Israel Matzav

Change at the New Israel Fund?

You will all recall that last winter, the New Israel Fund came under attack because organizations that it financed produced much of the material that was used in the Goldstone Report. The attacks have apparently hurt NIF's fund-raising enough that on Sunday they came out with new guidelines for grantees. Or did they?

“NIF is now sending mixed signals regarding these reported new guidelines,” says Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “We do not know whether these are old or new guidelines, or how they will be implemented. NIF clearly is having an internal debate about whether to continue funding groups that de-legitimize and demonize Israel. This is an important debate, but it is now being muddied now with unclear messages.”

JTA reported that NIF director Daniel Sokatch last week said that the guidelines’ language “would prohibit proposals for a binational constitution of the kind that two NIF grantees submitted several years ago.” The grantees in question, Adalah and Mossawa, co-wrote a manifesto in 2007 calling for Israel to abandon its definition as a Jewish state. Mada al-Carmel’s Haifa Declaration is similar. However, Itzik Shanan, the NIF’s director of communications, said that no changes to grant guidelines will be implemented. This was followed by Israeli NIF head Rachel Liel today on Israeli radio station “Reshet Bet” saying that NIF will not fund groups that act against Israel’s existence as a Jewish democratic state.

“If NIF is serious about funding transparency and severing ties with groups that de-legitimize Israel, then it is on the same page as NGO Monitor,” Steinberg added. “We expect NIF to implement these changes, and to clarify how and when the new grant guidelines will be enforced. NGO Monitor is prepared to work with NIF and its donors in the implementation of guidelines.”

Adalah and Mosawa were also two of the five NIF grantees who signed a letter calling for divestment from Israel, which was sent to the Norwegian Government Pension Fund. Adalah also promotes a “Democratic Constitution” calling for eliminating Israel’s Jewish framework, and based on the “one-state solution.” Adalah officials were also involved in writing and editing a May 2009 South African publication “Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel´s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law.” The document refers to Israeli occupation as a “colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.”

The key sentence in the new guidelines is that they will not provide funding to any organization that "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." This guideline would apparently eliminate funding to "Adalah, Mada al-Carmel, CWP, PHR-I, and other anti-Israel NGOs on the NIF black list.

But what do the words "within Israel" mean? Is that meant to exclude Judea and Samaria so that grantees who support expelling all Jews from those territories would still receive funding?

Worse still, the NIF is now denying that there has been a change in policy.

The New Israel Fund on Sunday denied speculation it would cease giving money to the Mossawa Center and Adalah, saying it stood firmly behind its commitment to provide financial aid to the controversial Israeli-Arab human rights groups.

“Recent reports about a change in NIF policy are mistaken and result from a misunderstanding over this complex issue,” Itzik Shanan, the NIF’s director of communications, told The Jerusalem Post.

“The NIF shall continue to support – as it has done in the past – important organizations protecting the rights of the State of Israel’s Arab citizens, such as Adalah and Mossawa.... [T]he NIF has never acted as though it were the thought police, and it never will,” he said.

Speculation regarding the possibility that the NIF would sever its ties with its two grantees began last Thursday when new NIF director Daniel Sokatch told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview that it would not support groups lobbying for Israel to cease being a “Jewish homeland.”

Shmuel Rosner, who is largely in NIF's court, takes the group to task for its apparently purposeful vagueness.

2. Here's what I think happened. The NIF was pressured and needed to give something. But it didn't really want to alter its practice. The compromise: Some change will be announced, but in way that will make it possible for NIF not to have to abandon any of its current grantees. Abandoning a grantee will be an admission of mistake - why did he get money to begin with. Clarifying policy guidelines without abandoning anyone will essentially mean: We have rules and we abide by the rules - as we always had. Proof: there's no need to dump any grantee from our roster.

3. The bad news: this is far from over. There are enough people around who had committed themselves to the cause of humiliating and curbing NIF - and these people will not let go. If NIF doesn't make sure its list of grantees is less controversial, sooner or later a scandal will emerge. The good news: Pressure seems to be working. The mare fact that NIF felt the need to clarify that those working to "deny the right of the Jewish people to sovereign self-determination within Israel" are no friends of the organization - is a sign that something is happening.

And by the way - read this sentence again: "deny the right of the Jewish people to sovereign self-determination within Israel". No wonder they say it's "complex".They make it complex, and fishy, instead of clarifying it.

NIF is going to have to change if they want to continue to raise funds from within the Jewish community. The money that the NIF raises from the Jewish community could be replaced by George Soros or by the European governments that are already supporting NIF. But without fund-raising from within the Jewish community, NIF will lose even more credibility than it has lost already.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:04 PM