by Judith Bara
Last year the New Israel Fund, among other human rights NGOs working within and for an equitable society in Israel, came under attack from a number of organisations who set themselves up as guardians of Israel’s ‘real’ interests.
According to Nicholas Saphir, Chair of New Israel Fund UK, several organisations, including NGO Monitor and Israel Resource News Agency, smeared Human Rights NGOs such as New Israel Fund as anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and describe Jews associated with them as ‘self-hating’, especially if they dare to criticise any policy or activity undertaken by Israelis. This is resonant of previous neo-Conservative smears on those seeking pluralism and dialogue across a wide range of issues.
Naomi Chazan MK
More recently this has become even more vitriolic and personal, singling out to vilify and harass individuals such as Naomi Chazan, NIF President and a previous Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, academic and long-term activist for peace and reconciliation. It appears that some of the impetus for these attacks has come from organizations of dubious provenance, many of which are supported from funding from the United States. One example is Im Tirtsu. Such groups are often supported by evangelical Christians- sometimes self-styled as ‘Christian Zionists’.
As Naomi Chazan pointed out in an interview with ‘The Independent’ on 13th February of this year, attacks by supporters of such movements, which have begun to go beyond the verbal and written, have ‘debased’ the concept of Zionism. I would go further and suggest that this has also cast doubt on the more positive ideas traditionally associated with ‘Christian Zionism’.
Sure, there have always been those who have supported Jewish aliyah on the grounds that it is only after the Jews have returned to their true homeland will it be possible to expect the ‘second coming’. Others might have been even less philosemitic in their support for a Jewish state, so that Jews in the diaspora would have been encouraged to leave and settle in Israel. However, if reports such as that in ’The Independent’ last month are to be believed, there are ultra-conservative evangelicals who are alleged to have argued ‘that the Holocaust was a good thing because it created the state of Israel’. This is an absolute disgrace and deiles not only the martyrs of the Shoah but also the righteous gentiles who fought against it.
We might dismiss these ideas as those of ill-informed, ignorant or, worse still, racist cranks who take every opportunity to hold Israeli pluralists and their supporters responsible for every perceived misfortune to be visited on Israel. Increasingly, the perpetrators of this onslaught are by their actions undermining the rule of law, either by misusing the justice system or by flouting decisions of the courts, Ignoring such activities is a dangerous and ill-conceived reaction. What we should be doing is rebutting such untruths and supporting those who wish to develop an Israel which is both true to the principles of the 1948 Declaration and seeks peace with her neighbours on the basis of security for Israel, Palestine and the region as a whole.
Thank goodness there are still people of sense and sensibility, both within Israel and the diaspora, who continue to support NGOs like New Israel Fund. Organisations which work with different communities in Israel, to foster both the spirit and the letter of the 1948 Declaration. Unlike some of their critics they aim at spreading enlightenment rather than fear, believing that communication fosters understanding which can help in creating trust and an atmosphere more conducive to peace than a stand-off or even worse. Because ‘worse’ is surely what will happen if the detractors have their way.
More detailed information about the REAL work of the New Israel Fund can be found at www.newisraelfund.org.uk