The NIF and the GR

The New Israel Fund (NIF) is a "progressive" (left-wing) American based
fund that supports like-minded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in
Israel, including human rights and civil rights organizations. Some of
these take openly anti-Zionist stands, such as B'tselem that continuously
monitors the IDF for actions against civilians, Adalah that gives legal
support to Israeli and Palestinian Arabs to bring cases against the
Israeli Government and the IDF, Machsom Watch, that monitors the actions
of IDF soldiers at check points and brings cases against them, Breaking
the Silence, an organization of anti-war former IDF soldiers, and so on.
The NIF has become a hot issue in Israel for two reasons: 1. Many of the
above Israeli NGO's gave evidence to the Goldstone Commission that
claimed deliberate targeting of civilians and war crimes by the IDF. In
fact B'tselem was the most cited NGO in the Goldstone Report (GR) and the
others were not far behind. 2. Some of the funding of the NIF and hence
of these Israeli NGOs was given by foreign governments, including the EU
and various of its individual members (UK, Spain, Denmark) as well as
American organizations and individuals. So in effect Israeli
organizations were funded by foreign governments to provide damning
evidence against Israel to the GR, much of which is alleged to have been
false.

The issue came to a head when a right-wing youth organization Im tirtzu
("if you will it") put an ad in the Jerusalem Post on January 31showing
Naomi Chazan, the Head of the NIF and a former left-wing (Meretz) MK,
with a horn coming out of her forehead and claiming as fact that the NIF
used foreign funding to support 92% of the false claims of the GR.
Apart from the fact that the ad itself is insulting to Chazan, Im
Tirtzu's spokesman stated that the idea of the horn came from the
translation of the word Keren in Hebrew that means both "fund"
and "horn," so any other interpretation is false. But, Chazan and the NIF
deny the substantive charge that they support NGOs that deliberately gave
knowingly false information to the GR in order to undermine Israel and
the IDF.

Of course, the NIF argues that the human and civil rights NGOs have an
important role to play in democratic societies and that they were merely
doing their jobs. Now a sub-committee has been formed of the Knesset Law
and Justice Committee to investigate the charges that the GR relied
heavily on information supplied by Israeli NGOs and that foreign
governments or sources were used to support their activities. NIF claims
that this is a "witch hunt" and that the subcommittee must investigate
the right wing NGOs too. Both sides say that their activities and
sources of funding are "transparent," but that claim does not seem to be
valid.

In the final analysis, this sub-committee's job is to ensure that foreign
governments and organizations are not funding Israel NGOs that act
deliberately against the interests of the Israeli State and its
institutions.