Once again, the New Israel Fund is soliciting donations and for Jews to attend an event in California that seeks to de-legitimize and ultimately destroy the Jewish state while claiming they are promoting democracy.
The problem with this organization is that it is serving as just another front group for the anti-Zionist International Solidarity Movement that the Israeli government just can’t get around to booting from the country despite all the flotillas, constant riots, boycotts, attacks on border police and other activities against Israel by this noxious pro-communist, pro-terrorist group.
In the past, NIF funded one group that canvassed Israel’s train stations offering IDF soldiers stipends if they would go to jail rather than do their duty in the IDF. The NIF collected money for the BDS campaign being promoted by the Coalition of Women for Peace and Dalit Baum here in the US (while they denied it even after proof was shown).
Now a new case in point is an NIF email broadcast to the Jewish community in America, particularly the Jews in Northern California. The email is a display ad format that invites Jews to come to a presentation promoting the “Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Project.”
It reads:
“ On the Cutting Edge of the Struggle for a Democratic Israel:
The Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement
Featuring Israeli Activist Shira Wilkof Sunday, January 22 at 7:00 PM
United Methodist Church of Davis Sanctuary
Please join the New Israel Fund, Jewish Peace Alternatives, and the United Methodist Church of Davis to hear from Shira Wilkof, who will speak about the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement (SJSM), an NIF grantee organization that works towards civil equality within Israel and an end to the occupation.
The movement emerged following the forced eviction of four Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
Led by young Israelis and Palestinians who want to live in a society that respects human rights, the SJSM has since grown from weekly protests in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood - where participants stood shoulder to shoulder with local Arab residents - to a movement of hundreds of activists and a record of consistent, principled resistance to the growing attacks on Israel's fragile democracy. Shira Wilkof is one of the founders of SJSM and was a member of the group’s media relations team in Israel before beginning PhD studies at UC Berkeley.”
Ms. Wilkof is in fact an anti-Israel activist preying on her own country of birth to enable the Arabs to take East Jerusalem away from Israel.
The Israeli courts right up to the Supreme Court adjudicated the dispute over the houses in question and found the Arabs there did not own them and had refused to pay rent they agreed to pay to the real Jewish owners who proved ownership since the Ottoman Empire. The court case took over 25 years as the Arabs squatted on land and homes that did not belong to them (and refused to pay rent). Arutz Sheva covered this extensively.
Nachalat Shimon, the corporate owner of the land, is a charity that makes homes for Jews who were refugees from Arab and Muslim lands. The Palestinians want to prevent Jewish neighborhoods so Jerusalem can slowly be turned into a city as part of a Palestinian state.
If anyone doubts this, they can visit the Facebook page for the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement where there are endless tales of PSP riots (always called “nonviolent” despite violence directed at Israeli soldiers) in the West Bank and calls to help release Arabs arrested for violent activities. One can also find gems such as “Do you know where the food you buy comes from? Do you know what to answer when people ask you why you boycott Israeli goods? Watch PSP`s new short.”
The George Soros-Iranian and Saudi front J Street uses the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Project as a propaganda tour event to counter Birthright Israel’s hasbara among young secular Jews. If these young American Jews can be convinced Israel is a rogue state that abuses the Arabs, then the Jewish state will lose American support among the Jewish community in succeeding generations.
They do even manage to get some naïve young Jews to think boycotting Israel is “nonviolent” and that starving Jews out is a human rights activity by claiming they represent Jewish democratic principles as they support the totalitarian Palestinian “revolution.” The PSP has even accused Israel of a massacre when it stopped the ISM Flotillas in order to show support for Hamas.
Meanwhile, they say nothing about the Palestinian Authority law that metes out death to anyone selling land to a Jew, even retroactively.
Ms. Wilkof has been touring the USA speaking at colleges to the ISM-linked Students for Justice in Palestine chapters whose mission statements advocate the end of Israel and that routinely support Hamas. The Methodist Church is active in promoting the boycott of Israel and even provides venues for the Gaza Flotilla organizers as well as this one in Davis, California. UMC is affiliated with the church where Obama’s reverend called to damn America and Israel.
In 2003, I attended undercover an ISM conference at Ohio State where it was discussed in committee how to deconstruct American Jewish support for Israel by persuading young American Jews that Israel was a violator of human rights. I laughed under my breath then, but I am not laughing now. These events are occurring more and more frequently all over the US in our colleges, trade unions, some churches, anywhere a crowd can gather.
They talk of human rights and “peace” but only promote Arab fascism and unending war on the Jews.
American Jewry has to recognize that New Israel Fund is not promoting democracy in Israel, but rather working to undermine the Jewish state in order to end it as the Jewish National Homeland.
The government of Israel needs to find ways to alert American Jews, especially college-aged ones, that this is the true agenda of J Street as a front for anti-Israel forces abroad and that the NGO should be shut down inside Israel by losing its non-profit status.