New Israel Fund Supports BDS: Stop LYING

In today’s radical leftist Jewish newspaper, The Forward, editor Jane Eisner sheds crocodile tears over AFDI’s new bus campaign exposing Jewish funders to BDS and the “anatomy of the smear” (cribbing from my playbook).

In the last few weeks, there has been a tremendous outcry against the New Israel Fund.

Among many other matters, New Israel Fund (NIF) funded organizations and their activists are at the core of the international boycott campaign against Israel. Ever since the establishment of the State of Israel, this country has faced many and varied attempts to isolate it in the international arena. In recent years there have been redoubled efforts to promote boycotts and sanctions and to promote divestments from Israeli companies. One of the organizations behind these attempts is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The BDS campaign is a direct continuation of the Durban strategy (accusing Israel of apartheid policies), with the main goal of using a network of international social organizations to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

Following Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, Israeli organizations and bodies have joined the calls for a boycott against Israel, and have sometimes even led such calls. Among the most energetic Israeli organizations and activists that support and promote the boycott against Israel are activists and organizations affiliated with the New Israel Fund.

The NIF’s website (in Hebrew) contains the following declaration: “the New Israel Fund does not support activities that promote an international boycott against Israel and does not support organizations that operate programs in that field.” NIF Spokesperson Naomi Paiss declared in April 2014 that, “for the past five years the NIF is not funding organizations that support BDS.” Still, the NIF stopped funding Coalition of Women for Peace only in 2011, and to this day there is continuous damage from the activities of that organization, which built a database to promote the boycott and divestment.

In his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the U.S. Congress on 5 March, 2014, investigative author Edwin Black noted that, “501c(3) organizations raise money and donate it to organizations involved in the BDS… the number one organization which has been associated with this process has been the New Israel Fund, which gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Coalition of Women for Peace so that they could create a global infrastructure of boycott.

The following are a few examples of main BDS activities:

Coalition of Women for Peace, which was a NIF grantee until 2011, is involved in promoting the boycott against Israel through its Who Profits from the Occupation project, which includes a database that is used for encouraging divestment from Israeli companies, supports organizations involved in the boycott, signs letters calling for the boycott, etc.

In 2009 that project’s activities included a letter that was signed by a few NIF- funded organizations (Machsom Watch, Mossawa and Social Television) and sent to the Norwegian government, demanding  its  divestment  from  Elbit Systems, an Israeli company involved in the construction of the separation fence. Former NIF President Naomi Hazan is a member of the Public Council of Social Television (Syncopa).

Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah initiated a petition calling for the boycott and divestment from companies that profit from the Occupation. The petition was published on the Social Television website.

Activists and senior figures in NIF-funded organizations made remarks in support of the boycott against Israel, supported the Palestinian boycott against Israel, signed letters calling for a boycott and sometimes even initiated such letters.

Social Television advertised a new BUYCOTT application in 2013, that enables users to identify products manufactured in settlements, and avoid buying such products. Association for Civil Rights in Israel, one of the NIF’s flagship organizations, actively opposed the legislation of the Boycott Law aimed at preventing the involvement of Israelis in the boycott against Israel.

Organizations that called for joining the BDS campaign and actively promoted boycotts against Israel are provided a platform on the website of Shatil, the operational arm of the NIF.

The following are a few examples of activities promoting the boycott against Israel, by organizations and activists in NIF-funded organizations:

Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah initiated a petition in 2010, calling for the boycott of and divestment from companies the“profit from the Occupation”:“We are calling upon the public to join the Palestinian boycott of settlement products; to boycott Israeli companies that operate in occupied Palestinian land and in East Jerusalem and profit from the Israeli occupation, to divest of these companies, and to abstain from business transactions with them and from the purchase of their products… We hope that the law prohibiting boycott advocacy will be checked; however, if it is passed, we are ready to be tried for violating this anti-democratic legislation”. This petition was published on the Social Television Website.

Association for Civil Rights in Israel opposed the Boycott Law in 2011, claiming that “any economic or academic boycott, infuriating as it may be, is a legal, legitimate non-violent means for advancing political and social struggle…”

The +972 blog magazine published an article in 2013, claiming that a boycott against Israel is “fair game.”

In 2013 Social Television supported the boycott of products manufactured in the settlements, by advertising a new smartphone application – BUYCOTT – which enables consumers to identify products manufactured in settlements, in order to avoid purchasing them: “A cellular application called BUYCOTT – enables consumers to learn  about  the  companies  that  manufacture  the  products  by  scanning the barcode on the packaging. Application users can indicate their consumer preference, such as: support for certain companies, buying blue-and-white, boycott or avoiding the purchase of products manufactured in the settlements… So far there have been few instances of genuine enlistment for an effective consumer boycott in Israel. Perhaps this application, which enables us to vote directly via our wallet, will succeed in promoting the values in which we believe.”

Nurit Elhanan Peled wrote an article on the Coalition of Women for Peace website in favor of the academic boycott: “In the wake of the boycott that is hanging over the head of Israeli academia … and especially the fact that Israeli academia is not rising up and crying out in the face of the despicable racism of their leaders… in a State that is sunk up to its neck in racist discourse, in the blood of innocents, in injustice the likes of which have not been seen in years… then these people of letters and science deserve every condemnation and every boycott that the enlightened world can impose on them.”

Gideon Spiro, Comptroller Committee member, Physicians for Human Rights, supports the boycott: “I hope the Golan Heights is returned to Syria without a war, and that the occupation is ended without a war, and that the European community forces Israel to end the apartheid regime without a war. A serious boycott will suffice.”

Prof. Rachel Giora, one of the leading figures calling for a boycott of Israel, and editor of Coalition of Women for Peace’s Noga magazine, gave a lecture in 2009 on BDS as part of the activities of Women’s Coalition for Peace, in which she is a member.

Senior figures in Israeli academia protested against a science exhibition presented by Technion Israel Institute of Technology in the U.S. in 2010, on the grounds that “The display is part of a propaganda campaign by the State of Israel to present itself as a beacon of progress in a desert of backwardness and deflect attention from its atrocious human rights record and fundamentally discriminatory policies…” and claimed that the Technion has, “a  long track record of developing  technologies of death.” The letter was signed by Noam Chomsky and professors from Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute, including Rachel Giora.

Activities promoting divestment from Israeli companies

The following are a few examples of activities promoting divestment from Israeli companies, by organizations and activists in NIF-funded organizations:

In 2006 Coalition of Women for Peace initiated the Who Profits from the Occupation project, which includes a website with a database on all the companies that have investments or involvement in enterprises located over the Green Line or in Israeli security companies. The site encourages  international  companies  and  foreign  governments to divest from such companies. Who Profits has had a number of “successes,” such as the Norwegian government pension fund’s divestment from Elbit Systems, due to that company’s involvement in the construction of the separation fence and the Swedish government’s cancellation of a contract with Veolia, due to the latter’s construction of the Jerusalem Light Rail. During the launching of Who Profits, the CWP website noted that donations could be made toward that project via the NIF, which provided financial support to CWP until 2011.

Who Profits’ activities include the dispatching of a letter to the Norwegian government in 2009, demanding the divestment  from  Elbit  Systems,  due  to that company’s involvement in the construction of the separation fence.15 The signatories to that letter include additional NIF-funded organizations: Machsom Watch, Mossawa and Social Television-Syncopa. Former NIF President Naomi Hazan is a member of Social Television’s Public Council.

As noted above, the Norwegian government decided to comply with the Who Profits demand and divested from Elbit Systems.

Shamefully, the New Israel  Fund is backed by individuals, including Alisa Doctoroff, Karen R, Adler, Edith Everett, David Eisner, President and CEO of Repair the World, Dr. Gabor T. Herman and many others.

Help us stop these dangerous Jewish self-haters.

 

Major American NIF Supporters 2009 – 2013

Funds that identify with the NIF’s goals