An old joke tells the story of a court clown that was asked by the king to do something for which the apology would be worse than the deed itself. The clown sneaked behind the king and pinched his butt. When the king demanded an explanation, the clown said: “sorry, I thought it was the queen”. The claim by Im Tirzu (a new Israeli extremist right-wing movement), regarding the Israeli Knesset’s decision to establish a new committee that will investigate the funding sources of human rights organizations in Israel, that “Arab money funds these (human rights) organizations” falls exactly in to the same pattern of discourse. The essence of this argument is racist and implies that money that comes from Arabs is dirty, and that it is illegitimate to accept it because of its origin.
The weakness of the allegations of Im Tirzu and the initiators of the bill in the Knesset, led by Faina Kirshenbaum and Avigdor Lieberman, comes also from their double standards regarding external forces that aim to influence internal affairs of Israel with their money. These external influences did not bother them when the money served goals such as building settlements or attacking civilians in the West bank and Gaza.
Of no less concern is the line of defense taken by the Jewish human rights organizations, which were in a hurry to repudiate the idea that the source of the money is Arabic countries.
Rather than focusing the public discussion on the main issue – the growing fascism that this new bill represents– they fell into the racist rhetoric used by their opponents. For example, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem officials responded to the claims by saying “…B’Tselem is funded by four Israeli-friendly countries: Switzerland, Denmark, Holland and Sweden.” Similarly, the organization Breaking the Silence blamed Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman: “Apparently the foreign minister …has decided to turn Israel into a leper and ruin its relations with Switzerland, Denmark, Holland and Sweden. Breaking the Silence received donations only from friendly countries and if the foreign minister, the government and their strategic partners from Im Tirtzu wish to turn them into enemy states, they have the diplomatic tools to do so.”
The investigation of the sources of the funding of the human rights organizations is merely a tool to shut them down with one excuse or another, by those who do not endorse human rights. The focus on whether these sources are legitimate or not in the public discourse serves the initiators of the bill in achieving this goal because it legitimizes the investigation and its racist presuppositions.
