American-funded NGOs clash in Israel

Propaganda, Israeli style. Only, you know, in English.

It’s NGO vs. NGO in Israel… and both of the non-governmental organizations involved receive much of their funding from Americans.

Last week, Israeli right-wing “neo-Zionist” organization Im Tirtzu accused the left-wing New Israel Fund of defaming Israel. Specifically, they acused the New Israel Fund of being directly responsible for the United Nations’ Goldstone Report, which charges Israel (and Hamas) with war crimes in the 2009 Gaza conflict.

The New Israel Fund defines itself as “the leading organization committed to democratic change within Israel.” Based both in Jerusalem and Washington DC, the group works towards supporting free speech and religious pluralism in Israel. Many of their projects serve underrepresented segments of Israeli society such as recent immigrants, Bedouins and migrant workers. Their publications are primarily in English, their website is English-only and most of their fundraising takes place in the United States.

Im Tirtzu, meanwhile, call themselves “a centrist extra-parliamentary movement that strives to strengthen the values of Zionism in Israel and to renew and reinstate Zionist discourse.” The organization has been a key part of the “neo-Zionist” movement, which has encouraged attacks on left-wing professors at Israeli university campuses.

Then Im Tirtzu released a report blaming the New Israel Fund for the Goldstone Report:

A soon-to-be-released report by the Zionist student group Im Tirtzu, which accuses the New Israel Fund of direct responsibility for the UN’s Goldstone Report on the IDF’s Gaza offensive last winter, is “just another in a series of attempts to quash freedom of speech in the human rights and civil rights community in Israel,” the NIF’s CEO Daniel Sokatch told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

According to the Im Tirtzu report, 92 percent of the Goldstone document’s allegations criticizing the IDF’s conduct came from 16 Israeli NGOs that received some $7.8 million from the NIF in 2008-2009 alone.

Im Tirtzu members have begun a protest campaign to coincide with the release of the report, and on Saturday night they staged a mock rally of Hamas members outside the Jerusalem home of NIF chairwoman Naomi Chazan, a former Meretz MK.

Im Tirtzu has also sparked outrage – both in Israel and the US – with a full-page ad it took out in the Post’s Sunday edition that featured a caricature of Chazan with a rhinoceros horn bearing the letters “NIF” tied to her forehead. This was followed by a series of brutal attacks on the New Israel Fund in the Israeli press. Incidentally, Chazan is also the former Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament).

Apparently, holding a mock Hamas rally outside the home of an Israeli is now acceptable behavior for the country’s right-wing. The advertisement depicting Chazan as a rhinoceros is reproduced above. Meanwhile, a news report about the Chazan demonstration from a right-wing Israeli website sounds downright creepy:

Im Tirtzu, a growing grassroots movement which calls itself “the second Zionist revolution,” pretended to be Hamas terrorists during a demonstration outside the home of New Israel Fund (NIF) Chairwoman Naomi Chazan Saturday evening. The protesters donned Arab headdresses and imitated terrorists who thank Chazan for the NIF’s support following IDF counter-terrorist operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

However, Im Tirtzu is not as all-Israeli as it seems. Israeli journalist Danit Gottfried found out that Im Tirtzu received $100,000 from American pastor John Hagee. Hagee is the founder of Christians United for Israel, which collects financial donations from American Christians for right-wing Israeli organizations. Hagee also is arguably as anti-Semitic as they come, which still doesn’t stop right-wing Israelis from accepting his checks:

Hagee was in the headlines in 2008 during the US presidential campaign, when a recording circulated in which he claimed that “Hitler was fulfilling God’s will, to return the Jews to the land of Israel according to the biblical prophecy.” Right after the radical comment, Republican presidential contender John McCain had to repudiate Hagee’s public support. Additionally, in his book “Who Is a Jew?” Hagee claims that “Hitler was half Jewish, from the descendents of Esau,” and that “the Holocaust happened because the Jews rebelled and denied the real God.” He claimed that “Jewish rebelliousness is the reason for the anti-Semitism and persecution they suffered over the years.”

About the economic crisis that hit the US and the world in 2008, Hagee said that “the U.S. Federal Reserve is under the control of a few shareholders, including the Jewish Rothschild family.” He added that “the Rothschild family is part of an extensive economic conspiracy by strong shareholders who reside in Europe.” Hagee is considered a controversial and extreme figure among the Jewish communities in America, after he called the Reform Jews “poisoned” and “spiritually blind.”

But, at the end of the day, two Israeli organizations are fighting over the future of Israel… with American money. We find it especially interesting that the (ugly) propaganda advertisement sparking this whole quarrel is in English – and Israel, of course, is a Hebrew-speaking country.