FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

I’ve written a lot recently (here, here, here, and here) about the controversy surrounding the New Israel Fund (NIF) and the accusations against it made by Im Tirtzu, a student Zionist organization, which claimed that 16 NIF-funded organizations were responsible for the majority of the documentation supporting the anti-Israel conclusions of the Goldstone report.

One of the 16 was “Rabbis for Human Rights” (RHR), a group founded and run by Rabbi Arik Ascherman (whom I met some years ago in another context. He seemed like a nice guy). RHR is probably one of the least offensive of the 16 groups cited by Im Tirtzu. Unlike the Israeli Arab groups Adalah and the Mossawa Center, it does not work toward the “de-Judaization” of the state, nor does it specialize in slandering the IDF throughout the world, like Breaking The Silence. I’m sure Ascherman doesn’t want to see Hamas attain its goal of replacing Israel with an Islamic state.

Here’s how NGO Monitor, a harsh critic of many Israeli NGOs, summarized its 2005 report on RHR:

RHR is an example of a human rights organization that, while critical of Israeli government policies and prone to political statements that are out of the human rights sphere, refrains from engaging in the language of demonization. RHR, however, also works in coordination with and lends support to many of the most active anti-Israel NGOs, and focuses most of its resources on Palestinian issues, while failing to address many of the complex issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to its website, RHR works to “promote the upholding of Palestinian rights in a variety of areas, in east Jerusalem, the west bank and Gaza,” which it does by legal action and “on the ground,” which sometimes includes civil disobedience. It works with Palestinian Arabs and ‘internationals’, volunteers from outside of Israel. It protects Arab farmers from “violent settlers” when they harvest olives, files lawsuits when it believes that the security barrier is encroaching on land worked by Palestinians, and tries to prevent the demolition of illegally-built Palestinian structures (alleging that Israeli policies preclude legal building).

Protecting anybody’s rights is laudable and there’s no doubt that there is a lot of unfairness in the relationship of the Israeli authorities toward Palestinians in particular cases.

But — yes, there had to be a ‘but’ — there are several problems.

One of them is that the philosophy of the group seems appropriate for a social change club on a university campus in the US, not a Middle Eastern nation at war.  Rights exist in a societal context: the Mideast isn’t Berkeley, California, and Israel’s struggle to survive in a very hostile world isn’t a student demonstration. An occupied territory with a hostile population isn’t a minority neighborhood in an American city. Like the “messianic crazies” that they decry on their website, RHR too has a one-dimensional view of right and wrong.

Yehoyada Amir’s exposition of the ideology of the group sees the “post-national approach” as the pinnacle of political evolution, although he somehow wants to leave room for an attenuated tribalism called a “familial and national partnership.”  Unfortunately he comes down way too far on the multicultural and “pan-human” side for today’s (or even tomorrow’s) Middle East. It’s a kind of unilateral disarmament in a hostile and well-armed neighborhood.

Another problem is the possible consequences of RHR’s actions. If a bunch of college students oppose, say, the gentrification of a poor neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin then they might or might not help anyone, but in any event there will be little damage. But an Israeli  human-rights group taking the  position that the IDF’s intentions in Gaza must be investigated may have far-reaching consequences for Israel’s ability to defend itself.

RHR sees the conflict as a struggle between “two peoples”, by which I presume they mean Jews and Palestinian Arabs. But there is a much wider context which can’t be ignored, in which the Jewish state is considered an abomination, illegitimately existing in the midst of land forever belonging to Muslims, by literally hundreds of millions of Arabs and other Muslims whose fondest desire is to see it disappear.

This rejectionist opposition is also extremely well-organized and well-financed, today primarily by Iran, which is moving to surround Israel by proxy armies. It also supports terrorist groups in the territories and even extremists among the Arab citizens of Israel. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that Israel is in existential danger from these forces, even leaving aside the nuclear threat.

From RHR’s myopic point of view, the Jewish state is a behemoth oppressing powerless Palestinians; but in fact it is a very small and vulnerable island in a hostile sea. One of the strategies of Israel’s enemies is to remove the props of international support and reduce the world’s tolerance of its efforts at self-defense, in order to make it easier to physically destroy it. Thus the delegitimization campaign of which the Goldstone report is emblematic can have very real consequences for Israel’s future.

Palestinians in particular understand quite well the Western attitude toward human rights, and do their best to help make the news from the territories and Jerusalem fit the narrative of a noble people victimized by a soulless oppressor. RHR serves as a perfect megaphone for this.

Even if its complaints were not unbalanced or exaggerated, RHR  applies Berkeley standards to a Middle Eastern nation which has essentially been at war since its founding. It amplifies and focuses attention on human-rights issues which — in context — are not issues. By doing so it provides real ammunition to Israel’s enemies.

Technorati Tags: Rabbis for Human Rights, New Israel Fund, Im Tirtzu

News item:

NGOs that receive funding from a “foreign political entity” would have to register with the Political Party Registrar and declare in all public appearances that they represent an organization that receives funding from such an entity, according to a bill sponsored by Likud MK Ze’ev Elkin that received government backing from the Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday…

According to the bill, no organization in Israel would be allowed to receive money from a foreign political entity unless it registers with the Registrar of Political Parties. The registrar would be responsible for the registry completely independent of his registry of political parties.

The NGO would have to list the aims of the organization, its address and the identification number of every key activist, including directors, members of the executive committee, active directors and those authorized to sign checks…

This would seem to apply both to foreign governments, fronts for same, and charities like the New Israel Fund (NIF).

Something like this is necessary, because of the massive worldwide concentration of interest in what happens in this tiny little country. Israel’s ‘footprint’ in the world’s news media on any given day is greater than that of the whole continent of Africa, whose population is about 142 times larger. This is matched by an obsessive interest in controlling affairs in Israel, especially on the part of European nations. And this seems to express itself in an anti-Zionist direction.

Some of the reasons are psychological. Holocaust guilt is often redirected as anti-Zionism, while shame resulting from Europe’s colonialist past seems to express itself as pro-Arab leanings. Other reasons include the relationship of Christianity to Jerusalem — perhaps part of the reason that the US State Department has never been comfortable with Israeli control of any part of the city — and of course economic connections between Europe and oil-producing nations. The large Muslim populations in many European countries are beginning to have political effects, too. Finally, we can’t ignore the really pathological anti-Zionism of the Left, both in Europe and the US.

While there is some pro-Zionist money flowing from the US — for example, from evangelical Christians and a few right-wing American Jews — it is dwarfed by the left-wing support for “human rights” groups and others which seem to support every imaginable ‘right’ for Arabs while working against the right of the Jews to self-determination: i.e, the state of Israel.

Here is a table from NGO monitor, which has been sounding the alarm about the activities of these groups for years (it took the NIF controversy to get people’s attention). They document a total of over $18 million contributed by European governments in 2006-9 to de facto anti-Zionist NGOs in Israel. And this is a minimum figure, because amounts of many such donations are unspecified. The NIF also donates large amounts, with almost $8 million going to the ‘dirty sixteen’ organizations cited so often in the Goldstone report.

Adjusting for population, this would be as if the governments of Russia, China, etc. contributed about $1.1 billion to anti-state organizations in the US. Can you imagine the outrage?

The proposal in the Knesset should become a law. It’s just part of a nation’s sovereignty that it should have control of money spent by foreign governments for political purposes inside its borders.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Europe, NGOs, foreign funding

News item:

Visiting U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen declared Sunday that Washington was committed to Israel’s security, voicing concern over the “unintended consequences” a war in the Middle East over Iran’s contentious nuclear program would bring.

“I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences of a strike,” he told reporters during a visit to Tel Aviv, referring to Iran’s threats to retaliate against Israel and U.S. sites in the Gulf. “I think the Iranians are very difficult to predict.”

Translation: he’s worried about Israel’s security so much that he really doesn’t want Israel to attack Iran. This makes little sense. Nobody is more aware than Israel of Iran’s ability to retaliate in many unpleasant ways, and so it’s very likely that it would not take that step unless there was absolutely no alternative. It would only attack if the consequences of not attacking were judged to be worse.

The US has said over and over that it wishes to deter Iran from proceeding with its program by applying sanctions. So far, sanctions aimed specifically at the nuclear program have been spotty and easily bypassed. The international sanctions now being contemplated would be applied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and businesses and institutions associated with it.

Now consider that the nuclear program is top priority for the Iranian leadership. Ahmadinejad has diverted an enormous amount of resources which could have been used to improve the local economy into a crash program to develop nuclear weapons, and has brutally repressed popular anger at resulting problems. Iran has managed to get its hands on critical technology despite embargoes on it.

Is it likely that Tehran will reverse course at this point as a result of more economic sanctions? Is it not more likely that they will be countered by a further diversion of resources, and simply exacerbate the problems of the general population? The ability of a dictatorial regime to shift resources at will and suppress popular opposition makes sanctions a poor way of influencing its behavior.

The US House and Senate have passed bills calling for US sanctions on international companies which export refined fuel to Iran. This would bite very hard, since at present Iran lacks sufficient refining capacity of its own — although a Chinese consortium is planning to build a refinery in Iran to help solve this problem.

But even if refined fuel sanctions could be implemented (the bills would need to be reconciled and signed by the President, and there is serious opposition from various quarters), there’s no reason to think that they would have much effect on the nuclear program. The result would probably be even more trouble for the Iranian populace, who can nevertheless be kept in line by the same vicious oppression that allowed the regime to steal the last election.

So here are the facts:

• Nuclear weapons development is of the highest priority for the Iranian regime;
• The ability of the dictatorial regime to shift resources means that sanctions are unlikely to be effective, even ‘painful’ ones;
• Therefore, unless something totally unexpected happens, only military action can be effective in preventing or delaying the Iranian bomb.

I’m pretty sure all parties involved understand this — even the Obama administration. Therefore the debate (at least in the US — in Israel they know the answer) should be expected to shift to variations of “how bad would a nuclear Iran really be?” See my take on one example of this genre here.

Technorati Tags: Iran, nuclear weapons, sanctions

News item:

Israel and a future Palestinian state should agree to land swaps that would make settlement blocs part of Israel proper and certain Arab towns now in Israel part of a future Palestinian state, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in an interview published on Saturday.

Ayalon also said that the Palestinian demand to stop settlement construction as a precondition to negotiations was unrealistic, and would be like Israel demanding that the PA, as a precondition to talks, give up its demand for a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.

In an interview with the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat, Ayalon said Israeli Arabs “would not lose anything” by joining the Palestinian state as part of a land swap.

“If Israeli Arabs say that they are proud Palestinians, why should they not be proud in the Palestinian state?” the Israel Beiteinu minister asked. This population could contribute to building the Palestinian state due to its high socioeconomic status, he said.

I don’t know how much of the above was simply rhetorical, but a few comments:

A) Israeli Arabs have always been violently opposed to land swaps, for two reasons. One is that they know that they are far better off economically and more secure physically as citizens of Israel than of ‘Palestine’. The other is that they believe that the land of Israel belongs to them and that ultimately they will control it. Here’s my favorite quotation to demonstrate this:

We are an inseparable part of the Palestinian people, we are the original residents of the place and we will never leave it. We are the owners of these lands and we are not guests… Let he who arrived last leave first. — Ahmed Tibi, Arab Member of the Knesset, at last summer’s Fatah convention.

Land swaps would be a great idea, if the goal was to make a peaceful two-state solution possible. This of course is the last thing that the Palestinian Arab leadership wants, preferring to keep the conflict going until (perhaps as a result of a regional war) it will succeed in ending the Jewish state and taking all of the land.

B) While I agree that the Arab demand for a settlement freeze is unreasonable, it’s not in any way parallel to an Israeli demand for them to give up their claim to a right of return to Israel, which is far beyond unreasonable, being a demand for Israel to commit suicide. Here’s a slightly improved version of a list I made a few years ago of reasons that the “right of return” should not even be considered:

1. The war which created the refugees was started by the Palestinian Arabs and their allies and was the culmination of a campaign of terrorism and pogroms against Jews in Palestine since at least the 1920’s. They lost the war — why should this result be reversed?
2. There were at most 700,000 Arab refugees (probably less). The Palestinians are demanding that almost 5 million descendants of these ‘return’ to Israel 60 years after the war (the Jewish population of Israel is about 5 million). No similar ‘right’ has ever been granted to descendants of refugees.
3. During and after the War of Independence, about 850,000 Jews were expelled from or fled their homes in Arab countries, in most cases leaving all of their property behind. These Jews were absorbed by other countries, most of them going to Israel. Do not their descendants have a claim on the Arab world?
4. The Arab nations hosting the Palestinian refugees refused to absorb them, and a special UN agency (UNRWA) was created just for them. The normal UN refugee agencies were not used, because they are concerned with finding homes for refugees. UNRWA’s job, on the contrary, has been to keep them in camps and on welfare in order to nurture a hostile population to be used as a source of anti-Israel soldiers and ultimately as a demographic weapon. Some UNRWA personnel belong to terrorist organizations, such as Hamas.
5. When Jordan occupied Judea an Samaria and East Jerusalem in 1948, these areas were ethnically cleansed of Jews, who fled or were murdered. Today, the Palestinians are demanding that all Jewish settlements be removed from what would become their state. Yet they expect Israel to absorb an additional 5 million Arabs!
6. If Israel were to agree to this, it would immediately have an Arab majority and would cease to be the state of the Jewish people. But the Palestinians insist that they must have a state because they have a right to self-determination. Apparently, they do not think that the Jewish people has this right as well.
7. Practically speaking, the influx would result in immediate civil war, which would make similar wars in Lebanon and Yugoslavia look like ping-pong tournaments.

In addition, it’s extremely important that Israel does not agree to any such right in principle, even if it is not put into practice.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, Danny Ayalon, land swaps, right of return

Jacob Berkman writes a blog about Jewish philanthropy called “The Fundermentalist“. Today he tells us that for the New Israel Fund, apparently no publicity is bad publicity:

The attack on NIF may actually play right into the organization’s hands. At least that’s what [NIF CEO Daniel] Sokatch seems to think.

He told us that the recent attention proved to be a boon for NIF.

“This has not only mobilized our base, but there are people hearing about us for the fist time and saying, ‘This is what I want to support,’ ” Sokatch said. “That is the irony of this. This has put us in the limelight.”

The NIF says its number of Facebook fans has tripled, and its number of Twitter followers has jumped 50 percent over the past two weeks. And more than 50 Tweeters have put a horn on their profile pictures in a show of solidarity with [NIF President Naomi] Chazan.

…and all this because someone pointed out that NIF-funded organizations provided much of the documentation cited in the Goldstone report!

Sokatch went on to take credit for what some see as the destructive phenomenon of left-wing Israeli organizations, empowered by foreign money, which use the rhetoric of social justice and  human rights to contribute t0 the demonization of Israel:

“Over the past 30 years, NIF has helped to transform Israel into a vibrant civil society, and there is virtually no corner of civil society not touched by NIF,” Sokatch told The Fundermentalist Wednesday. “We really seeded the ground for what has flourished over the past 30 years.”

I suppose he doesn’t exactly agree with my interpretation, of course, but considering what some major recipients of NIF grants have done with their money, it isn’t far from the truth. In the most generous view, NIF’s goal is to import ‘progressive’ ideas of social justice, as they have developed in places like California, to a tiny Middle Eastern nation which is at war, literally surrounded by enemies and with a substantial hostile population within its borders as well.

But Israel isn’t Berkeley, and anyway the reality is that some of NIF’s grantees are cynically using the progressive rhetoric as a smokescreen to hide their efforts to weaken the state.

Sokatch, former Executive Director of a group called the Progressive Jewish Alliance,  and CEO of the the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation for a year, has just recently taken the job of NIF CEO.  He’s very focused:

Though the NIF claims that it hit its slightly decreased budget expectations last year, the organization has struggled to energize a young base of donors, despite its liberal slant. The NIF is hoping that will change as a result of its turn in the spotlight.

“We will do everything we can” to monetize the new interest, Sokatch said.

Technorati Tags: Israel, New Israel Fund, Daniel Sokatch