Donors to New Israel Fund must stop funding the New Israel Fund, and here is why.
This week a New York court ruled that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were responsible for encouraging and inciting terror attacks during the Second Intifada. After weeks of trial, a jury found that this organization supported international terrorism and 10 American families who had their loved ones murdered and maimed were awarded $655 Million dollars.
As Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Israel Law Center case noted after trial, “We started out more than a decade ago with the intent of making the defendants pay for their terrorist crimes against innocent civilians and letting them know that there will eventually be a price to be paid for sending suicide bombers onto our buses and into our cafes.” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rightfully called on the international community to follow the court’s example and punish those who support terrorism.
This is a major victory for Pro-Israel lawfare. It is a victory of the good who fight evil. However, when there are winners there are also losers.
An extreme left-wing Israeli attorney, Michael Sfard testified as an expert witness for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) during the trial, as he has previously provided paid testimony on behalf of the PLO. This is consistent with his previous lawfare work for extreme left wing Israeli organizations funded by The New Israel Fund (NIF).
Sfard is an attorney for a number of organizations who are funded by the New Israel Fund related organizations, including Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence, and Al-Haq, a leading anti-Israel “lawfare” NGO, on a lawsuit filed in Canada seeking a judicial declaration of Israel’s guilt in committing “war crimes” and deeming the security barrier illegal.
The New Israel Fund has long used warfare – and fund organizations where Sfard works – and this Israeli lawyer came to New York to testify for lawyers. That is the essence of the New Israel Fund.
The radical, extremist New Israel Fund recently petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of terrorists and their families, including the terrorist who tried to kill American-born Rabbi Yehuda Glick, the terrorist who slammed his tractor into a bus, two who drove their cars into people near train stops, and those who murdered five Israelis a few months ago in a brutal massacre during morning prayers in Jerusalem.
Israeli academic Professor Gerald Steinberg recently said of donors to the New Israel Fund that it is as an organization that “..claims to support Israel and human rights principles, they enable the highly destructive activities that do the opposite. By the time these funders acknowledge this failure and end their support, the damage will be done.”
Donors to New Israel Fund must stop funding the New Israel Fund.
Shamefully, donors include the President of the UJA-Federation, Alisa Doctoroff who has given 5 figures at least 3 years in a row according to New Israel’s annual report, as well as Carole and Saul Zabar, Irwin and Joan Jacobs, the Bonnie and Marty Tenenbaum Foundation, the Edith and Henry Everett Foundation, Susie and Michael Gelman, and others. These wealthy American Jews can do so much good with their money. Giving to the New Israel Fund is dangerous to the State of Israel.
Today their “expert witness” lost in a terrorism case.
The JCRC silently endorses their positions on BDS, that is their funding of organizations that promote BDS, by partnering with NIF in Boston – and allowing NIF to march in the Israel Day Parade.
Rosa Luxemburg, a prominent Bolshevik once said, “I have no room in my heart for Jewish suffering – Why do you pester me with Jewish troubles?”
Those who support the New Israel Fund are helping to harm the Jewish people. The New Israel Fund must be ostracized by the Jewish community.
Ronn Torossian is an entrepreneur.
What? It cannot be! The “NIF” is a Jewish organization, is it not? What went wrong over there? 🙂
NIF is a cluster of rabid enemies of Jews and Israel. Nekudah.
They support the SAND Nazis.