JPost discovers 'exclusively' that only Left-wing NGO's receive money from foreign governments - UPDATED
JPost is shocked, just shocked, to discover that nearly all the NGO's being targeted by the new NGO transparency bill being debated in the Knesset are Leftist.
On Thursday, The Post exclusively obtained the list of NGOs
which show that 23 out of the 25 organizations are left-wing, with only
two being centrist or non-affiliated. There are no right-wing
organizations.
The Justice Ministry bill in question, which
returned to the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on
Wednesday after passing a first reading in the plenum, requires any NGO
receiving more than half its funding from a foreign political entity
identify itself as such in any publications and any meetings with public
officials, and has been controversial because most of the organizations
under the bill’s purview were predicted to be left-wing. The list,
obtained on Thursday, confirms that that suspicion.
...
The organizations listed included, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, the
Economic Cooperation Foundation, Yesh Din and The Public Committee
Against Torture in Israel. According to the Justice Ministry report,
Yesh Din, for example, receives NIS 4.7 million of its NIS 5.3 million
budget from foreign political entities. B’Tselem gets NIS 6.2 million of
its NIS 9 million budget from foreign sources as well.
On Wednesday, Nonprofits Registrar representative Yafit Shemer
told the Knesset committee that the legislation on transparency for
organizations getting most of their budgets from foreign governments
will affect 27 NGOs.
Committee chairman Nissan Slomiansky (Bayit
Yehudi) prohibited Shemer from presenting the list to the MKs, arguing
that he wants the bill to be “clean” of being drafted in a way that
would target specific NGOs, sparking vocal debate among lawmakers. The
Justice Ministry did not respond to requests for the list.
The reason the Left needs funding from foreign governments is because most Israelis have turned Right after the Oslo debacle, and will not support Leftist NGO's.
But don't worry. This bill will eventually go to the Supreme Court which will undoubtedly find an excuse to strike it down. Maybe then we can have a rational discussion about the balance of powers and the Supreme Court's dictatorship in this country. But probably not.
Funny how no one bothered to interview Professor Gerald Steinberg, the director of NGO Monitor and the country's leading expert on this issue, for this article.
UPDATE 4:31 PM
Professor Steinberg is quoted in an earlier article on this issue.
NGO Monitor President Prof. Gerald Steinberg said donations of more
than NIS 100m. per year from foreign governments “distort Israeli
democracy and dangerously damage its sovereignty.”
But this
should be mitigated by dialogue with lawmakers in Europe, many of whom
oppose their government’s donations to political organizations.
Of course, those European lawmakers seem to be having trouble stopping those contributions....
Oh and here is another interesting tidbit from that earlier article.
Also on Wednesday, the Knesset approved in a preliminary reading the
“V15 bill,” meant to make American- style Super PACs illegal. The
measure proposed by MK Yoav Kisch (Likud) would limit political
organizations’ ability to raise funds in an election year by making the
limitations on NGOs involved in elections similar to those on a
political party.
The legislation is nicknamed “V15” after an
organization that campaigned against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
in the last election using advanced data methods to target voters
door-to-door.
Exposed: 'Breaking the Silence' collects intelligence on the IDF - Does it reach their European masters?
Greetings from Boston where I have been working all week, and where the Sabbath does not start for several more hours. I will be here until Sunday morning. Sunday is a travel day, but I'm not heading back to Israel just yet. I'm heading West... (and should have WiFi access on the plane, so you may see a few more posts on Sunday). And for those who watch the weather reports, it looks like I will once again escape a serious winter snowstorm by the skin of my teeth, God Willing.
For those of you who have forgotten 'Breaking the Silence,' they are an organization that claims to be dedicated to exposing IDF abuses of 'Palestinians' in Judea and Samaria. They are funded by European governments, by the European Union (which awarded them the prestigious Andrei Sakharov prize) and by private American citizens (as well as by UNICEF and OxFam). Br'eaking the Silence' interviews discharged IDF soldiers and debriefs them regarding their IDF service. Or so they claim. It now seems that they do a lot more.
You might recall that recently, an organization called Ad Kan (Until Here) turned over video evidence to Israel's Channel 10 about human rights violations by 'human rights' groups Taayush and B'Tselem.Spreading the wealth, the group handed over material on 'Breaking the Silence' to Israel's Channel 2, which reported on it Thursday night (link and video in Hebrew). The material shows that 'Breaking the Silence' is collecting military intelligence which has no connection to 'human rights' violations in Judea and Samaria or anyplace else. And the unanswered question is 'with whom does 'Breaking the Silence' share that intelligence material?' That intelligence material could clearly and presently endanger the State of Israel.
In its investigation, Channel 2 cited unpublished testimonies from
Israeli soldiers that were obtained by the right-wing NGO Ad Kan, which
sent some of its members to join Breaking the Silence undercover. The
report claimed that Breaking the Silence collected “operational and
intelligence” information about IDF activities from both current and
former soldiers.
Channel 2 also broadcast videos of Breaking the Silence asking
soldiers “questions [that] appear to revolve more around their
operational activity rather issues regarding Palestinians and human
rights.”
While Breaking the Silence says it gathers anonymous testimonies from
Israeli soldiers about the IDF’s purported human rights abuses, these
testimonies have been previously criticized as being unsubstantiated and lacking context. In recent months, the group has come under increased scrutiny over the ethics of its practices.
In the wake of the new Channel 2 report, Breaking the Silence denied
any wrongdoing and emphasized that it works closely with Israel’s
military censor. Breaking the Silence CEO Yuli Novak added that several
organizations and members of the Knesset were trying “to silence” her
group.
And it seems that the next group to come under scrutiny may be 'rabbis' for 'human rights.'
The broadcast became headline news and the fallout
continued for weeks. Nawi was arrested at Ben-Gurion Airport when he
tried to flee the country.
A few days later, a follow-up program aired
more hidden-camera footage, this time showing Nawi with officials from
two other prominent “human rights” NGOs—Breaking the Silence (BtS) and
Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR). Both groups were shown giving money to
Nawi, who then handed out checks to Palestinians, apparently for taking
part in violent demonstrations. RHR claimed that Nawi was paid for
providing transportation services. BtS denounced everyone involved in
the program as “Stasi,” a reference to the notorious East German
intelligence service.
Steinberg observed that even before the broadcast of Nawi with
representatives of Breaking the Silence, there was growing criticism of
the group across the political spectrum in Israel.
Prior to the Uvda broadcasts, BtS and its patrons were
the particular focus of growing anger among many Israelis on the Right,
center, and even the center-Left. This anger followed a major jump in
the visibility of BtS, which reflected the group’s million- dollar
budget. BtS events in churches, universities, and national parliaments
around the world featured “anonymous testimony” that alleged systematic
immorality by IDF soldiers, with no corroborating evidence.
In response, hundreds of IDF reserve officers petitioned the Minister
of Defense, demanding that BtS activists be barred from speaking on
military bases. In parallel, relatives of terror victims and fallen
soldiers demanded that Education Minister Naftali Bennett prohibit BtS
from speaking to high school students. NGOs like B’Tselem were also
criticized. On Israel’s popular Saturday night satire program Gav Hauma,
host Lior Schleien did a ten-minute routine based on the issue,
primarily lampooning BtS and related NGOs.
I'm amazed that B'Tselem is allowed to speak on military bases.... But what Professor Steinberg says about anger coming from 'even the center-Left' is true. Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid has accused 'Breaking the Silence' of digging under the foundations of the State of Israel, and causing it both internal and external damage (link in Hebrew).
For those of you wondering why Israel feels the need to stop foreign governments from financing its NGO's, this is another data point.
Second reporter confirms AP ordered staff to shun Steinberg
A second reporter has now confirmed Matti Friedman's charges that the AP ordered its reporters not to interview or quote Professor Gerald Steinberg or NGO Monitor.
Response to the AP Ban on NGO Monitor and Prof. Steinberg
In a November 30 article published in The Atlantic (What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel), former AP journalist Matti Friedman states that, during his time at the AP Jerusalem bureau, reporters had explicit orders “to never quote [NGO Monitor] or its director… Gerald Steinberg. In my time as an AP writer moving through the local conflict, with its myriad lunatics, bigots, and killers, the only person I ever saw subjected to an interview ban was this professor.”
“Matti Friedman’s revelations regarding the efforts to censor NGO Monitor and me as its president are not entirely surprising,” said Professor Gerald Steinberg, president and founder of NGO Monitor. “Based on our experience in publishing detailed research on over 150 NGOs claiming to promote human rights and humanitarian objectives, we are aware of the intense efforts to maintain the NGO ‘halo effect’ and prevent critical debate. While the AP censorship was explicit, we have experienced similar silencing from other media platforms.”
Friedman also highlights the “ethical gray zone of ties between reporters and NGOs” in Israel, where journalists socializing in the same circles as NGO officials, seek employment with NGOs, and adapt to a journalistic culture in which NGOs “are to be quoted, not covered.”
This absence of critical analysis of political NGOs reinforces their biases and the lack of professional methodology. Friedman rightly criticizes, “one of the strangest aspects of coverage…namely, that while international organizations are among the most powerful actors in the Israel story, they are almost never reported on.”
Professor Steinberg continued: “When NGO Monitor was founded following the 2001 NGO Forum of the UN Durban conference, our primary objective was to open debate and provide accountability where none existed, develop systematic checks and balances, and ‘speak truth to NGO power.’ The importance of this mission has grown since then, as has the political influence of NGOs, as well as their funding and media impact, particularly in the Israeli context.”
Still haven't heard any spin on this from al-AP.
And I strongly suspect that most of the other mainstream media had similar 'rules.'
You wonder why the world hates us? Because they're told to hate us by the Leftist elites who run the media.
To make sense of most international journalism from Israel, it is
important first to understand that the news tells us far less about
Israel than about the people writing the news. Journalistic decisions
are made by people who exist in a particular social milieu, one which,
like most social groups, involves a certain uniformity of attitude,
behavior, and even dress (the fashion these days, for those interested,
is less vests with unnecessary pockets than shirts with unnecessary
buttons). These people know each other, meet regularly, exchange
information, and closely watch one another’s work. This helps explain
why a reader looking at articles written by the half-dozen biggest news
providers in the region on a particular day will find that though the
pieces are composed and edited by completely different people and
organizations, they tend to tell the same story.
The best insight into one of the key phenomena at play here comes not
from a local reporter but from the journalist and author Philip
Gourevitch. In Rwanda and elsewhere in Africa, Gourevitch wrote in 2010,
he was struck by the ethical gray zone of ties between reporters and
NGOs. “Too often the press represents humanitarians with unquestioning
admiration,” he observed in The New Yorker. “Why not seek to
keep them honest? Why should our coverage of them look so much like
their own self-representation in fund-raising appeals? Why should we (as
many photojournalists and print reporters do) work for humanitarian
agencies between journalism jobs, helping them with their official
reports and institutional appeals, in a way that we would never consider
doing for corporations, political parties, or government agencies?”
This confusion is very much present in Israel and the Palestinian
territories, where foreign activists are a notable feature of the
landscape, and where international NGOs and numerous arms of the United
Nations are among the most powerful players, wielding billions of
dollars and employing many thousands of foreign and local employees.
Their SUVs dominate sections of East Jerusalem and their expense
accounts keep Ramallah afloat. They provide reporters with social
circles, romantic partners, and alternative employment—a fact that is
more important to reporters now than it has ever been, given the
disintegration of many newspapers and the shoestring nature of their
Internet successors.
In my time in the press corps, I learned that our relationship with
these groups was not journalistic. My colleagues and I did not, that is,
seek to analyze or criticize them. For many foreign journalists, these
were not targets but sources and friends—fellow members, in a sense, of
an informal alliance. This alliance consists of activists and
international staffers from the UN and the NGOs; the Western diplomatic
corps, particularly in East Jerusalem; and foreign reporters. (There is
also a local component, consisting of a small number of Israeli
human-rights activists who are themselves largely funded by European
governments, and Palestinian staffers from the Palestinian Authority,
the NGOs, and the UN.) Mingling occurs at places like the lovely
Oriental courtyard of the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem, or at
parties held at the British Consulate’s rooftop pool. The dominant
characteristic of nearly all of these people is their transience. They
arrive from somewhere, spend a while living in a peculiar subculture of
expatriates, and then move on.
In these circles, in my experience, a distaste for Israel has come to be
something between an acceptable prejudice and a prerequisite for entry.
I don’t mean a critical approach to Israeli policies or to the
ham-fisted government currently in charge in this country, but a belief
that to some extent the Jews of Israel are a symbol of the world’s ills,
particularly those connected to nationalism, militarism, colonialism,
and racism—an idea quickly becoming one of the central elements of the
“progressive” Western zeitgeist, spreading from the European
left to American college campuses and intellectuals, including
journalists. In this social group, this sentiment is translated into
editorial decisions made by individual reporters and editors covering
Israel, and this, in turn, gives such thinking the means of mass
self-replication.
...
In the aftermath of the three-week Gaza war of 2008-2009, not yet
quite understanding the way things work, I spent a week or so writing a
story about NGOs like Human Rights Watch, whose work on Israel had just
been subject to an unusual public lashing in The New York Times by its own founder, Robert Bernstein. (The Middle East, he wrote,
“is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights
records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more
condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any
other country in the region.”) My article was gentle, all things
considered, beginning like this:
JERUSALEM (AP) _ The prickly relationship between Israel and its
critics in human rights organizations has escalated into an
unprecedented war of words as the fallout from Israel’s Gaza offensive
persists ten months after the fighting ended.
Editors killed the story.
Around this time, a Jerusalem-based group called NGO Monitor was
battling the international organizations condemning Israel after the
Gaza conflict, and though the group was very much a pro-Israel outfit
and by no means an objective observer, it could have offered some
partisan counterpoint in our articles to charges by NGOs that Israel had
committed “war crimes.” But the bureau’s explicit orders to reporters
were to never quote the group or its director, an American-born
professor named Gerald Steinberg. In my time as an AP writer moving
through the local conflict, with its myriad lunatics, bigots, and
killers, the only person I ever saw subjected to an interview ban was
this professor.
When the UN released its controversial Goldstone report on the Gaza
fighting, we at the bureau trumpeted its findings in dozens of articles,
though there was discussion even at the time of the report’s failure to
prove its central charge: that Israel had killed civilians on purpose.
(The director of Israel’s premier human-rights group, B’Tselem, who was
critical of the Israeli operation, told me at the time that this claim
was “a reach given the facts,” an evaluation that was eventually
seconded by the report’s author. “If I had known then what I know now,
the Goldstone Report would have been a different document,” Richard
Goldstone wrote in The Washington Post
in April 2011.) We understood that our job was not to look critically
at the UN report, or any such document, but to publicize it.
Decisions like these are hard to fathom if you believe the foreign
press corps’ role is to explain a complicated story to people far away.
But they make sense if you understand that journalists covering Israel
and the Palestinian territories often don’t see their role that way. The
radio and print journalist Mark Lavie, who has reported from the region
since 1972, was a colleague of mine at the AP, where he was an editor
in the Jerusalem bureau and then in Cairo until his retirement last
year. (It was Lavie who first learned of the Israeli peace offer of late
2008, and was ordered by his superiors to ignore the story.) An
Indiana-born Israeli of moderate politics, he had a long run in
journalism that included several wars and the first Palestinian
intifada, and found little reason to complain about the functioning of
the media.
But things changed in earnest in 2000, with the collapse of peace
efforts and the outbreak of the Second Intifada. Israel accepted
President Bill Clinton’s peace framework that fall and the Palestinians
rejected it, as Clinton made clear.
Nevertheless, Lavie recently told me, the bureau’s editorial line was
still that the conflict was Israel’s fault, and the Palestinians and the
Arab world were blameless. By the end of Lavie’s career, he was editing
Israel copy on the AP’s Middle East regional desk in Cairo, trying to
restore balance and context to stories he thought had little connection
to reality. In his words, he had gone from seeing himself as a proud
member of the international press corps to “the Jew-boy with his finger
in the dike.” He wrote a book, Broken Spring, about his front-row view of the Middle East’s descent into chaos, and retired disillusioned and angry.
Read the whole thing. And yes, he also explains the genesis of that picture at the top of this post.
“Suspend transfers to Israel of munitions, weapons, and related
equipment including crowd control weapons and devices, training and
techniques,” Amnesty said in a 74-page report titled “Trigger- Happy:
Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank” that it issued on
Thursday.
Arms transfers by the United States, the European Union and other
countries should only be resumed once Israel can ensure that they will
not be used to violate international humanitarian law and international
human rights law, Amnesty said.
“Without pressure from the international community, the situation is
unlikely to change any time soon,” said Philip Luther, director of the
Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International.
“Too much civilian blood has been spilled. This long-standing pattern
of abuse must be broken. If the Israeli authorities wish to prove to
the world they are committed to democratic principles and international
human rights standards, unlawful killings and unnecessary use of force
must stop now,” Luther said.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the report “smacks of bias, discrimination and racism.”
He accused Amnesty of wanting to deprive Israel of the right to self-defense.
“Amnesty takes to making up its own laws. In their frenzied public
relations stunt to grab a quick headline, they innovate in the legal
realm: no right of self-defense under fire [for Israelis],” he said.
“Amnesty lies by omission, and otherwise.”
The IDF said that Amnesty was ignoring the substantial increase in
Palestinian violence against Israel in the last year. In 2013,
Palestinians injured 132 Israelis, almost double the number of those
harmed in 2012, the IDF said.
It noted that this was “no surprise, considering that over 5,000
incidents of rock-hurling took place, half of which were toward main
roads.”
It added that “there were 66 further terror attacks, which included
shootings, the planting of [improvised explosive devices], blunt weapon
attacks and the abduction and murder of a soldier.”
The report, it said, also showed “a complete lack of understanding as
to operational challenges the IDF is posed with in the West Bank.
“Where feasible, the IDF contains this life-threatening violence using
riot dispersal means, including loud sirens, water cannons, sound
grenades and teargas.
Only once these tools have been exhausted, and human life and safety
remains under threat, is the use of precision munition authorized,” it
said.
“Amnesty International accusations are
reckless, blatantly biased, and reflect the lack of a credible research
fact-finding methodology,” said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO
Monitor. “Amnesty lacks the expertise and credibility to analyze or
assign blame for deaths in the context of violent confrontations in the
West Bank. As in the past, the allegations in this report repeat
unverifiable Palestinian ‘testimony.’”
Indeed, in a February 10 interview with Al Jazeera,
Amnesty International’s Secretary General Salil Shetty acknowledged
that “we are not an expert (sic) on military matters. So we don’t want
to, kind of, pontificate on issues we don’t really understand.”
In its report, Amnesty makes numerous non-specific claims without any
supporting evidence, such as “Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers
did not appear to be posing a direct and immediate threat to life” and
the use of “arbitrary” force. In contrast, other monitoring groups such
as B’Tselem acknowledge
that the majority of Palestinian casualties occurred during combat or
violent clashes and confrontations with Israeli security personnel.
Amnesty’s removal of this essential context and abuse of the term
“civilian” further highlights the lack of credibility.
Likewise, NGO Monitor has shown
that Amnesty’s “research” team on Israel comprises two individuals with
backgrounds in anti-Israel political activism, not military and legal
expertise.
Yes, but unfortunately, I'll bet a lot more people read Amnesty's report than the criticism, and that more headlines will reflect Amnesty's views than the critics' views.
The Super Bowl may be over, but the battle between Israeli advertiser SodaStream and the Oxfam NGO is far from it. On Sunday, SodaStream's CEO accused Oxfam - based on data from NGO Monitor - of funding the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement.
“Unsurprisingly, Oxfam has joined the BDS in this movement [to close
down the West Bank factory],” SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum said. “I’m
saying ‘unsurprisingly’ because we found out that some of the Oxfam
branches have been donating funds to the BDS, and this money is used to
demonize and attack Israel.”
...
Birnbaum spoke out Sunday against Oxfam after the Israeli nonprofit
group NGO Monitor posted information on its website claiming that in
2013, the charity’s Dutch affiliate Oxfam Novib had transferred NIS
406,300 to the Coalition of Women for Peace, which was involved in the
BDS campaign against Israel.
Oxfam claims that they 'only support' BDS - they don't fund it. However they don't deny that their Dutch affiliate funds the Coalition of Women for 'peace' which is a participant in the BDS campaign.
Oxfam immediately responded, denying the claim.
“We do not support BDS. We do not fund BDS,” Oxfam
International’s head of media Matt Grainger said, though “we do fund
lots of civil society organizations and lots of Palestinian civil
society organizations.”
Yeah.... Right....
Three words: Money is fungible, and if you give money to an organization whose raison d'etre is to promote BDS, you're supporting and funding BDS.
I chose to picture a totally treife cheeseburger rather than a possibly treife hamburger, because something that is totally treife should be depicted by something that is totally treife. Learning from Hamas' terror-teaching summer camp, 'jewish voice for peace' (which still feels it deserves to be 'in the tent') has teamed up with the Quakers' American Friends Service Committee to create a summer camp that teaches BDS.
Once back on campus, these students will push
BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaigns against Israel,
employing the wider anti-Israel political warfare that stems from the 2001 Durban NGO Forum.
This sustained global demonization strategy seeks to exploit the labels
of “apartheid” and “racism” in political warfare targeting Israel,
while promoting the Palestinian narrative. The ultimate goal is
dismantling Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
To these ends, JVP promotes divestment
campaigns on U.S. campuses, in mainline churches, and in corporate
stockholder meetings. AFSC also supports BDS, hurls demonizing “apartheid” accusations, advocates for a “right of return” and extols “popular resistance in Palestine.”
The joint JVP-AFSC BDS Summer Institute
is an implementation of the Durban strategy. It is a five day
“intensive program for campus BDS organizers – those with campaigns
already running and those hoping to get one launched in the 2013-2014
school year.” It is set to take place beginning July 28 at the bucolic
Presbyterian Church’s Stony Point Center, in New York. JVP and AFSC also
ran a BDS camp last summer.
AFSC’s funding sources
are largely transparent. Its website carries annual reports, audit
reports, lists of foundational donors, and a breakdown of where and how
its funds are spent.
In sharp contrast, JVP’s funding sources are
non-transparent. Its website carries no information on its donors.
There are no annual reports or other financial data. Limited financial
information is available through public IRS documents and other
databases. NGO Monitor has found that JVP’s budget in 2011 (the last
year such information was available) was nearly $900,000. JVP has
received funding from the Violet Jabara Charitable Trust (an Arab-American foundation that also supports the virulently anti-Israel Electronic Intifada), the Firedoll Foundation, and the Wallace Global Fund, which all contribute to numerous anti-Israel groups.
As we look forward to a new school year this
September, divestment and boycott efforts will likely begin anew on U.S.
campuses. And, it should be remembered that much of the campus BDS
drive comes from the self-described “Jewish wing” of the Palestinian
solidarity movement, the Jewish Voice for Peace.
What? No Soros?
The Arabs are financially supporting Jews who are attempting to bring about the destruction of the Jewish state. What could go wrong?
Your tax dollars at work: US also funding radical Leftist Israeli NGO's
And you thought that it was only European governments that were using taxpayer money to fund radical Israeli NGO's. No. It turns out that the United States of Obama is also funding radical Leftist NGO's in Israel. This is Caroline Glick.
According to the report, in accordance with the NGO Transparency
Law which requires NGOs to report on donations received from foreign
governments, three Israeli NGOs received funding from the US.
Keshev,
a radical leftist "media watchdog" group run by some of Israel's most
outspoken, and radical journalists and writers received NIS 492,452 in
direct aid from the US government. To understand how subversive Keshev
is, it suffices to note that they criticized the Israeli media
for rushing to judgment about Fatah's unity deal with Hamas. That is,
the group the US supports believes we should not criticize Fatah for
joining forces with a genocidal jihadist movement committed to the
obliteration of Israel that is in cahoots with the Iranians.
Through
Catholic Relief Services,the US also gave NIS 220,304 to the
anti-Israel pressure group B'Tselem. The money was used to fund
B'Tselem's video project. B'tselem's video project involves the
distribution of video cameras to Palestinians to film snuff films that
portry Israelis as aggressive bullies who seek to harm the Palestinians
for no reason.
Finally, the US government donated NIS 15,474 through the Foundation for Middle East Peace to the far left internet outlet Social TV.
To a certain degree, Social TV can be -- and has been -- portrayed as
the anti-Zionist answer to Latma, the Hebrew-language media criticism
site that I run. But Latma is wholly funded by private contributors and
foundations.
It would have never occurred to
me to ask a foreign government to fund the project. It never would have
occurred to me to ask a foreign government to get into the media
watchdog game in Israel. But then, from reading the report it is clear
that the aim of the US government is not, in fact to help Israeli media
outlets do a better job reporting on events. Rather, the report
indicates that the US government has decided to use radical Israeli NGOs
to wage political warfare in Israel. The aim of this campaign is to
convince the public that Israel is to blame for the absence of peace
with our neighbors.
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.
Earlier today a major new social media campaign was launched. The campaign is a project of AICE, and major partners include Hillel, StandWithUs, ICC and WZO. Other partners include AZM, Honest Reporting, ROI, NGO Monitor and others. The campaign is aimed at college students in North America. The Pitch video (below) gives an overview, a more detailed briefing for potential partner organisations can be downloaded from here.
Let's go to the videotape.
Okay.... I wish he had kept the towel on, even if it's only a cartoon.
UN special rapporteur accuses Israel of 'Judaization'
Every time I see us accused of 'Judaization' - an accusation frequently leveled at Israel by the 'Palestinians' regarding Jerusalem - my instinctive response is "What else do you expect us to do? Encourage Arabs to settle there? It's a Jewish place in a Jewish country."
On Sunday, a UN investigator accused Israel of 'Judaization' in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Negev. Yes, the Negev. In case you're wondering what the next frontier is if the 'Palestinians' ever - God forbid - get their reichlet in Judea and Samaria (with Jerusalem as its capital).
In any event, here's the story of the UN special rapporteur. Israeli activity against Negev Beduin and Palestinians in both east Jerusalem and Area C of the West Bank “are the new frontiers of dispossession of the traditional inhabitants and the implementation of a strategy of Judaization and control of the territory,” said Raquel Rolnik, a special UN rapporteur on adequate housing.
...
In addition, the Beduin and Palestinians suffer from discriminatory practices, including land expropriation, she said.
In east Jerusalem, Palestinians can apply for building permits on only 13% of the area, Rolnik said.
“The number of permits issued is grossly inadequate to housing needs, leading many Palestinians to build without obtaining a permit,” she said.
As a result, tens of thousands of Palestinians’ homes are at risk of being demolished, she added.
More than 70% of the demolitions in Jerusalem are carried out against Palestinian residents, even though they make up only 20% of the infractions, Rolnik said.
Wow does she sound confused. Does that mean Jews can't get building permits either? (Answer - yes).
In the West Bank, security and administrative measures result in the demolition of Palestinian homes, she said, and also limit Palestinian growth and access to livelihood and services.
Rolnik said she was concerned by plans to forcibly relocate the Jahalin Beduin who live in the area near Ma’aleh Adumim.
Last year, Israel demolished 622 Palestinian structures, including 222 that were family homes [What were the rest? CiJ], she said, and 1,094 people were displaced. “This is almost double the number from 2010,” she said.
The largest number of demolitions occurred in the Jordan Valley, she said.
She also took issue with plans by Palestinians to construct a new city in the West Bank, called Rawabi, because it will not provide affordable housing to “numerous communities living in inadequate conditions.”
Rawabi is Israel's first racist city. No Jews allowed. In fact, some Jewish contractors aren't allowed either.
But here's the coup de grace:
The Foreign Ministry, which assisted Rolnik during her visit, took issue with her comments.
Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said her statements “manifest such a profound misunderstanding of basic realities that one really feels obliged to request the honorable rapporteur to go back to square one and do her homework properly.”
Why did the Foreign Ministry 'help' her? Her 'conclusions' were entirely predictable before she stepped off the plane!(By the way, the part of the article I omitted blames the Israeli government's land policies for the high price of housing here - a problem that mostly affects the Jewish community but she didn't mention that).
In response to the use of an antisemitic slur by Raquel Rolnik, the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor today demanded her immediate resignation. Rolnik utilized the term "Judaization" to describe Israeli government housing policy in the Negev, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. NGO Monitor notes that the term originated with Arab rejectionists and has been promoted by fringe non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that falsely claim the mantle of human rights.
"'Judaization' is an anti-Jewish racist term which suggests that the presence of Jews is alien and unacceptable," says Anne Herzberg, legal advisor for NGO Monitor. "This immoral rhetoric is part of the broader delegitimization campaign that is counterproductive to fostering peace in the region. As with the false 'apartheid' analogy, it is invoked with the same goal to demonize. It is the latest manifestation of the 1975 UN 'Zionism is racism' resolution and the 2001 Durban Conference NGO Forum declaration."
NGO Monitor notes that Article 4 of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination "condemn[s] all propaganda and all organizations which are based on ideas or theories of superiority of one race or group of persons of one colour or ethnic origin, or which attempt to justify or promote racial hatred and discrimination in any form..."
NGO Monitor also notes that it is immoral for human rights organizations and UN officials to use phrases such as "Judaization," which explicitly endorses ethnically-based exclusion.
"The term Judaization is immoral and employed for antisemitic goals; we expect that it would not be invoked by a UN Special Rapporteur claiming to operate with a human rights framework," Herzberg adds. "Raquel Rolnik's use of it makes peace more difficult to achieve, and in light of this she should resign immediately."
Well, yeah, but don't hold your breaths waiting for it to happen.
New Israel Fund grantee promoting the notion of 'Israeli apartheid'
Adalah, an 'Israeli Arab' organization that received more than $475,000 from the Jewish-funded New Israel Fund in 2010, is making a presentation to a BDS (Boycott Divest Sanction) conference in Geneva next Tuesday on 'Israeli apartheid.'
"The use of the false 'apartheid' analogy and misleading 'racism' terminology is totally unacceptable and is the antithesis of human rights," said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. "Adalah's funders, including the EU, European governments, and foundations, should repudiate Adalah's use of immoral and inflammatory rhetoric."
NGO Monitor notes that Adalah's submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which is meeting in Geneva next week to discuss Israel, demonizes Israel for laws and policies that allegedly "permit and even actively promote racial discrimination."
And the money that Adalah gets from the New Israel Fund is coming straight from your do-gooding Jewish neighbors who think that they're promoting 'civil rights' in Israel. The rest of Adalah's money comes from the anti-Semitic Europeans who are looking for the Arab Muslims to finish the job that the Europeans couldn't finish 70 years ago.
By manipulating traditional Christmas songs, images, and messages, NGOs such as Sabeel, War on Want (UK), Amos Trust, and Adalah-NY continue to demonize Israel with crude, antisemitic rhetoric.
"These NGOs have hijacked Christmas to promote their extremely divisive boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) and demonization campaigns," says Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. "Manipulating religious symbols and images in this manner is deeply offensive, and clearly does not foster an environment of coexistence among Israelis and Palestinians. These NGOs are pursuing hate-filled agendas."
Friends of Sabeel - Detroit is selling Christmas cards as a "fundraiser in support of Friend of Sabeel - North America," one of which implies the destruction of the Jewish state by depicting a map of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza as one territory filled in with the phrase "The Empire will not last!"
Adalah-NY held its annual "Anti-Apartheid Holiday Caroling" on December 17, 2011 in front of a New York jewelry store owned by Israeli businessman Lev Leviev. The protest is part of Adalah-NY's campaign targeting Leviev because he is an Israeli, and they invited activists to sing awkward and offensive versions of traditional holiday songs. This year, the event was held in conjunction with Code Pink, whose Stolen Beauty campaign targets the Israeli company Ahava. In their lyrics, the NGOs use the "Ethnic cleansing and apartheid" blood libels, and chanted "Selling beauty creams, / Blood mixed in with mud"; other inflammatory lyrics include "That beauty cream you bought her / Makes her soul disappear."
UK-based Amos Trust is advertising its annual Bethlehem Pack, "a resource to help churches talk about the current situation in Bethlehem at carol services and Christmas events." Exploiting charged theological images to attack Israel, this text proclaims: "If Jesus was born today in Bethlehem, the Wise Men would spend several hours queuing to enter the town" and "If Jesus was born today in Bethlehem, much of the shepherds' fields would have been confiscated for illegal Israeli settlements."
"Linking the suffering of Palestinians to Christian themes revives traditional and deep seated antisemitic theology," Steinberg adds. "By employing these tactics, and grossly misrepresenting a complicated conflict, these NGOs are making peace more difficult to achieve."
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, November 18.
1) Why do rational people make irrational decisions? If you follow baseball, like I do, you've probably noticed that baseball has changed a bit in the past 20 years. Whether it is the way teams evaluate player or reporters cover the game, statistical analysis is playing a bigger role in baseball. Bill James, who spurred this revolution in baseball, wrote the following observations:
“Baseball men, living from day to day in the clutch of carefully metered chance occurrences, have developed an entire bestiary of imagined causes to tie together and thus make sense of patterns that are in truth entirely accidental,” James wrote. “They have an entire vocabulary of completely imaginary concepts used to tie together chance groupings. It includes ‘momentum,’ ‘confidence,’ ‘seeing the ball well,’ ‘slumps,’ ‘guts,’ ‘clutch ability,’ being ‘hot’ and ‘cold,’ ‘not being aggressive’ and my all time favorite the ‘intangibles.’ By such concepts, the baseball man gains a feeling of control over a universe that swings him up and down and tosses him from side to side like a yoyo in a high wind.” It wasn’t just baseball he was writing about, James continued. “I think that the randomness of fate applies to all of us as much as baseball men, though it might be exacerbated by the orderliness of their successes and failures.”
The letter quoted here, was written to Amos Tversky. Tversky and his colleague, Daniel Kahneman described thought processes that explained why people would make bad decisions even if they seemingly had all the necessary information and expertise to make good ones.
Michael Lewis (of "Moneyball" fame) caught up with Dr. Kahneman and got him to describe his conclusions. Writing for Vanity Fair, Lewis explained (h/t Rob Neyer):
Kahneman walks the lay reader (i.e., me) through the research of the past few decades that has described, as it has never been described before, what appear to be permanent kinks in human reason. The story he tells has two characters—he names them “System 1” and “System 2”—that stand in for our two different mental operations. System 1 (fast thinking) is the mental state in which you probably drive a car or buy groceries. It relies heavily on intuition and is amazingly capable of misleading and also of being misled. The slow-thinking System 2 is the mental state that understands how System 1 might be misled and steps in to try to prevent it from happening. The most important quality of System 2 is that it is lazy; the most important quality of System 1 is that it can’t be turned off. We pass through this life on the receiving end of a steady signal of partially reliable information that we only occasionally, and under duress, evaluate thoroughly. Through these two characters the author describes the mistakes your mind is prone to make and then explores the reasons for its errors.
I’ve come to realize a hitherto hidden dimension of why it is so hard for Western establishment figures (policymakers, journalists, and academics) to understand the Middle East. It is the conflict between the thirst for good news and the reality of bad news. Being optimists (based on the relatively good course of their own societies?) and believing that positive change is really easy if people only put their minds to making it happen (ditto and also liberal thinking), they exaggerate any sign that things are getting better. Moreover, contemporary thinking trembles in horror about saying anything critical about Third World peoples (racism, Islamophobia) while it is considered noble to criticize “ourselves.” On top of that is the assumption that no one can really be radical. They are just responding to past mistreatment and will revert to being moderate the minute the oppression is corrected. So constantly we are led to an artificial optimism that ignores threats or even converts them into benefits.
Prof Rubin is effectively describing a collective of "System 1" thinkers dominating field of Middle East studies, diplomacy and journalism.
Here at Gruenewald railway station, on these platforms, on 39.11.42, three children of the Bobkar family - Maly, Hala and Abraham - stood here by themselves.Perhaps the two older sisters held their seven-year-old brother by the hand. They stood here without mother or father and the train came. The transport number was #23, the destination was Auschwitz, they were among the first. The Wansee Conference had taken place not long before, on the other side of the forest.
The Bobkar children, as Sharon told, were on the way to their deaths.
In 1958, shortly after Yaakov moved to Israel, he and his wife filled out a page of testimony at Yad Vashem commemorating his dead parents. Nahum had meanwhile settled in Ukraine, where his surname was mangled into Koramblyum. For the rest of their lives, the brothers searched for each other in vain, the paper trail often coming to a dead end because of the differing spellings of their names. In 2006, Yaakov’s daughter, Bracha Fleishman-Korenblum, updated the online entry, attaching an old black-and-white photo of her grandparents and four of their children — including Nahum and Yaakov. Two months ago, one of Nahum’s American grandchildren stumbled upon the entry and was shocked to recognize his grandfather in the picture. He reached out to the Korenblum clan in Israel and a reunion was put into motion.
3) The Iran Mexico axis
A few weeks ago it was reported that a couple of Iranians had plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The Iranians were intending to enlist a Mexican drug ring to carry out the hit. But what was the connection.
This week the London Times reported (h/t Honest Reporting) that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were engaged in the international drug trade. A shorter version of the article appears to have been published in the Australian.
Iranian sources, including a former IRGC intelligence officer, have named two senior figures within the Guard involved in the drug trade. Abdullah Araghi, the IRGC commander for Greater Tehran, is alleged to have extensive connections with gangs in Eastern Europe. Mohsen Rafighdoost was head of the IRGC in the 1980s and has maintained close contact with the organisation since retiring. Sajjad Haghpanah, a former investigator with the IRGC's domestic intelligence division, said drug trafficking was endemic within the unit. "There are several commanders involved in smuggling narcotics. Raw opium or morphine is smuggled in from Afghanistan and developed in labs inside Iran," said Mr Haghpanah. "They work with criminal gangs to move it overseas. They have their own ships, aircraft and haulage companies, everything needed for import and export. Their power is limitless."
Is this where the suspects first came into contact with drug gangs? 4) NGO proliferation
Gerald Steinberg, the group’s president, said, however, that he opposed the two new bills under consideration. He added that he suspected they would not survive. ... He said that European governments spend more per year on left-wing Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups than their total contributions to nonprofit human rights groups in other countries in the Middle East. “We estimate that together, this amounts to between $75 and $100 million from European governments to Israeli and Palestinian groups annually, far exceeding funding for human rights and democracy organizations in the rest of the region,” he said.
That's a pretty ridiculous focus on Israel. Daled Amos provides (NGO Monitor's) chart. It looks like a number of people are well paid for digging up damaging information against Israel and then being a primary source for news stories.
Video: Shalit agreement shows moral failure of 'human rights' groups
Prof. Gerald Steinberg interviewed on the IBA English News October 17, 2011 about the Gilad Shalit prisoner deal and the utter failure of Human Rights NGOs during Shalit's 5 years in a Hamas prison.
Remember the NGO law, which finally passed in a watered down version? Well, Wikileaks released a cable from February 2010, which provides some fascinating insights from both sides to the issue. The cable is based upon an earlier version of the bill.
4. (C) NGO Monitor President Gerald Steinberg, a conservative professor of political science at Bar Ilan University who initiated the push for this legislation during a December Knesset conference that was boycotted by most NGOs, told PolOff on February 24 that the legislation aimed to replicate the U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). He described the human rights NGOs in Israel as having become thoroughly discredited in the eyes of most Israelis because their activities were political in nature, and not truly concerned with human rights. He decried what he termed the NGOs' overblown allegations of war crimes at every turn and specifically cited B'Tselem's refusal to recognize even simple facts contrary to its political agenda; B'Tselem's counting of Hamas operatives as among the civilian dead during Operation Cast Lead just because they wore civilian clothes was one egregious example. Steinberg described such NGOs as being dedicated to ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank with no regard for what would happen afterwards, as though the solution was really that simple and there were no consequences from Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.
¶5. (C) Steinberg said the legislation was aimed to "send a signal" that Israeli human rights NGOs' activities were in fact "political warfare" that had consequences for Israel internationally, with the Goldstone Report being a predictable culmination. He rejected the idea that the legislation would curb freedom of speech as he maintained that left-wing NGOs had long monopolized the public space, accrued much soft-power internationally, and needed to be opposed by increasing transparency. He saw these NGOs as playing a crucial role in a vicious cycle whereby foreign (mostly European) governments funded actions that manipulated domestic politics, undermined Israel's international legitimacy, and falsely legitimized such anti-Israel actions as the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign. Steinberg is currently suing the European Union for violating Freedom of Information laws for funding Israeli NGOs secretly and estimated that the EU provides almost 10 million dollars in funding to Israeli NGOs per year and that individual European states' funding, particularly Britain, France, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland, brought the total to tens of millions of dollars.
¶6. (C) B'Tselem Director Jessica Montell, who estimated her 9 million NIS ($2.4 million) budget is 95 percent funded from abroad, mostly from European countries, told PolOff on February 10 that she did not believe the legislation would pass in its current form. ACRI's International Communication and Development Coordinator, Melanie Takefman, also told PolOff on February 10 that she believed the troublesome legislation would be amended and that the NGOs would likely be able to influence the draft legislation so that it would achieve its goal of greater transparency without restricting the NGOs' ability to operate. Both denied any need for greater transparency, but said they would welcome it if it applied equally to all NGOs, including NGO-Monitor and especially Jewish settler organizations.
¶7. (C) New Israel Fund (NIF) Associate Director in Israel Hedva Radovanitz, who manages grants to 350 NGOs totaling about 18 million dollars per year, told PolOff on February 23 that the campaign against the NGOs was due to the "disappearance of the political left wing" in Israel and the lack of domestic constituency for the NGOs. She noted that when she headed ACRI's Tel Aviv office, ACRI had 5,000 members, while today it has less than 800, and it was only able to muster about 5,000 people to its December human rights march by relying on the active staff of the 120 NGOs that participated. Radovanitz commented that the NIF was working behind the scenes through many NGOs to prevent the NGO legislation from passing in its current form. She commented that she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic. She also said the NIF was currently re-evaluating its strategy and was hoping to create a movement rather than just a lot of NGOs. She said the NIF had no plans to build a human rights constituency within the right wing of Israeli society, though she believed politics had shifted to the right for the foreseeable future.
That seems pretty damning to me. Peace Now admits that 95% of its funding comes from abroad? NIF says ACRI membership has dropped from 5,000 to 800 and that they have to take money from abroad because they have no domestic constituency? Can you conceive of any other country in the world where other countries would be interested in funding political activity that most of the local population abhors - or with which it at least disagrees?
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
