New Israel Fund, Adalah and the Support to Save Gaza Tunnel Terrorists - by Stephen M. Flatow

...Adalah is not fighting “for minorities, for the voiceless, and for the powerless,” as the New Israel Fund claims. Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists are not a persecuted minority. They are not “voiceless” or “powerless.” They have a voice through their many supporters around the world, and they have the power of their missiles, guns, and knives.

Stephen M. Flatow..
jewishpress.com..
09 November '17..
Link: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/american-jews-trying-to-save-gaza-tunnel-terrorists/2017/11/09/

An Arab extremist group has submitted an urgent petition to Israel’s Supreme Court, demanding that Palestinians be permitted to rescue Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who may be trapped in a terror tunnel bombed by Israel.

And guess who’s funding the petitioners? American Jews.

The organization trying to save the terrorists is called Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. What the rescue of Hamas and Islamic Jihad murderers in Gaza has to do with “Arab minority rights in Israel” is anybody’s guess.

But that doesn’t seem to bother Adalah’s many donors. In 2016 and 2017, the Swiss Foreign Ministry gave Adalah $165,000. Prominent charitable organizations in Belgium, Germany, Holland, Spain, and England also have contributed generously in recent years.

One of the largest donors to Adalah is the liberal American Jewish organization New Israel Fund. According to NGO Monitor, New Israel Fund contributed more than $2 million to Adalah from 2008 to 2016.

It’s not as if Adalah ordinarily is a reasonable, moderate organization and this petition to save terrorists is some kind of aberration. On the contrary. Adalah’s record of extremist activity is long enough to fill several filing cabinets at New Israel Fund headquarters.

In other words, the folks at NIF have always known exactly what they were getting with Adalah. Yet they keep on signing the checks.

Riddled With Falsehoods - New Israel Fund Response to Im Tirtzu Charges

Elder of Ziyon..
Algemeiner.com..
14 December '12..








Zionist youth movement Im Tirtzu recently wrote the following open letter to the new head of the New Israel Fund, an organization which funds anti-Israel NGOs:

Dear Mr. Lurie:

We write to ask a simple question: Do you stand by the latest accusations NIF-funded groups are making against Israel?

After Operation Cast Lead in 2009, groups funded by the NIF led a campaign that sought to portray Israel as a war criminal and human rights violator. That campaign culminated in the Goldstone Report, a ruthlessly biased attack on Israel that cited NIF groups hundreds of times. Even Judge Goldstone himself has disowned it.

Now, in the weeks after the latest conflict in Gaza, NIF groups are once again making misleading and unfounded accusations against the IDF.

B’tselem, Adalah, Gisha, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel are claiming that the IDF targeted journalists and civilians, violated international law, and is perpetrating “collective punishment,” a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

In the weeks leading up to Israel’s response, as terrorist rockets forced thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters, none of these groups criticized the attacks or stood up for Israel’s right – its human right, and its right under international law – to defend itself.

Despite this troubling record, we hold out hope for your leadership as the new president of the New Israel Fund. We ask that you hold the groups you fund responsible for the veracity of their accusations, and that you demand just as much accountability from them as they do from the IDF.

And if you do not stand by their latest false accusations, Israelis deserve to know: What will you do to reform the New Israel Fund?

Sincerely,

Im Tirtzu

The Zionist Student Movement

The NIF response, posted below paragraph by paragraph with my comments, is astonishing:

(Continue)

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Haaretz and the apartheid pseudo-poll

Dr. Gerald M. Steinberg..
Israel Hayom..
01 November '12..

The pseudo-poll and headline published by Haaretz on Oct. 23 is now generally acknowledged as a major mistake. The poll's manipulative methodology and shallow questions have been dissected in newspaper columns and talk shows across the Israeli spectrum. Haaretz was forced to publish a correction, which was largely hidden, and Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy wrote a minimal retraction.

However, a great deal of damage has been done outside Israel, where this farce was used to further the campaign of anti-Israel political warfare and demonization. The British Guardian and Independent, the Canadian Globe and Mail and Australia's Sydney Morning Herald ran the story accompanied by headlines as misleading as the headline on the original Haaretz piece: “Many Israelis support apartheid-style state, poll suggests,” and “The new Israeli apartheid.”

The poll that generated such attention was flawed in many dimensions. In Maariv, Ben-Dror Yemini details many of the false claims and absurd statements it contains. And in Haaretz, former Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Dr. Yehuda Ben-Meir emphasized that the actual conclusion to be drawn from the poll results was “exactly the opposite of what's written in the article's headline” and that the majority of Israelis were “unwilling to live in a country with an apartheid regime.” As a “push” poll used for crude political manipulation, and involving only 503 people, this survey was driven by clear political objectives.

New Israel Fund (NIF), Jewish Values and Atonement

Gerald M. Steinberg..
The Algemeiner..
23 September '12..

In its September newsletter, the New Israel Fund (NIF) urged Israelis to examine their behavior (“cheshbon nefesh”), declaring “We have been telling you for some time about the upsurge in hatred and incitement in Israel…” But, in Jewish tradition, the processes of introspection and atonement for sins of commission and omission begin at home, including for the NIF.

As the most powerful political and social framework in Israel outside of the government, the NIF exerts major influence through its funding—providing millions of dollars every year to dozens of organizations.

The founding donors and officials sought to promote important social objectives in a Zionist framework. But over the years, the Zionist commitment became blurred, and money from pro-Israel donors was channeled to extreme anti-Israel organizations, including key supporters of the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaigns. NIF’s network also played a central role in the discredited Goldstone report, which falsely accused the Israeli military of systematic war crimes. In addition, while claiming to promote liberal, progressive Jewish values, a number of NIF-funded groups push highly intolerant and polarizing agendas, amplifying the impact of radical fringes in Israeli society, at the expense of the democratic consensus.

As a result, NIF is viewed with increasing suspicion by many Israelis and in a number of diaspora communities. In response, in September 2010, the NIF leadership belatedly adopted guidelines to prevent funding for groups that work “to deny the right of the Jewish people to sovereign self-determination within Israel.”

Fresnozionism - New Israel Fund supports pro-BDS group

Fresnozionism.org..
08 February '12..




I’ve dumped on the New Israel Fund (NIF) before.

But there are still those who think it is a progressive organization that funds initiatives to make Israel more democratic, to improve the treatment of women and Arab citizens, to increase tolerance of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism in Israel, etc.

Some of its grantees are focused on these kinds of things, but it has another side which is not so progressive.

Let’s leave aside whether well-off American liberals really understand the differences between Israel and the US, whether the silly comparisons between Arabs and African-Americans make sense, and whether they have the slightest idea of what it is like to live under rocket bombardment or send their children to compulsory military service.

Leibler - New Israel Fund Sparks Furor Down Under

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking From Jerusalem
02 December '11

http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=3774

In June 2010, amidst considerable controversy, an Australian branch of the New Israel Fund (NIF) was launched by its president, former MK Naomi Chazan, who a few months earlier had been disinvited from an Australian Zionist speaking engagement because of controversies associated with the NIF.

In September last year, I wrote a critical review of the NIF (insert link), observing that whilst the majority of the organizations who were beneficiaries of over $200 million of funds dispersed by the NIF were engaged in worthy welfare and developmental projects, vast funds were also being provided to groups engaged in campaigns to delegitimize Israel.

Foremost amongst these groups, I referred to Adala which, in addition to promoting the Goldstone Report, urged foreign governments “to reevaluate their relationship with Israel”, described Israel as “a colonial enterprise promoting apartheid”, called for implementing the Palestinian right of return to Israel, provided affidavits to Spanish courts to charge Israeli officials with war crimes and defended a Hezbollah spy as a “human rights defender”.

I also related to NIF-sponsored “Breaking the Silence” another organization which had paved the way for the Goldstone Report.

Presumably in order to improve their image, Australian NIF invited a prominent Israeli to promote their case to the Jewish community and Australian media.

They made the disastrous blunder of selecting David Landau, a talented and articulate writer who has published a number of influential books, including the recent biography of Ben-Gurion based on interviews with President Shimon Peres. The NIF also highlighted the fact that he was orthodox and a former yeshiva student.

However, Landau, former editor of Haaretz is renowned for promoting far left views which the majority of Israelis would consider contemptible. He is the Israeli correspondent of The Economist which, to put it mildly, is unfriendly to Israel. He is also highly regarded by the BBC, which frequently interviews him.

Many Israelis still recollect that in September 2007 in the course of an intimate gathering at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, he informed the then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that ”it has always been my wet dream to address the Secretary of State” and suggest how to act in relation to Israel. He then went on to describe Israel as a politically “failed state” and urged the US impose a solution on Israel, telling Rice “I implore you to intervene” adding that the government of Israel “wished to be raped”. His remarks appeared in the media and created a considerable furor.

Navon - Protecting Israeli Democracy from the NIF

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
25 October '11



http://navonsblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/protecting-israeli-democracy-from-nif.html

Israel’s social protest died out with the opening of the school year. Earlier this month, the Israeli Government approved the recommendations of the Trachtenberg Committee, which include far-reaching measures aimed at easing the burden of the middle class and at making life in Israel more affordable. Yet it would be misleading to believe that the social unrest is behind us. In fact, the self-appointed leaders of last summer’s tent protest announced that they will renew their struggle after the High Holidays.

For a start, they rejected in toto the recommendations of the Trachtenberg Committee. Daphni Leef, who emerged as one of the movement’s iconic leaders, has declared that there would be a popular general strike on November 1st to shut down Israel’s economic activity and to topple the government. Two days before the strike, a huge demonstration is supposed to take place throughout the country as a “last warning” to the Prime Minister that he must meet the protesters’ demands. Eldad Yaniv, from the “National Left” movement, warned in Ha’aretz’s October 11 edition that the struggle will continue “until the 120 loafers [e.g. MKs] go home.”

The leaders of Israel’s social protest talk and behave as if Israel was not a democracy, and as if Israel’s government had not been elected by a large majority. They claim that most Israelis support their demand. Let them prove that in the next elections. For better or worse, democracy grants power to the people. In representative democracy, the majority runs the government for a set period of time. By trying to impose their demands on an elected government, the unelected representatives of the social protest are breaking the rules of democracy.

Fresnozionism - NIF go home

Fresnozionism.org
09 August '11


http://fresnozionism.org/2011/08/nif-go-home/


Hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities can’t be ignored, although one should keep in mind that there are more than 5 million registered voters in Israel (in 2009, 65% of them voted), and most of them are not in the streets.

There’s no doubt that many of the demonstrators’ complaints are justified. It’s just Economics 101 that monopoly or oligopoly-dominated markets result in higher prices. It’s a fact that a great degree of income inequality creates dissatisfaction. And it’s a fact that there is a real problem finding affordable housing, and not just in the most desirable parts of Tel Aviv.

But there is also no doubt that some are trying to turn the protests into a movement to replace the government with one more to their liking, and not just because of economic issues. As I wrote last week, connections between protest leaders and not only anti-Bibi but even anti-Zionist elements have been evident from the beginning.

In particular, the American New Israel Fund (NIF) has been playing a central role in financing the protests and advising their leaders. The NIF has always been arrogant about its ‘right’ to directly interfere in the politics of another nation, and the arrogance is openly on display in a fundraising letter sent to American donors by Daniel Sokatch, NIF CEO and Rachel Liel, his Executive Director in Israel, which includes this:

150,000 of my fellow Israelis went into the streets Saturday night to demand a better, more just Israel…

Our Shatil organizers are in the field, lending expertise at protest sites all over the country. And our emergency grants help sustain the activists in their ongoing protest.

I just bet.

The NIF has supported — and continues to support — various groups which engage in demonization of the IDF, call for the ‘dezionization’ of the state and boycott-divestment-sanctions of Israel. This is described in detail in my earlier post, “The New Israel Fund — the bad and the ugly.”

The NIF’s “better, more just Israel” is not the Jewish state that the great majority of Israelis, or even the majority of demonstrators, want.

If the protest leaders want their legitimate demands taken seriously, then they should tell the NIF and its “Shatil organizers” to go home.

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The New Israel Fund — the bad and the ugly

Fresnozionism.org
16 June '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/06/the-new-israel-fund-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

The following is from an article by Anne Hertzberg of the intrepid NGO Monitor:

…a group of NGOs, primarily funded by European governments, the EU, and the New Israel Fund (NIF) have initiated a campaign to denigrate the Israeli justice system in order to bolster efforts to have Israelis arrested for “war crimes” in Europe, and in order to support the PLO’s application to the International Criminal Court for an investigation of Israel.

They also play an integral role in the PLO strategy to use UN frameworks, not to resolve the conflict, but to “internationalize the conflict as a legal matter” and to “pave the way for (the Palestinians) to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice” as Mahmoud Abbas tellingly revealed in a May 17 New York Times op-ed…

Adalah, an Israeli NGO heavily funded by the NIF and the EU, is a leader of this strategy. At a 2008 conference in Brussels funded by the Swedish government, Adalah’s General Director Hassan Jabareen recommended that Palestinian activists “should try to portray Israel as an inherent undemocratic state” and “use that as part of campaigning internationally.”

Adalah has implemented this strategy in many submissions to UN committees, including the Human Rights Council. Additionally, in 2009, Adalah filed an “expert” opinion on behalf of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in a lawsuit brought by the group in Spain seeking the arrest and imprisonment of seven Israeli officials for alleged “war crimes” arising out of the killing of a senior Hamas terrorist, Salah Shehade.

In 2007, Adalah presented its proposal for a “Democratic Constitution” for Israel. In its introduction, Adalah begins by demanding that

NIF Funds successful boycott action

Fresnozionism.org
10 May '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/05/nif-funds-successful-boycott-action/



News item:

German national railway company Deutsche Bahn will cease working on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem train line because it passes through the West Bank, German newspaper Der Spiegel reported this week.


According to the report, the railway company decided to abandon the project following mounting pressure from German, Palestinian and Israeli elements, headed by the Coalition of Women for Peace – an Israeli feminist organization…


Project coordinator Merav Amir lauded the decision of the German government, saying “I want to congratulate the German government for making such a clear and bold statement about the illegality of this train route under international law.

So who and what is “The Coalition of Women for Peace” (we won’t even ask what train routes and Israel-bashing have to do with feminism)? Let me quote NGO Monitor:

As of 2009, Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP) has ten members, including New Profile, Bat Shalom, Machsom Watch and Women in Black, and provides an additional platform by which these NGOs promote their campaigns…


Reflecting its political agenda, CWP states that it “is committed to the struggle to end the occupation”; claims “to act for peace, justice, and equality in the Israeli Society,” and uses demonization rhetoric such as referring to the security barrier as “The Apartheid Wall.”


CWP also joined “Zochrot” and “New profile” in celebration of “The 59th Anniversary of the Naqba” during Israel’s Independence Day.


CWP promotes the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement through a project entitled “Who Profits from the Occupation,” “exposing companies and corporations involved in the occupation.”


Also involved in campaigns against Ahava cosmetics and Agrexco produce in Italy, and in support of the Berkeley divestment vote.


Lobbied the British government in December 2009 to “Enable Prosecution of Israeli War Criminals.”

Sounds like a real pro-Israel, Zionist outfit, doesn’t it? Let’s follow the money. Surely they are funded by Iran or Saudi Arabia? But here’s what NGO Monitor tells us:

In 2006-2009, the New Israel Fund (NIF) authorized grants worth $294,129 to CWP (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009).


“Major donors” since 2000 include the European Union, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (587,189 NIS from the German government), Heinrich Böll Stiftung (from the German government), the Moriah Fund, Aaron Back and the Ford Israel Fund, and SIVMO. (This funding does not include support for individual NGOs in the coalition.)

So in addition to the hostile Europeans, liberal American Jews have unknowingly been supporting this viciously anti-Israel organization!

A prominent member of the NIF, chair of its “Pluralism Grants Committee,” is the Union for Reform Judaism’s nominee for its new President, Rabbi Richard Jacobs, who describes himself as “proudly and strongly pro-Israel.”

I doubt that Rabbi Jacobs’ committee approved these particular grants, which do not appear to be related to religious pluralism. But is it possible that he could hold his position without being aware of what NIF was funding?

I don’t think so.

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Beinartism

Fresnozionism.org
(Originally posted
01 April '11)

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/04/beinartism/


(FresnoZionism’s powerful piece about the warped perspective of the Jewish Left, “Beinartism,” is competing in the quarter-finals of the 2011 pro-Israel Blog-off! An excellent article, and if you agree, please give it your vote of confidence at the 2011 pro-Israel Blog-off! Voting closes Sunday.Yosef)


Israel has a problem. OK, Israel has a lot of problems, but one of the biggest is American Jews who

1) take as their primary sources the loud but demographically unimportant media and academic Left in Israel; and,


2) combine ignorance with remarkable arrogance to apply American paradigms and analogies to Israeli society and politics, and


3) conclude that Israel is becoming (or has already become) morally corrupt, right-wing, theocratic, anti-democratic and anti-peace.

I call this position ‘Beinartism’. The Beinartist manifesto is this Peter Beinart article, which I also discussed here and here.

The US is Israel’s only source for vital military hardware (aid dollars are not as important as availability of spare parts and qualitatively superior technology), and its only defender in the UN Security Council. I think it’s safe to say that Israel’s enemies would eat it alive if the US turned against it. American Jews are only a tiny portion (a couple of percent) of the US population, but enormously important in determining policy toward Israel.

This is because they take an interest in it, because non-Jewish politicians look toward Jews for direction in this area, and because Jewish opinion provides an excuse to justify what officials want to do anyway. So if the administration wants to stop Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem, it is very helpful if it can point to a large group of American Jews that agrees with it. And this is why Beinartism is dangerous.

Beinartism often expresses itself in statements that begin by declaring undying love for Israel, but then continue by excoriating it in ways usually associated with the extreme anti-Zionist Left. Beinartism, like J Street, is phony: it is dislike (or worse) pretending to be love, and it includes a threat that if Israel doesn’t change in accordance with Beinartist principles, it will be abandoned by American Jewry.

Yaacov Lozowick, discussing speakers at the J Street conference — including Beinart himself, but also David Saperstein of the Union for Reform Judaism — put it this way:

…there’s a consistent tone of disdain of Israeli society coming from these people which I find arrogant and very distasteful. Americans left and right have lost their civility in political discourse; Israelis, admittedly, never had it. Yet there are codes in language, deeper than mere words, and the subtext of these J Street spokesmen when discussing Jews from Russia, religious Jews and centrist Jews, is ugly. I find no other word for it. Just as their compassion for Israel’s Arabs (the citizens) is odd. There’s a level of identification with them which is totally lacking when they talk about the majority of the Israeli Jews. I say this as someone who wishes only the best for Israel’s Arabs.

Beinartism is characterized by false analogies: the situation of Israeli Arab citizens, or even Arabs in the territories, is often compared to that of African-Americans in the pre-civil rights movement South. It fails to note the huge differences, and the ways in which the physical situation of Israel makes it vulnerable in a way that we’ve never been.

Beinartism advocates a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, but it ignores the real security issues that would have to be dealt with before such a solution would be anything other than suicide. It makes vast assumptions about Arab intentions, or rather, doesn’t even think about them.

Beinartism accepts uncritically the prejudices of the academic and media elite of Israel, who tend to despise Russian immigrants, Jews from Arab countries, observant Jews and of course (last but not least) ‘settlers’.

His Master's Voice – From the NIF's Mouth to the "Organ of Anglo-Jewry"

Daphne Anson
22 December '10

Snow-bound in her igloo somewhere in the ice-covered rural landscape of the British Isles, this sun-loving Aussie gal wasn't able to pick up her hard copy of last week's Jewish Chronicle (17 December) until the lanes became passable.

And what did I find? Why, the JC and the New Israel Fund tucked up in bed together. Yes, cosily between the JC's sheets is a loose tabloid-sized four-page insert calling itself New Israel News ("NIF Publication", Winter 2010). Under the banner headline "New debate welcomed by NIF", the insert's main frontpage article declares: 'The move by Mick Davis and leading figures in Anglo-Jewry, to engage in "honest and open debate" about the policies and actions of the Israeli government, has been welcomed by the Chair of the New Israel Fund (UK), Nicholas Saphir.'

The article generously quotes Mr Saphir, and when we turn to page two we find – lo and behold! – an article by that gentleman entitled "Diaspora Jewry must speak up". At the foot of the article is the note "Nicholas Saphir is Chair of the New Israel Fund" – he’s also, as a matter of fact, a trustee of the Kessler Foundation, which owns the Jewish Chronicle, as was noted in my recent post called "Screwing the Right".

Yes, folks, that’s the same New Israel Fund whose dodgier initiatives have been exposed by NGO Monitor, as I indicated in that same post. And that’s the same Jewish Chronicle which has yet to feed its readers all the hard sober facts about the existential threats faced by Israel – for example, I have looked in vain yet again for anything about the possibly domino-effect recognition of a Palestinian State with its borders pre-Six Day War (those "Auschwitz borders" for Israel) by several South American nations (four at last count; the JC hasn't even reported one!). I thought this news, which was ignored by thewebsite, would be in the hard copy. It's been a futile search, and I don't think I need Specsavers.

(Read full "His Master's Voice – From the NIF's Mouth to the "Organ of Anglo-Jewry")

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NIF Cuts Off Funding for BDS Groups

Alana Goodman
Contentions/Commentary
16 December '10
Posted before Shabbat

Some Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions groups are going to have to find a new way to bankroll their important anti-Israel endeavors (hummus boycotts, costume parties, impromptu choral performances) because the New Israel Fund is cutting off funding for organizations involved in the BDS movement.

NIF has been criticized for giving grants to groups that engage in anti-Israel boycott campaigns, such as Concerned Women for Peace, Israel Social TV, Mossawa, Machsom Watch, and Women Against Violence. The fund amended its website on Dec. 13 to reflect its change in policy:

The NIF opposes the global BDS movement, views the use of these tactics as ineffective and counterproductive and is concerned that segments of this movement seek to undermine the existence of the state of Israel.

NIF will not fund global BDS activities against Israel nor support organizations that have global BDS programs.

I’m really pleased to see NIF finally come around on this issue. But as Jeffrey Goldberg noted at the Atlantic, NIF’s statement stopped short of rebuking the BDS movement as a whole. “I was slightly taken aback by [CEO Daniel] Sokatch’s statement that, ‘segments of this movement seek to undermine the existence of the state of Israel,’” wrote Goldberg. “I would say that undermining the existence of the state of Israel is this movement’s raison d’etre.”

(Read full "NIF Cuts Off Funding for BDS Groups")

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The Moral Argument Against BDS

Naftali Balanson
ZEEK Journal
01 December '10

New Israel Fund (NIF) Director of Communications Naomi Paiss “Don’t Divest; Invest” makes an important statement by rejecting the global boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement and its accompanying “apartheid” rhetoric. Paiss reaffirms the notion that BDS is totally incongruous with Jewish values, and demonstrates that progressives within the community cannot tolerate its “inflammatory and counter-productive” agenda. Her piece is a sharp blow to the very legitimacy of BDS campaigns, particularly those conducted by Jewish groups (see “Peace Process or Land Grab?” by Rebecca Vilkomerson).

However, although her argument is compelling, Paiss significantly understates the case against BDS. Yes, attempts to isolate Israel “penalize the innocent along with the guilty, push moderates towards right-wing nationalism, and spur rejection of progressive and humanist values.” But, more importantly, BDS is the antithesis of universal human rights values, rooted in immoral double standards that single out and condemn Israel as a pariah state. The BDS movement also rejects the very existence of Israel as a Jewish entity. Inasmuch as BDS activists seek to eliminate Jewish self-determination, the movement (as a movement, not necessarily every individual linked to it) is anti-Semitic.

The core goals of the BDS agenda expose the true nature of the movement. One of them is the “rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes,” falsely portrayed as a “precept of international law.” There is no such legal obligation, nor is the right of return a peaceful goal. Rather, it is an attempt to reverse partition, refight 1948 – at least demographically – and overturn the right to Jewish sovereignty.

It is, therefore, no surprise that proponents of BDS resort to racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. A particularly offensive and common theme – exemplified by the hate speech of PACBI’s Omar Barghouti, Electonic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah, and others – is identifying Israel with Nazi Germany and the IDF with Nazi soldiers. The Palestinian Christian non-governmental organization (NGO) known as Sabeel claims that “Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him,” persecuted by an “Israeli government crucifixion system.” These pronouncements revive classic anti-Semitic theological themes.

(Read full article)

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Why I am pro-settler

Fresnozionism.org
21 November '10

I have something to tell you: I am pro-settler.

OK, you are not surprised. But considering the amount of vitriol poured out every day on settlers and settlements, I thought I needed to explicitly say this.

For example, here is how Naomi Paiss of the putatively pro-Israel New Israel Fund (about which I wrote yesterday) justifies boycotting ‘settlement’ products and artistic activities beyond the Green Line:

The settlements are not in Israel. They represent not “just” a blot on Israel as a just and decent nation, and a terrible danger to its survival, but also the waste of billions of shekels for security, expensive bypass roads, government-subsidized construction and mortgages, and more. Those are shekels that could be used to build a more prosperous and socially just Israel. Refusing products and services made in the settlements, and opposing government expenditures there, is well within the rights of every organization and individual who intends to influence the Israeli government to finally abandon the quixotic and immoral settlement enterprise.

I think even members of the pro-Zionist Left (I think NIF has crossed the line, although they would deny it) more or less share this viewpoint.

(Read full post)

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NIF tries to walk between raindrops, gets soaked

Fresnozionism.org
20 November '10

This January, an American charity, the New Israel Fund (NIF), was accused of funding most of the Israeli NGO’s that provided the documentation for the Goldstone Report.  And the NIF supported organizations dedicated to the delegitimization of Israel for long before that.

As a result of pressure from the organization “NGO Monitor”, the NIF agreed to change its funding guidelines, to now include the following restrictions (my emphasis):

Organizations that engage in the following activities will not be eligible for NIF grants or support:

1. Participate in partisan political activity
2. Promote anti-democratic values
3. Support the 1967 occupation and subsequent settlement activity
4. Violate the human rights of any group or individual, advocate human rights selectively for
   one group over another and/or reject the principle of the universality of human rights
5. Condone or promote violence or use violent tactics
6. Employ racist or derogatory language or designations about any group based on their
   religion, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.
7. Works to deny the right of the Jewish people to sovereign self-determination within Israel, or to deny the rights of Palestinian or other non-Jewish citizens to full equality within a democratic Israel.
8. Engage in activities at odds with the positions, principles, or vision of the New Israel Fund.

But some of the NGOs supported by NIF clearly do violate no. 7 above. And we were led to believe that NIF would stop funding them. 

(Read full post)

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NIF Will Gladly Tolerate Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions and Fund Them

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
17 November '10

Found:

What is NIF's position on boycott, divestment and sanctions?

NIF supports an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories as a central tenet of the strategic framework in which we operate. The tactics known as 'boycott, divestment and sanctions' (BDS) are designed to pressure Israel to end the occupation, but NIF believes these tactics to be unproductive, inflammatory and ineffective because of the difficulties in defining an approach that is not overly broad, does not delegitimize Israel and will achieve the long-term goal.

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NIF vs The Jewish State

Jameel
The Muqata
08 October '10
Posted before Shabbat



The New Israel Fraud is at it again, and this time they are outraged at the oath of allegiance proposal that Israel is a Jewish and Democratic State.

They now say it outright -- their vision for a "New Israel" -- is one without any connection to Judaism whatsoever.

The new disingenuous NIF slogan is "equality and democracy for all Israelis" -- and "all Israelis" can be from Ghana or Sudan...

Their most recent call is that Israel may not have any religious character whatsoever, and must be a "state of all its citizens."

See the NIF "call to arms" below, in their sample letter of protest of PM Netanyanu, where they express "deep concern" as "staunch supporters of a [non-Jewish] Israel" -- that declaring Israel to be a Jewish and Democratic State is "infuriating."

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What about Jewish farmers?

Op-ed: Police protect Arab olive harvesters, but do almost nothing for Jewish farmers

Orit Struck
Israel Opinion/Ynet
06 October '10

The headlines informed us that the IDF, Civil Administration, and Israel Police are preparing for the olive harvesting season in Judea and Samaria. “This mission is of the highest priority,” and hence, in the midst of a period replete with terror attacks, major manpower and great operational effort will be dedicated in order to allow the harvest to go “to the last olive.”

The media also prepares and places itself at the service of the “harvest coalition” – dozens of subsidiaries of the New Israel Fund and European Union that shall accompany the harvesters in order to turn a simple, popular agricultural effort into a raging, media-covered global event. We can assume that Mitchell, Clinton, and maybe even Obama shall make time in their busy schedules to ensure that each one of the farmers known as “Palestinians” will get to enjoy the fruit of their labor.

On the other hand, in a sort of mirror image, Jewish farmers who work their land by law in the very same area suffer daily abuse at the hands of their Arab neighbors, who are backed and incited by the very same leftist human-farmer rights champions. The damages sustained by these Jewish farmers are estimated at hundreds of thousands of shekels, and who could estimate the heartache of a farmer whose corps were damaged?

Yet the State of Israel’s law enforcement authorities do almost nothing to protect them, and the media barely covers them or their pain.

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NIF Israel head: we don't care what grantees say against our principles just what they do

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
20 September '10

"We allocate grants to whoever believes in the right of the Jewish People to self determination, and whoever sees Israel as a democracy, for everyone. If someone would act, not say something, but will act significantly against this principle and other principles of the NIF, I assume that he will not be entitled for a grant."
Rachel Liel, NIF-Israel Executive Director interviewed on Israel Radio's "Seder Yom" program

20 September 2010

In other words, a radical Israeli organization that openly and vocally opposes the right of the Jewish People to self determination - for example the Israeli Arab group Adallah, that calls for revoking the Law of Return that grants Jews from the Diaspora the right to Israeli citizenship if they immigrate to Israel, could continue to receive NIF funding since this is only "saying something"?

So just what exactly constitutes "acting"?

Lying down on the runway at Ben Gurion to block planes landing with Jewish immigrants?

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