
In one of her first interviews with the Israeli media as an MK, Ms. Zoabi went on the record with the Jerusalem Post as saying that she supported Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons as a counterbalance to Israel. In the interview she also stated that she is not loyal to the state of Israel as currently constituted. MK Zoabi, in her capacity as director of I’lam, helped draft and signed the Haifa Declaration. The Declaration was a proposal, supported by a large cross section of Arab civil society, which called for the negation of Israel’s Jewish identity and for a “comprehensive change in Israeli policy, whereby Israel abandons its destructive role towards the peoples of the region…”
Most recently, Zoabi had kind words to say about the armed rebellion against Israel. As she said to Australian news outlet GreenLeft, “We don’t live in the territories, we cannot throw stones and we cannot participate in the legitimate resistance against occupation.”
I’lam is also connected with the Washington DC-based New Israel Fund, an American Jewish philanthropic foundation, which also sponsors Israeli-Arab NGOs Adalah and Mossawa. All these groups call for the removal of Israel’s Jewish identity and for the return of Arab refugees to the lands inside the 1948 armistice lines. In addition to receiving funds from the NIF, I’lam is also a grantee of the organization Al-Quds: Capital of Arab Culture, a group spawned by both the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League.
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