From my column in the American Prospect on the right’s defamation campaign against the New Israel Fund:
Ronen Shoval caught me off-guard. I’d phoned the newly prominent rightist to listen to him repeat his allegations that the New Israel Fund, the major philanthropic backer of Israeli human-rights groups, was “aiding Hamas.” But I wasn’t expecting him to say that the NIF was “serving communist interests.” He’s not actually an Israeli neo-McCarthyist, I realized. He’s an authentic, original McCarthyist — cut loose in both time and space, in free fall, looking desperately for his mother ship. For a few seconds I felt sorry for him.
My moment of lost-kitten pity didn’t last. Anachronistic as he sounds, Shoval is quite dangerous. With politicians and major media figures helping to arouse hysteria, his Im Tirtzu movement has enjoyed very quick success in its campaign against the NIF. At the end of January, Im Tirtzu (“If You Will It”) issued a study portraying the NIF as the hidden force responsible for war-crimes allegations in the Goldstone Report on the fighting between Israel and Hamas a year ago.
The daily Ma’ariv, with the second-largest circulation in Israel, launched the Im Tirtzu study with a lengthy, supportive article. Im Tirtzu followed with a direct personal campaign against NIF President Naomi Chazan, a former Knesset member. Demonstrators outside her house held signs depicting Chazan with a horn sprouting from her forehead — playing on the fact that Hebrew word for “fund” also means “horn.” Israel’s Government Press Office translated another right-wing Ma’ariv columnist’s attack on the NIF and e-mailed it to foreign correspondents as if it were a government press release. Within a week, the Knesset Law Committee established a subcommittee to investigate foreign funding of Israeli organizations.
It’s a safe bet that the new panel (the Committee on Un-Israeli Activities?) is not intended to investigate the funding that Im Tirtzu has itself received from the Rev. John Hagee’s Christians United For Israel or from the Central Fund, an American body that serves as a pipeline for donations to far-right groups in Israel and West Bank settlements. Nor is it likely to look into the donations from U.S. businessmen Sheldon Adelson and Ronald Lauder to the neo-conservative Shalem Center think tank, from which Prime Minister Netanyahu has drawn top appointees. Foreign financing, especially from Diaspora Jews, plays a major role in Israeli politics, and the right would suffer far more than the left if the cash flow from abroad were blocked.
So the fight here isn’t over funding. It’s about free speech. …
Read the full article here, and come back to South Jerusalem to comment.