New Israel Fund’s red lines
On Thursday the New Israel Fund issued a statement reiterating its commitment to a "democratic Israel in which progressive voices are not intimidated, threatened and misrepresented" (read the statement here).
The missive comes in the wake of broadsides against NIF for its support of groups critical of Israeli government institutions or actions, including, most recently, Breaking the Silence, an organization that this month distributed a booklet of anonymous testimonials purportedly by Israeli soldiers alleging IDF misconduct and inhumane treatment of Palestinians durning Israel's military operation in Gaza last January. After its distribution, a pair of hosts on Israeli Army Radio jokingly suggested breaking the bones of Breaking the Silence. NIF did not find the remark funny.
NIF's statement on Thursday, issued to "set the record straight on some issues that continue to be debated in Israel and elsewhere," called the Army Radio hosts' remarks "inflammatory" and cited other recent attacks on NIF or its grantees, including a critique by NGO Monitor that I wrote about in a June 17 blogpost. The JTA blogpost is cited in NIF's statement.
The problem NIF is grappling with is that it funds groups that practice or advocate for things that are anathema to many Jews and Israel supporters (and NIF supporters) -- such as calling for divestment from Israeli companies, eliminating Israel's Jewish character and criticizing the Israel Defense Forces. Some of NIF's grantees advocate positions the NIF itself finds objectionable. But because NIF considers itself a "big tent organization" (in the words of communications director Naomi Paiss) and, as Thursday's statement says, "is committed to a democratic Israel in which progressive voices are not intimidated, threatened and misrepresented," such behavior does not result in automatic censure or the halting of funding.
The question for NIF is where are the group's red lines? Just because the NIF is committed to free debate in Israel doesn't mean it should provide financial support to those it believes are on the wrong side of the debate. The NIF owes its donors and the Jewish community an answer to the question of when a grantee's behavior crosses the line.
Here's what Paiss, NIF's spokeswoman, told me about NIF's red lines:
Our red lines now include those established by Israeli law governing amutot [Israeli nonprofits]. You have to be an amuta [Israeli nonprofit] to get a grant from us. Generally it’s the amuta law, which of course requires that organizartions don’t work against the State of Israel. The Israeli government keeps a fairly close eye on amutot.
Paiss also said the group's red lines include:
- Engaging in racist behavior.
- Demonizing any particular group.
- Using or advocating violence as a means of effecting social change.
- Engaging in activities not supportive of NIF goals of promoting civil rights and social justice for all Israelis.
"We are constantly engaging with our grantees and Shatil clients in spirited debates," Paiss told me. However, she said, "We are reluctant to impose are own positions on specific issues on grantees."
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It’s interesting that NIF complains about the NGOM oprganization for speading so-called false information about the NIF yet supports Breaking the Silence when it publishs and spreads so-called information about misdeeds of the IDF without naming names and giving information that can be checked. One must remember the rumors that were spread as concrete facts concerning actions of the IDF by soldiers who later were found out to neither witnessed actions they talked about or got their information from individuals who were. Why can’t Left-wing groups be identified as Left-wing instead of Progressive? To those giving funds to NIF, get a list of the organizations receiving money and check how they are being used.
Breaking the Silence, whose latest report—nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors—was embraced by the British press, has received a cool response from Kuwaiti Abdallah al–Hadlaq. Al-Hadlaq wrote in the Kuwaiti paper Al-Watan July 19:
http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com/2009/07/kuwaiti-raises-voice-against-breaking_24.html#links
All of the BtS testimonies published were verified by double-confirmation, i.e., more than one soldier confirming that an event had taken place. BtS collected over 700 testimonies from Gaza but only published thirty of them. Two of them were confirmed by Amos Harel, who published the stories in Haaretz. Harel met with the soldiers. More testimonies will be forthcoming in the media after being checked my reporters. And as a result of the publication, more soldiers are coming forth to give testimony to the group.
Why anonymous? Simple. Some of the soldiers are still on active duty and they are violating IDF policy by going to the group. Others who have given their names and detalis in the past have been questioned and interrogated by the military police. In other words, the IDF will do anything to make sure that soldiers do not tell the Israeli public what they have done or seen.
If the testimonies are not anonymous, then there will be no testimonies. On the other hand, there is more than enough identifying material in the testimonies for them to be taken seriously.
In the five years of BtS publishing hundreds of testimonies, not a single one has been shown to be false.
The truth is that much of the Israeli public is lying to itself about what goes on in the army. It doesn’t really care what the army does. And many of the soldiers don’t care. But soldiers with a conscience who witness the use of human shields and the use of white phosphorus, both illegal, who wish to tell their stories to an unbelieving public, are faced with being considered “enemies of the people”, as the comments above will prove.
Amos Oz, David Grossman, A. B. Yehoshua, Nahman Shay, Avishai Margalit—all of these are mainline Zionist intellectuals and writers—and all have supported Breaking the Silence and have called for an external and independent investigation into Operation Cast Lead.
Is the New Israel Fund out of line in supporting BtS after these people express their support.? Or is anything to the left of Labor considered a red line, accordning to Heilman?
In addition to the NIF, a number of European governments have been giving this small fringe group of disgruntled Israelis (Breaking the Silence) money for an international sales campaign which is condemning Israel for war crimes in Gaza. This is part of a wider pattern—many radical political NGOs on NIF’s list also get money from the Europeans. An article in today’s Haaretz quotes the Israeli Ambassador to Holland as saying: “The Dutch taxpayer’s money could be better used to promote peace and human rights.” And the Dutch Ambassador to Israel admitted that he did not even know that the embassy in Tel Aviv, which he heads, was funding Breaking the Silence. The Dutch government is re-evaluating the impact of this funding, and NIF donors might want to follow this example.
NGO Monitor is an ultra right wing organization funded by right wing Jews in the US that fund Stand with Us and the Israel Project, together with evangelical Christians. It never has shown a single testimony of Breaking the Silence to be false; instead it goes after the fundraiseing. NGO Monitor has had to retract several of its claims because it never checks its facts. It doesn’t have to—it just discredits with cheap shots. But more than that—according to NGO Monitor, all human rights organizations are biased against Israel. Yet it has never done a serious study of any of the same human rights organizations’ reports on other countries. Fortunately, NGO Monitor has no standing in any of the communities and can be safely ignored as a knee-jerk ultra rightwing site.
Only pretend Jews would for a second consider being members of NIF. It is beyond stupid to object to the Jewish nature of Israel or to consider the most ethical army on earth to merit criticism (see UK Col R Kemp’s comments). If Israel was not Jewish where would the Falashas have gone? Where would the Jews who could not get into the USA have gone? Jews have a special history and some need to return to the land of their ancestors, Many as well stay in Israel or make aliyah, because that is the place where their version of Jewsihness can be fulfilled and it is not the place of USA Jews to demand that those people surrender their democratic rights and their battle earned right to self-determination.
The comment that NGO Monitor is ultra right wing is so silly that it can only be believed by a wing nut who demands that Breaking the Silence testimonies, given anonymously without detail, be accepted as true because they cannot be proven to be false. As the cartoon Homer famously says: duh!
NIF is headed by a group of assimilated wealthy American Jews who are aiding and abetting the enemies of Israel who are waging war against her. Many of these enemies are Marxist Jewish Israelis who are opposed to the existence of a Jewish state as set up by the UN in 1947. NIF should be banned by Israel and all its funding to Jewish Israeli Marxists should be seized and used to rehabilitate all those traumatized and mutilated Israeli children who were the subject of collective punishment by the fiendish Hamas terrorists through their indiscriminate rocket fire on Israeli homes, day care centers and buses.
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Lansdowne Mike
07/24/09 04:12 PM
So we can feel confident that NIF will not be supporting amutot that demonize any haredi groups. That’s very good to know.
I’m sure that there are other red lines that the spokesperson didn’t mention, such as a pattern of engaging in unethical behavior, etc. I wonder why the behavior of Breaking the Silence in publishing anonymous attacks on claimed IDF actions passed that screen. I’m sure that if a Likud-associated group published a set of anonymous claims about progressive groups’ active support for terrorists there would be an international clamor about the unfairness of such a thing.