It’s OK for Americans to fund settlements, but aid human-rights groups? No way

by on February 4, 2010 4
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The Christian Science Monitor has a good piece on the campaign against the New Israel Fund, which supports democracy in Israel and is now under fire for connections to the Goldstone report:

A center-right group, "Im Tirtzu," issued a report last week charging that the Goldstone report relies on documentation from 16 local rights organizations that were vocal critics of Israeli conduct during the war. The report singled out a common financial thread, the multimillion-dollar New Israel Fund, which raises money among American Jews and foundations for progressive causes.

That sparked a drive in the Israeli parliament to approve an investigation to determine whether the work of those nonprofits undermines Israel’s legitimacy. The investigation could lead to the outlawing of some groups.

The hypocrisy I point out in my headline is one that Jeff Blankfort pointed out to me.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel/Palestine

{ 4 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. jimby says:
    February 4, 2010 at 10:25 am

    This could go in an interesting direction. It might cause a PUBLIC dialogue between American Jews on this important issue. Not being Jewish disallows me to enter into such talk.

  2. potsherd says:
    February 4, 2010 at 11:29 am

    More cracks in the monolith wall: link to haaretz.com

    “One of the issues which keeps coming up at every meeting with the various Jewish communities is the subject of pluralism in Israel,” Edelstein said, adding that while in Israel “the subject is taking up page eight in the newspapers, here it is something very much on people’s minds, like the ‘Women of the ‘Wall’ story.”

    The Information and Diaspora Minister was referring to an incident last month in which Haredi worshippers protested an attempt by 200 members of the “Women of the Wall” women’s organization to conduct a massive prayer session at the Western Wall.

    A month before that, police arrested Nofat Frankel who was praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, due to the fact that she was wrapped in a prayer shawl (tallit).

    Edelstein also referred to the controversy surrounding the liberal nonprofit The New Israel Fund, saying he felt the situation reached “absurdity.”

    The New Israel Fund is “doing many good things, but, at the same time, some problematic ones as well. There’s good reason to think that much of the material that made its way to the Goldstone report was supplied by organizations funded by that organization.”

    “I have never treated the Goldstone report as anti-Semetic, but it de-legitimized Israel in a very dangerous way, and we can see the result that while the UN praises Israel for its rescue work in Haiti, the internet is filled with stories of IDF soldiers harvesting organs there.”

    Edelstein was also critical toward the dovish lobby J Street, saying that while he didn’t meet members of that group he felt that “there is a very simple rule: if you want to call yourself a lobby for Israel, you first need to check yourself and see if you could work with either Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Sharon.”

    “I’m not one of those squares yelling out ‘you must support Israel, right or wrong,’ but I’m leaving a question mark on the whole J Street issue,” the Likud minister said, adding that if “J Street can’t represent every government in Israel, they can call themselves something else than a lobby. Then, we’ll speak to them.”

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