For those still unsure whether the New Israel Fund is aligned with factions devoted almost exclusively to seeing Israel weakened, and worse, eliminated from the world stage, this week Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked made the point even sharper.
Shaked noted in an interview that prior to meeting foreign elected leaders, she reviews their contributions to NGOs, and when she meets them, she urges them to stop supporting Anti-Israel NGOs – amongst them three grantees of the New Israel Fund (NIF): Bimkom, Breaking the Silence, and Hamoked.
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Shockingly, these groups are amongst the many funded by NIF at the tune of $30 Million annually by American Jews, including the President of UJA-Federation, Alisa Doctoroff and the President of the Jewish Communal Fund, Karen R. Adler. Israel fights terrorism, the Israeli Minister of Justice asks for foreign nations to stop giving to anti-Israel organizations, yet extremist American Jews help Israel’s enemies. Shameful.
Bimkom, an Israeli NGO actively pushes the “apartheid rhetoric”, against Israel, and ties it into the BDS effort – as if to make the comparison to the former anti-apartheid boycott campaigns against South Africa. Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO founded with the purpose of criticizing Israeli policy, pushes “war crimes allegations, lobbying the EU and UN.” Its goal is to see Israeli soldiers and officials brought before war crimes tribunals and arrested if they should travel abroad. Then HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, an Israeli human rights organization with a main focus assisting Palestinians of the “Occupied Territories” whose rights they believe are violated by Israel, also pushes the apartheid rhetoric and legal actions against Israel – which brings it back to promoting BDS.
Shaked is confronting world leaders who may be giving without knowing that some groups harm Israel, but believe they are giving to a “human rights organization.” As she clarified, these are anti-Israel groups. While the European ministers she speaks with may not know the intricacies of the harm being caused by these groups, the same cannot be said of the New Israel Fund, its leadership and its donors.
NIF has consistently put its support behind each of these groups, in addition to many others not mentioned here, and has gone to bat for them publicly to explain how the anti-Israel work that they do is a supposed positive step for Israel.
When Breaking the Silence issued a one-sided, biased and inaccurate report about alleged war crimes committed by the IDF in Gaza, NIF promoted the report and went on a fundraising tour.
Hamoked also issued a report accusing Israel of war crimes in 2014, and the New Israel Fund promoted it when appealing for additional support, and Bimkom’s executive director Hedva Radovanitz formerly served as NIF Israel’s associate director – and was quoted by a Wikileaks document saying” [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.” Radovanitz went on to tell the U.S. political officer that “the NIF was currently re-evaluating its strategy and was hoping to create a movement rather than just a lot of NGOs.”
When Israel’s Justice Minister makes a point of asking foreign counterparts to stop giving to these NGOs – foreign leaders who undoubtedly have countless concerns on their minds – is it such a reach to expect that a group devoted entirely to Israel issues stop funding these NGOS as well?
Still, the NIF continues.
When these facts have been written about many times over, NIF donors such as the Jim Joseph Foundation, Lopatin Foundation, Barbara & Eric Dobkin, William & Serra Goldman and Carole and Saul Zabar choose to ignore them, and continue sending money to the major grantee of organizations seeking to undermine Israel. If the highest levels of diplomatic communications are not enough to bring proper attention to the matter, what will it take?
By Ronn Torossian, CEO of a top 20 US PR agency, and author of For Immediate Release.
George Birnbaum is a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
and, Hank Sheinkopf, CEO of Sheinkopf Communications, is a leading political strategist who has worked on campaigns in four continents. His clients have included former President Bill Clinton.
