NGO Monitor calls on New Israel Fund to establish "red lines"

NGO Monitor has compiled an even more extensive file on New Israel Fund-supported anti-Zionist NGOs than Im Tirtzu, and they had these data for years. Yet they have been ignored and ridiculed and slandered by the NIF.

 

This seems a fair enough assessment:

 

NGO Monitor has raised these topics in reports and correspondence with NIF officials on several occasions, but NIF has been unwilling to engage in substantive debate. Instead, NIF and its supporters have smeared NGO Monitor as "silenc[ing] expression," and being "extremist," "incendiary," the "rotten fruit of Israeli democracy," "McCarthyite," and "right-wing." The aim of these responses is to avoid substantive debate.

Unlike Im Tirtzu, NGO Monitor has not engaged in personalities or exaggerations. Yet NIF chose to stonewall and start a slander campaign rather than replying to the issues they raise.

Is it too much to ask of New Israel Fund and its supporters to stick to the issues. Can they explain why they continue to support Adalah, and organization that calls for right of return of Palestinian refugees? Can they explain why they continue to support Machsomwatch, Mossawa and other groups that called on Norway to boycott Israel? Can they explain why they collect donor-advised contributions for the divestment campaign run by Coalition of Women for Peace? Or will we only get from them more and more of the same old litany about McCarthyism and free speach. In Israel, Israeli citizens can say what they please. But the Israeli government doesn't have to cooperate with foreign lobbies that are encouraging destruction of the state.

Ami Isseroff

NGO Monitor has called on the New Israel Fund (NIF) to implement clear "red lines" regarding the activities and rhetoric of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that it funds. This initiative comes in the wake of wide criticism of NIF for supporting advocacy groups that centrally contribute to demonization of Israel through allegations of "war crimes" and intense lobbying for the Goldstone Report.

These guidelines should prevent NIF funding for organizations that support "Durban strategy" activities such as:

1. BDS: Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns.
2. Demonization and delegitimization: Expressions including "apartheid," Nazi rhetoric, "war crimes," and deliberate misrepresentations of international law, as well as the use of UN frameworks for these goals.
3. Lawfare: Legal threats or activities in courts outside Israel directed against Israeli officials, "Zionist" or "parastatal" groups, or companies that do business in Israel.
4. Anti-Zionism: Opposition to the definition of Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state," including demands for a "one-state solution," the revocation of the Law of Return, and the elimination of national Jewish symbols.

These activities, which promote the isolation of Israel internationally, are entirely inconsistent with NIF claims that "our supporters love Israel."

NGO Monitor has raised these topics in reports and correspondence with NIF officials on several occasions, but NIF has been unwilling to engage in substantive debate. Instead, NIF and its supporters have smeared NGO Monitor as "silenc[ing] expression," and being "extremist," "incendiary," the "rotten fruit of Israeli democracy," "McCarthyite," and "right-wing." The aim of these responses is to avoid substantive debate.

For more details, see NGO Monitor's report, NIF-Funded NGOs: Goldstone's Building Blocks, February 9, 2010.