Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg
Im Tirtzu CEO Matan PelegYoni Kempinski

Matan Peleg, chairman of the Im Tirtzu movement, whose movement works in opposition the New Israel Fund, hailed the Prime Minister's intention to set up a commission of inquiry to examine the fund's conduct.

"We welcome the Prime Minister's important decision to examine the conduct of the foreign political organization: the New Israel Fund," Peleg said.

"In the democratic world, there is no parallel to a phenomenon in which a foreign political organization acts as a belligerent and open opposition in the country that hosts it, against an elected government, and for inciting the society and smearing its soldiers.

"As we have said recently, time and time again, there is no escaping the [need to] remove this foreign and subversive political organization from the State of Israel," Peleg added.

On Tuesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that he had asked coalition chairman Dudi Amsalem to begin the process of setting up a parliamentary commission of inquiry against the New Israel Fund.

"The New Israel Fund is a foreign organization that receives funding from foreign governments and elements hostile to Israel, such as from the fund of George Soros. The ultimate objective of the fund is to erase Israel's Jewish character and turn it into a state of all its citizens, alongside a Palestinian nation-state that is free of Jews on the 1967 lines with Jerusalem as its capital," Netanyahu said.

"For decades the fund has funded anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian organizations, including those who slander IDF soldiers such as Breaking the Silence and B'Tselem and those who fight for Palestinian terrorists such as Adalah.

"I do not know any Western democracy, especially the United States, which over time was prepared to tolerate hostile activity funded by foreign countries, as has been happening here in Israel with the fund for decades."