Is the cartoon above anti-Semitic? No, it's not. The cartoon was published on the web page of Im Tirtzu, which exposed the assistance that organizations supported by the New Israel Fund gave to the prevarications of the Goldstone Commission in 2009-10. Indyk is co-chairman of the New Israel Fund, and the cartoon was accompanied by a letter criticizing him for that.
The right-wing Israeli organization Im Tirtzu published a cartoon
earlier this week, depicting newly appointed U.S. envoy for Middle East
peace Martin Indyk as a puppet. Some have called the cartoon anti-Semitic,
and claim that it is not the first time that the rightist group has
used offensive cartoons to attack its targets. Im Tirtzu styles itself
an "extra-parliamentary movement that works to strengthen and advance
the values of Zionism in Israel."
The
cartoon was published on the group's Facebook page, along with a letter
written by Ronen Shoval, Im Tirtzu chairperson, to U.S. Ambassador to
Israel Dan Shapiro. The letter criticizes Indyk for serving as head of
the New Israel Fund, which Shoval wrote is "is known to support
anti-Israel organizations that spearhead anti-Israel propaganda around
the world."
Further,
according to the letter posted on Facebook, Im Tirtzu seeks to "ask the
U.S. government to appoint an 'honest broker,'" and claims that the
Israeli public does not view Indyk as such. Indyk also twice served as
U.S. ambassador to Israel, from 1995 to 1997, and 2000 to 2001.
Indyk is, as the cartoon implies, a puppet for the anti-Israel Israeli Left. What he really believes is anyone's guess.
The Right-wing NGO Im Tirtzu sent a letter this week to the New Israel Fund, the financier of all anti-Israel causes in Israel. The letter appears above. I am reproducing the text below.
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
Here's a fact sheet from Im Tirtzu:
“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.”
Thorough
documentation of NIF’s involvement in producing the Goldstone Report is
contained in the 2010 NGO Monitor report, “NIF-funded NGO’s: Goldstone’s
Building Blocks.” (HERE)
As the
report notes, “After the Goldstone commission was established, three
major and long-time NIF grantees (Public Committee against Torture in
Israel, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and Adalah) participated in a
May 2009 NGO ‘town hall meeting’ in Geneva that helped shape the course
of Goldstone’s ‘investigation’. In addition, seven NIF-funded NGOs
(including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Gisha, HaMoked,
and Yesh Din) submitted a joint statement to Goldstone, and a
representative from PCATI ‘testified’ at the July 2009 Goldstone
hearings, referring to ‘collective punishment’ and ‘[Palestinian]
martyrs.’
“The
resulting Goldstone report referenced B’Tselem more than 56 times;
Adalah, 38; and Breaking the Silence, 27. Significantly, many of these
citations referred to speculative issues unrelated to the conflict in
Gaza, seeking to brand Israeli democracy as ‘repressive,’ and to widen
the scope of the condemnations and the resulting political campaigns.”
After the
Goldstone Report was released, “B’Tselem, Adalah, and PHR-I, among
others, have lobbied Israeli and foreign governments to support
Goldstone’s report and itsrecommendations.”
The
executive director of one of NIF’s flagship groups, B’Tselem, went so
far as to boast of her organization’s contributions to the Goldstone
Report. B’Tselem, Jessica Montell said, “provided extensive assistance
to the UN fact-finding mission headed by Justice Goldstone—escorting
them to meet victims in Gaza, providing all of our documentation and
correspondence, and meeting the mission in Jordan.” (HERE)
“Even Judge Goldstone himself has disowned it.”
In
a 2011 Washington Post op-ed, Judge Richard Goldstone rescinded the
central claim of the Goldstone Report, that Israel had intentionally
targeted civilians in Operation Cast Lead. (HERE)
“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.”
A B’Tselem statement
the day after Operation Pillar of Defense began accused Israel of
targeting civilians: “As was the case four years ago [in Operation Cast
Lead], Israeli officials are now using the conduct of Palestinian
organizations to justify harm to Palestinian civilians….The fact that
one side violates the law does not give the other side the right to
violate it as well.” (HERE) Days later, B’Tselem accused Israel of targeting journalists (HERE) despite the fact that the “journalists” were well-known senior terrorists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad. (HERE)
Adalah,
another flagship NIF grantee – it seeks as an official position the end
of Israel as a Jewish State – accused Israel of “a serious violation of
the laws of war.” (HERE)
Sari Bashi, the executive director of Gisha, accused Israel of “collective punishment” during the conflict. (HERE) Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel signed a statement claiming, without offering any specifics, “concrete
evidence indicating the commission of war crimes” by Israel. The
statement also blamed Israel entirely for Hamas’s rocket attacks on
Israeli civilians and called for another Goldstone-style “investigation” of Israel at the United Nations. (HERE)
The New Israel Fund's (pathetic) response is here. Elder of Ziyon demolishes them here.
Undiplomatic behavior by a (former) American diplomat?
Oh dear me. I've gotten a report that former US ambassador to Israel and 'peace processor' Martin Indyk (pictured with Ehud Olmert - who, fortunately, was not at the conference) had a little temper tantrum at the President's Conference on Thursday. Some of the participants at the President's Conference in Jerusalem witnessed a very public display of uncivil and undiplomatic behavior from Indyk on Thursday afternoon around 5:30 pm. In the main entrance hall, in full view of at least 15 people, Martin Indyk went up to Professor Gerald Steinberg, the head of NGO Monitor, and began to shout at him. Indyk then turned around, made an obscene gesture with his finger, and stormed out.
This incident was apparently related to the New Israel Fund (NIF). Ex-ambassador Indyk joined NIF's board, and in 2010, his effort to get NIF funding in Australia was cancelled after a series of embarrassments. Indyk wrote a crude column directed at the head of NGO Monitor, Professor Gerald Steinberg, blaming him for exposing the NIF facade. NIF tried again, as NGO Monitor published new reports detailing NIF's central role and cover-up in funding BDS-supporting anti-Israel NGOs like CWP, Adalah, etc. Apparently, the Australians did not buy the NIF-Indyk line, and this explains the emotional explosion today.
For more background on Indyk's involvement in the NIF dispute go here.
Sounds like someone needs to apologize for his temper tantrum.
'Human rights' groups to lose National Service volunteers?
It never would have occurred to me that the Israeli 'human rights' groups that provided the fodder for the slanderous Goldstone Report have the right to benefit from National Service volunteers - people who choose to serve the country in ways other than through the IDF (mostly religious girls). But they do have those rights - at least for now. And there's a movement afoot - which could even be called bipartisan - to revoke them (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).
Behind the initiative is MK Israel Hasson (Kadima ), who recently asked Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz (Habayit Hayehudi ), the minister responsible for the National Service administration, to formulate new criteria for determining which organizations in the country are eligible to receive National Service volunteers, as part of new legislation that will govern the activities of the National Service.
After conducting an initial investigation, Hershkowitz discovered that among those organizations that receive National Service volunteers are the Association for Civil Rights Israel (ACRI ), Amnesty Israel, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Physicians for Human Rights Israel. Hasson's initiative comes on the heels of similar attempts to impinge on the activities of Israeli organizations that provided information to the Goldstone Commission, while it was compiling its report on IDF activities in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.
Ever since the Im Tirtzu movement published a list of such organizations, focusing in particular on support they received from the New Israel Fund, a number of MKs have put forward proposals aimed at cutting their funding.
In his letter to Hershkowitz, Hasson accused the organizations of slandering the IDF and its officers and called for new criteria to be set to prevent such organizations from benefiting from National Service volunteers in the future. He noted that the groups "urged the UN inquiry committee headed by Judge Goldstone to accuse Israel of anti-humanitarian activities and severe violations of human rights during Operation Cast Lead."
"The organizations have made statements based on mere assumptions regarding the motives of the IDF actions against Hamas," Hasson wrote. "They claimed the operation was a punitive one, which used destruction as a means of deterrence and punishment, not as a means for attaining any real military objectives. As a result, it raises serious suspicions about the legality of the entire operation. This was said despite the fact that these organizations did not have the information on which to base such statements."
As I said at the top of this post, it never would have occurred to me that these organizations would have the right to benefit from National Service volunteers, given that their work is a national disservice. Maybe now that wrong will be set right.
Sometime during the course of the Sabbath here, Blogger restored service for Blogspot blogs. For those who don't follow me on Twitter, you may not be aware that Blogspot was down from 10:30 on Thursday night (Israel time) until sometime on Friday evening or Saturday (I have not checked yet when service was restored).
Im Tirtzu, which exposed the participation of groups funded by the New Israel Fund in the Goldstone Report, has published a 70-page booklet that refutes the myth of the ‘naqba,’ the claim that Israel inflicted a catastrophe on the ‘Palestinians’ by means of its birth. The book concludes that if there was a ‘naqba,’ it was self-inflicted.
The booklet is split into five sections, including, "They [the Arabs] attacked: The responsibility for creating the refugee problem," "They [the Arabs] abandoned: Haifa as an example," and "Since time immemorial? How long have Arab refugees really lived in Israel?" It also includes a long description of atrocities committed by Arabs against Jewish civilians pre-1948 and details what it describes as the support Palestinian society and Palestinian leaders gave to the Nazis during WWII. In addition, it includes a chapter entitled "they were expelled", which describes the expulsion of 900,000 Jews from the Arab and Muslim countries of the Middle East following the founding of the state of Israel.
The pamphlet reads "sadly, in recent years, the Arabs lies have received a platform of legitimacy, also within Israel. Of all places, among the Israeli elite, leaders in academics, culture, or law, who have "brought the idea of the Nakba into the Israeli public sphere."
The pamphlet doesn't try to say that no hardships were suffered by the Arabs who lived in what would later become in the land of Israel, rather that suffering did occur, but it was solely the fault of the Arabs who refused to accept the 1947 UN partition plan.
"Let there be no mistakes. No one is saying that the Arabs of Israel did not experience a disaster at the end of the 1940s; no one is trying to take away their subjective pain. True, Arabs of the land of Israel experienced a tragedy, a nakba in their words, and there is no desire or reason to blur this fact."
"The truth is, that the Palestinians and the Arab states carry 100% of the responsibility for the results of the war. Tragedy? Catastrophe? The blame is all theirs. A home-made catastrophe."
The pamphlet says that the Jewish Yishuv was willing to give up on the West Bank and the East Bank of the Jordan River, but that the Arabs "did not rest. They wanted more, they wanted everything. Their response to the Hebrew compromise was blood, fire, and billows of smoke. Death reared its head, in their cruelty, stupidity, and arrogance that knew no bounds, they brought destruction upon themselves."
The pamphlet continues "the myth of the nakba is an unprecedented and brazen fraud whose sole purpose is to make rewrite history. Under this myth, the attacker becomes the victim, and those defending themselves from massacre – become war criminals."
While the pamphlet doesn’t present exact figures on the demographics of the land of Israel pre-1948, it claims that without a shadow of a doubt the overwhelming majority of the Arabs living within the Green Line were "large groups of immigrants who made their way to Israel from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Yemen, Sudan, and elsewhere," largely to profit from the development brought to the area by the Zionist enterprise and the British Mandate.
Ford Foundation to stop grants to Leftist Israeli NGO's
The Ford Foundation has decided to stop funding Leftist Israeli NGO's.
The Ford Foundation, which has provided $40 million to civil society NGOs in Israel since 2003, will not resume its funding for programs in Israel once its current grant round ends in two years. The reason, the organization explains, has to do with changing priorities, not with politics.
But for struggling groups in Israel, losing the Ford Foundation’s financial backing means spending time and effort on developing alternative resources in an atmosphere of growing hostility toward civil society organizations that focus on human rights.
In recent months, the Ford Israel Fund, the foundation’s arm handling grants in Israel, began notifying grantees that funding will not be renewed after the current $20 million grant expires in 2013.
The Ford Foundation, ranked the second-largest philanthropic foundation in America, with assets of more than $10 billion, launched its program in Israel in 2003 as a partnership with the New Israel Fund, which provided the presence on the ground and administered the grants. Prior to this program, the Ford Foundation had given to a broad array of causes in Israel since the Jewish state gained its independence in 1948.
...
But the bottom line is clear: The partnership with NIF, which yielded $40 million for progressive NGOs in Israel, is coming to an end. “NIF has grown into a robust and capable independent foundation, and we look forward to seeing it continue to thrive,” the Ford statement concluded.
Aaron Back, director of the Ford Israel Fund, explained that the foundation’s commitments “had never been open-ended.” The new leadership of the Ford Foundation had conducted an across-the-board review of all programs and made significant changes in its priorities, he explained. The foundation’s new president, Luis A. Ubiñas, took office in 2008 after the new grant to Israel had already been approved. Both five-year funding programs were adopted during the tenure of former president Susan Berresford.
...
The end of the Ford Foundation grants is expected to have a significant impact on NIF. Currently, Ford Foundation grants make up roughly a third of NIF’s donor-advised giving, which reaches $14 million to 15 million a year. NIF’s core giving, however, which totals between $10 million to 15 million annually, will not be affected by the withdrawal of Ford funds.
“This was not a surprise for us,” said Daniel Sokatch, the group’s CEO. Sokatch praised Ford for what he described as the foundation’s “smart philanthropy,” which focused on NGO’s by building their capacities and ensuring their sustainability. Making sure that funds are used for growth and for stabilizing the grantees, he said, did this.
And maybe this had something to do with the Ford Foundation's decision:
“Ford Foundation has improved their grant guidelines since Durban-I, but there are still concerns with funding practices,” said Naftali Balanson, managing editor of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog organization that has been a leading critic of not-for-profit organizations that express critical views of Israel.
In the past year, NIF and other NGOs supported by the Ford Foundation came under attack in Israel from politicians on the right and from such organizations as NGO Monitor and Im Tirtzu, which claim that groups support the delegitimization of Israel. The Israeli Knesset passed laws requiring increased transparency of NGO funding and initiated parliamentary hearings targeting these groups.
Maybe some other NIF funders will follow suit. Heh.
LATMA tribal update: The UN on Muslims and a trailer for a new horror film
In this report, Jamil and Awad join the International Organization for Peace and Human Rights so that they can draw a salary from the European Union, the United Nations gives its perspective on Muslims, and you'll see a trailer for a new horror film called... I won't give it away.
More on Arab and European support for 'Palestinian' terror
In an earlier post, I wrote about the proposed Knesset investigation into the funding of Israel's radical Left, and that much of the funding is coming from Arab countries. Caroline Glick devoted her column this week to the report by Im Tirtzu that precipitated the demand for an investigation. On Saturday night, there was a demonstration against the proposed commission of inquiry in Tel Aviv.
Im Tirtzu's report is titled, "Support by Arab foundations and states for organizations working against the policies of the State of Israel and the IDF." It focuses on two Palestinian organizations headquartered in Ramallah: The Welfare Association, and the NGO Development Center.
The Welfare Association was established in 1983 for the purpose of building a sustainable Palestinian society. It operates in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, Gaza, throughout Israel and in Lebanon. It receives money from the EU and the World Bank and separate European governments. It also receives money from Arab governments and Arab governmental funds from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and OPEC. Of its 2004 budget of nearly $30 million, more than half came from Arab sources.
As the Im Tirtzu report notes, one of those contributors is particularly notable. In 2004, the Welfare Association received $796,606 from the Islamic Development Bank - al Aksa Fund - Saudi Arabia. Im Tirtzu attests that the IDB has continued to fund the Welfare Association since then as well.
According to the IDB's own documents, cited by the Im Tirtzu report, in October 2000 at an Arab League summit in Cairo, Arab leaders decided to establish the IDB's al Aksa Fund and the Al-Quds Intifada Fund "to assert comprehensive Arab support for the Palestinian people in the face of continuous Israeli aggression." Together the two funds received $1 billion to distribute.
According to a report by the American Center for Democracy cited by Im Tirtzu, "In 2001 alone, the IDB transferred $538 million raised publicly by Saudi and Gulf Royal telethons to support the Palestinian intifada and families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IDB has also channeled UN funds to Hamas, as documented by bank records discovered in the West Bank and Gaza."
In 2001 the Saudi Ain A-Yaqeen newspaper reported that that year the IDB transferred $2,378,072 to the families of Palestinian "martyrs," and prisoners.
Among the many groups it funds, the Welfare Association supports Israeli Arab NGOs. These include Adalah, Balanda, Ahali, Ittijah, Mada al Carmel, and the Galilee Society. The Welfare Association also gives direct support to Israeli Arab municipal governments including Nazareth's municipal government and Kfar Kanna's local council. Its efforts are aimed at breaking the cultural and civic ties between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. Among other things, it sponsored a campaign to block Israeli Arabs from volunteering in national service. It also buys properties for Arabs throughout the country.
The Im Tirtzu report shows that in 2006 the Welfare Association was instrumental in forming the NGO Development Center in Ramallah. Five out of 13 members of the NDC's board of directors are also on the Welfare Association's Board of Directors. The Welfare Association also donates money to the NDC.
The NDC acts as yet another clearinghouse for donor money to Palestinian and Israeli NGOs. Aside from the money it receives from the Welfare Association, most of its annual budget of $19 million comes from European governments.
According to the NDC's website, to receive funds from the NDC, groups must agree to "monitor, document, and report on violations by the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian human rights, as well as undertake campaigning and advocacy activities to address these violations and raise awareness about them."
Between July 2008 and December 2009, the NDC allocated $1.89 million to the following Israeli NGOs: B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights, the Public Committee Against Torture, Moked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, Bimkom, the Public Committee Against Housing Demolitions, Moussawa, Breaking the Silence, Gisha, Yesh Din, and Workers' Hotline.
The largest beneficiaries were B'Tselem, which was allocated $450,000 and received $405,000 by the end of the reporting period, and Moked which received $500,000.
While it is true that most of NDC's funds are donated by European countries, it is also true that it is a Palestinian organization. And as it funding requirements make clear, in order to receive money from the NDC, groups need to actively participate in political warfare against Israel.
Given Im Tirtzu's limited resources, it is more than likely that its findings are merely the tip of the iceberg. And yet, even with its limited scope, the report makes a convincing case that hostile Arab governments and bodies linked with terror finance are indirectly funding Israeli Arab groups.
Read the whole thing. The one question Glick doesn't really answer is why Benny Begin and Ruby Rivlin are opposed to the commission of inquiry (she also mentions Dan Meridor - who has all but become a Leftist - and Michael Eitan who has also moved somewhat left). Inquiring minds want to know.
JTA's Ron Kampeas reports that some American Jewish organizations have decided that they cannot defend Israel unless they openly criticize it. I have no problem with that, but I do have a problem with the issue on which they have chosen to take their stand: The demand for transparency by NGO's.
The American Jewish Committee and the Union for Reform Judaism have delivered broadsides in recent days against recent Israeli government initiatives targeting nongovernmental groups in Israel that monitor human rights. Last week, the Knesset approved in a preliminary reading a bill that would investigate the funding sources of nongovernmental groups that monitor and criticize the Israeli army.
“The Knesset’s action today contravenes the democratic principles that are Israel’s greatest strength,” AJC Executive Director David Harris said after Israel’s parliament voted Jan. 5 to investigate human rights groups. “Israel’s vibrant democracy not only can survive criticism, but it also thrives and is improved by it.”
Echoing demands from Israel’s left, the AJC and the Reform body instead called for across-the-board transparency in Israel.
In its statement the Reform movement suggested that such actions make it more difficult to defend Israel in other forums.
“The recent initiative undermines Israel's place in the global community and is a source of concern to the Jewish community throughout the world and to Israel's friends everywhere,” the statement said.
That was a theme picked up by the Anti-Defamation League, which in a statement posted on its website did not directly address the proposed Knesset law but expressed concerns about the “highly disturbing trend” of “Israeli intolerance.”
“Inflammatory statements have a negative impact on attitudes toward Israel around the world, even in friendly countries like the U.S.,” the ADL statement said. “More important, however, is the impact they have within Israel, undermining the democratic fiber, creating a mean-spiritedness in society and enlarging already significant communal rifts."
The significance of such statements was in their bearers -- mainstream American Jewish organizations, which are more accustomed to slamming Israel’s critics. In the past, these groups have targeted manifestations of bigotry by marginal Israeli groups, Israeli government discrimination against non-Orthodox religious streams and, in some cases, remarks by Israeli officials about the country’s Arab citizens.
What’s new is the concern by U.S. Jewish groups that discrimination and a diminishing of democratic values is becoming mainstream in Israel.
The proposed new transparency law applies to all NGO's that take money from abroad, but for the most part, it is only the Left's NGO's that are receiving money from foreign governments. On the other hand, the bill passed last week does limit itself to investigating the Left's NGO's, and many of those who have been pushing for NGO transparency feel that their cause has been set back by that bill. It certainly has if no one can tell the difference between the two bills and the NGO transparency bill baby gets thrown out with the investigation bath water. But that law may have passed its first reading (it's not law yet) in an effort to inject urgency into the matter. Not every law that passes a first reading passes a second and third reading and is enacted.
Requiring NGO transparency is good government. The US has laws that require organizations that take money from foreign governments to register as foreign agents, Europe has laws that require organizations that take money from foreign governments to register as foreign agents, so why when Israel does the same thing is it wrong?
There's more to it than that, and you should read the whole thing. We have brought a lot of this on ourselves (there's a criticism!) by deluding ourselves and our allies that we could make 'peace' with the 'Palestinians' on terms that allow us to continue to live here. That's unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes.
Im Tirtzu: Arab money supporting Israeli Leftist groups
In a report released on YNet's website on Monday night, Im Tirtzu, the group that exposed the New Israel Fund's connection to the Goldstone Report, described how Arab and European moneys fund Leftist groups in Israel.
According to Im Tirtzu, a centrist extra-parliamentary movement that "strives to strengthen the values of Zionism in Israel," the findings prove the need for the establishment of an inquiry commission. The report focuses on two Palestinian organizations – the Welfare Association and the NGO Development Center –which it claims work together to fund pro-Palestinian activities in Israel and the territories.
The report states that the organizations' yearly budget, which is estimated at tens of millions of dollars, comes from a number of sources: Countries and organizations in Europe - including the European Union, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland and Denmark – as well as Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Qatar.
According to Im Tirtzu, large banks, such as the Islamic Development Bank, as well as Arab funds, also allocate money to the Welfare Association and the NGO Development Center, which then transfer 97% of the funds to Palestinians in the territories and some 3% to leftist Israeli organizations.
The report also claims that the Welfare Association is directly involved in Arab activity in Israel, including a campaign against obligating Arab youths to participate in Israel's National Service program.
Im Tirtzu said that among the Israeli organizations to receive funds from the Welfare Association are Adalah, Mada al-Carmel and the Galilee Society.
According to the report, $2.65 million were allocated by the Welfare Association to finance activity in Israel, specifically to boost the socio-economic status of Arab-Israelis and to preserve and foster Palestinian national identity.
The Welfare Association also supports two local councils – Nazareth and Kafr Kana.
Over the past few years the Welfare Association's annual budget stood at roughly $40 million, making it one of the key channels for the transfer of funds to the Palestinians.
The Arab countries also fund 13 Israeli Leftist organizations including B'Tselem, Mossawa, Adalah, Breaking the Silence, Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the Public Committee against Torture, HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
Read the whole thing. A lot of the money is coming from Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Holland. I suspect that will be news to most Israelis. In particular, there's been a lot of hostility toward us from Sweden over the last couple of years (it was their media that accused the IDF of stealing organs from dead 'Palestinians'), and I suspect that a lot of Israelis will not be happy when and if they find out the truth.
You will all recall the self-righteous outrage of the Left - both in Israel and abroad - over attacks by a small organization called Im Tirtzu on the New Israel Fund, whose constituent organizations provided most of the material for the nefarious Goldstone Report.
The New Israel Fund now admits for the first time that they fund organizations that advocate BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) attacks against the State of Israel. Until now, they've always claimed that they were against BDS.
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.
Although we will continue to communicate publicly and privately to our allies and grantees that NIF does not support BDS as a strategy or tactic, we will not reduce or eliminate our funding for grantees that differ with us on a tactical matter. NIF will not fund BDS activities nor support organizations for which BDS is a substantial element of their activities, but will support organizations that conform to our grant requirements if their support for BDS is incidental or subsidiary to their significant programs.
In other words, NIF doesn't support BDS, except when it does. Jeffrey Goldberg describes this as 'disconcerting' and notes:
The way I read this, the NIF does not support the attempt by anti-Israel activists to turn the world's only Jewish country into a pariah state, and Jews into a target -- once again -- of a broad-based economic boycott. Except when it does, a little. It would seem that if the New Israel Fund believes BDS to be immoral, then it would defund grantees that support BDS, even incidentally. This is one of those bright-line issues, and if NIF wants to get on the wrong side of that line, it should not call itself a pro-Israel organization.
Jeffrey, that's exactly correct. Sounds just like J Street, doesn't it? Isn't it funny how the biggest Leftist groups that are 'pro-Israel' are turning out not to be so pro-Israel these days? They look more like Trojan horses to me.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
