Lately Allison did a post on the rightwing Israeli youth group Im Tirtzu engaging in Nakba denial at Tel Aviv University. This group has a disruptive pro-settler track record. And it’s got American support– as a charity, with your tax-free subsidy.
According to federal filings, an American charity organization, Kingjay Foundation Trusts, gave $10,000 in 2011 to Im Tirtzu as a public charity– to its “social and welfare programs.”
Kingjay has over $6 million in assets. Its principals are Roy and Judith Stern. They are settlers, apparently from America. They live in the sprawling illegal colony of Efrat. Here Roy calls on Israeli Arabs to have to demonstrate loyalty to the Jewish state if they want any rights.
The American representative of the organization is Steven Stern of the Upper East Side of New York.
Im Tirtzu is dedicated to an undivided Jerusalem and to regenerating Zionism. It says you can give it tax-free contributions through an American “charity,” the Central Fund of Israel; and Kingjay Foundation also gave $15,000 to the Central Fund of Israel, a settler “charity.” We’ve covered CFI a lot. It operates out of a fabric store on Sixth Avenue. It serves the “urgent security needs” of settlers.
Kinjay gets its tax-deductible status partly because it assures the US government: “The foundation only makes contributions to pre-selected charitable organizations.”
After Im Tirtzu published a cartoon of a liberal Zionist leader with a horn coming out of her head, Haaretz reported that Im Tirtzu is on the radical rightwing settler gravy train:
Financially, Im Tirtzu is supported by a foundation that has contributed to radical right-wing organizations such as the Women in Green; Pastor John Hagee, the head of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) which contributed to Im Tirtzu, has been implicated in the past by a number of anti-Semitic statements.
Ideologically, the movement’s chairman Ronen Shoval used to be spokesman of the “Orange Cell,” a student chapter at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that fought against the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and supported the settlement project. Shoval was even honored for his efforts with a citation from the evicted settlement block of Gush Katif.
The main channel for donations to Im Tirtzu is the Central Fund of Israel. In addition to Women in Green and Im Tirtzu, it supports Honenu, an organization sponsoring legal defense to radical right-wing activists in trouble with the law. Honenu boasts of financially supporting the families of the Bat Ayin underground, convicted for trying to bomb a girls’ school in East Jerusalem in 2002; of Ami Popper, who shot four Palestinian laborers during the first intifada; Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed participants in a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem in 2005; and Haggai Amir, brother of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin Yigal Amir.
Keep beating your head against the Zionist Wall, Phil. It’s a hard row to hoe. See The Sad Lesson of Alan Hart–is Phiip Weiss next? http://consortiumnews.com/2013/05/17/the-sad-lesson-of-alan-hart/
If I recall, Hagee’s organization found Im Tirtzu to be too radical and discontinued their support. This is one of the most frankly fascist organizations on the Israeli scene. In particular, Im Tirtzu targets “enemy within”, or “Jewish traitors”. But can such radicalism be singled out as not conforming to “social and welfare programs”?
IRS is already in hot water for scrutinizing charities that support so-called Tea Party which probably means our domestic hate groups. There are some laws singling out Communists, but I am not aware if IRS can discriminate against fascists.
RE: “Lately Allison did a post on the rightwing Israeli youth group Im Tirtzu engaging in Nakba denial at Tel Aviv University. This group has a disruptive pro-settler track record. And it’s got American support– as a charity, with your tax-free subsidy.”
ALSO SEE: “Houston Jewish Federation, Jewish Agency Fund Im Tirzu’s Assault on Israeli Universities” ~ by Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 3/17/10
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/08/17/im-tirzu-calls-for-academic-funding-boycott-of-anti-zionist-ben-gurion-university-receives-100000-from-john-hagee-via-jewish-agency/
“The United States-Israel Strategic partnership Act (S. 462) not only designates Israel ‘a major strategic partner,’ section nine of this legislation proposes to include Israel in the Visa Waiver Program while exempting it from the requirement to extend reciprocal privileges to all citizens and nationals of the United States. The exemption would allow Israel to arbitrarily deny entrance to U.S. citizens under the rubric of national security, effectively importing Israel’s apartheid laws into the U.S. immigration system.
“Israel has a history of discriminating against Palestinian-, Arab-, and Muslim-American travelers and denying them entry. According to the U.S. State Department Travel Advisory for Israel, the West Bank and Gaza : ‘U.S. citizens are advised that all persons entering or departing…are subject to security screening and may be denied entry or exit without explanation… Those with extensive travel to Muslim countries or U.S. citizens whom Israeli authorities suspect of being of Arab, Middle Eastern, or Muslim origin may also face additional questioning by immigration and border authorities…’”
The above was taken from a letter sent out by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation asking people to call on their Senators to speak out publicly and vote against this bill, which is apparently before Congress, and to send letters and op-ed pieces to their local newspapers.
Now, I am not in the habit of writing letters to my Senators (mainly because I do not wish to give the impression I care what they do, or legitimize a system I want no part of), and I have always regarded writing letters to the editor to be the ultimate confession of impotence. Moreover, I am not interested in defending my “rights” as a U.S. citizen, because I reject “the U.S.” “citizen” and “rights” as motivating categories, preferring to take my stand on the basis of my membership in the human race and my obligation to do right by it. Having made all these qualifications, I am not averse to drawing a lesson from history: This measure reminds me of the insistence of pre-Civil War southern officials on controlling mail delivered to southern states lest abolitionist propaganda make its way into hands where it might have some effect. That was one of a train of abuses, including the “Gag Rule,” the Mexican War, the Fugitive Slave Act and others, that made it clear that the slave system enslaved not only those forced to labor in the fields without wages but compelled all “citizens” to sacrifice what they naively thought of as their “rights.” The Civil War broke out because the people of the northern states could not accept the domination of the southern system over the entire country. This latest measure may well awaken some to the realization of what support for Israel costs them, and to the realization that so long as Zionism prevails we are all Palestinians.
What a surprise these terrorist supporters get do donate to a terrorist supporting org and no taxes but legit Palestinian support groups are shut down