New Israel Fund: Supporting Israel’s Destruction, One NGO at a Time?
Like every person who reads the Jewish Forward, I received an email solicitation on April 1, 2010, from Daniel Sokatch, chief executive officer of the New Israel Fund (NIF). If I want to save Israeli democracy from the threat of the ultra-orthodox and the settlers, the solicitation informs me, I should sign an email petition for Prime Minister Netanyahu.
No, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke, and I immediately thought about who would save Israel from Daniel Sokatch and the NIF.
The NIF and the NGOs it funds are under attack in the Israeli Knesset. Sokatch wants American Jews to pressure the Israeli government to call off its investigation of the relationship between the NIF‘s NGO recipients and the infamous Goldstone Report. This is an uphill struggle for NIF, since the loudest calls for investigation are from Kadima, the Israeli centrist party.
As someone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has experienced firsthand the effects of Sokatch’s work here as the former CEO of the Jewish Community Federation, I strongly believe most of the members of this Jewish community would eagerly sign a petition that would encourage the Israeli government to pursue its investigation with all deliberate speed. If NIF is innocent of the accusations made against it, let it be exonerated within the democratic process it supports.
Sokatch was hired as CEO of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation because some community leaders believed that a person with an ultra-progressive agenda could mobilize donors who shared his views. These community leaders also believed that exposure to the real world of pluralistic community politics would mature a person with well-honed leadership skills who was perceived as highly intelligent and talented, but politically naive.
None of that happened. There really aren’t a lot of George Soroses out there, even in Berkeley, and people who spend their time railing against capitalism never seem to become terribly successful businessmen. But the biggest disappointment to some was that Sokatch, despite his obvious talents, seemed stuck in his ultra-progressive ideology.
Sokatch left his position at the Jewish Community Federation after only fourteen months. He might have been on his way to different pastures anyhow, but what seemed to seal his fate was last year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Directed by Peter Stein, a man with an Israel-bashing agenda sustained by a compliant board, the festival showcased the crudely crafted documentary Rachel — a piece of vicious anti-Israel propaganda. The film lionized Rachel Corrie, the International Solidarity Movement militant who recklessly got in the way of an Israeli bulldozer.
Stein malevolently added insult to injury by giving the stage to Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, who added to the propaganda value of the film and took a few softball questions from Stein that would have embarrassed even Larry King.
A substantial segment of the film’s audience was comprised of Israel-bashers who hurled anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic epithets at those who challenged the so-called “documentary.” Free speech did not escape the heckler’s veto that day.
Local Zionists demanded that the Jewish Community Federation, which contributes money to the film festival, do something about the outrage. Instead, Sokatch — who was also on the board of the festival — defended it.
Well done Abe. It is good to see that cockroaches like Sokatch and Baum are being exposed… they shun the “light” so it is good to shine it at them.
Uber-progressive Jews like Sokatch have done and continue to do far more damage to the Jewish people than any jihadist or neo-nazi, and are all the more dangerous.
The existence of a group like Kesher Enoshi which openly supports Israel’s destruction is as preposterous as seeing a Jewish group in the 30′s blaming violent German Judeophobia on the economic oppression of Germans by Jews. Such groups ultimately have the same goal: helping to more peaceably march Jews into the ovens.
Last night, the student government at UC Berkeley defeated an attempt to override the veto of a divestment bill against Israel. Pro-Israel groups are finally waking up to the intentional deceit of groups like NIF and people like Dalit Baum who actually want Israel destroyed to become Arab-Palestine. The BDS movement against Israel is illegal and illogical, but thrives because the Jewish establishment is too narrow to understand when they are infiltrated in order to trick people into hating Israel. Sokatch and JCCF leadership, even Stein, see things only through their own windows and can’t be bothered by the facts.To this end, they facilitate the infiltration by front groups. We all need to expose these problems and close down the lazy and stupid among us who aid the malicious and vile to demonize Israel. When you have Jews marching at UC Berkeley in support of Hamas that has a charter that calls for the annihilation of world Jewry, then you have total anarchy.
Good article. Now, for once, let’s stop funding NIF and force their leaders to resign, or at least have them on a short leash. They still threaten Israel’s existence, do not preserve her civil rights but rather act as a funnel for Arab oil money laundered through Europe and US NGO’s. DAFKA.org
and StoptheISM.com.
Lee Kaplan deserves recognition beyond the link to his article exposing Dalit Baum. As the one person who truly has his finger on the pulse of the anti-Israel, Jewish left, Kaplan has revealed in detail the antics of these groups for years, even while the mainstream Jewish organizations have had their heads in the sand. That divestiture almost made it through the Berkeley ASUC last night shows that our local organizations have been asleep at the wheel. Yet, an attempt to expose the incompetence of these organizations was crudely censored by our local Jewish weekly magazine, J. I confess to a begrudging admiration for the Muslims. They possess unity, determination, a steadfastness of purpose, and a belief in themselves. When it comes to promulgating their point of few, the sixty-something local imam, as a one man show, seems to accomplish more than the Jewish community with all its infrastructure and bureaucracy. The Muslims do not create infrastructure to sabotage themselves. They and their progressive Israel-bashing Jewish allies lost this round, but I am not sure they will lose the next.
Abe Miller raises excellent issues here and I have been active on the UC Berkeley, and against the broader NGO leftist agenda which is now totally out of control.
I note the reference to John Rothman.
I debated him before a large Bay Area audience (and won the debate easily but the Jews voted for Obama anyways) in 2008, where he passionately advocated for the election of Barack Obama, who has violated the bi-partisan national political consensus of a strong US – Israel relationship.
I hereby challenge John Rothman to another debate: Has Obama been good for Israel
and for America? I would like him to face the music and the overwhelming evidence of Obama’s disastrous foreign and domestic policies. Rothman was wrong in 2008, and would be easily defeated again in debate. Nice guy, but strange views. He thought his local celebrity would help him, but even a liberal audience saw him get his clock cleaned.
I am available to debate John Rothman….Round 2 !
Larry Greenfield
Executive Diretor
Reagan Legacy Foundation
Fellow, The Claremont Institute
Professor Miller continues to identify what is driving the left: insane self loathing and intense hatred of tradition and traditional America. This hatred of tradition is so intense that it even extends to traditional Jews and Israel.
The Jewish left apparently learned nothing from the Hitler’s oppression–i.e., that dictators and their oppression must be confronted, not appeased. The Jewish left has deluded themselves to believe that if they sell out and deny their Jewish heritage they will be safe. Not so.
“The Jewish left has deluded themselves to believe that if they sell out and deny their Jewish heritage they will be safe. Not so.” That is exactly correct. I also have received several requests for contributions from the New Israel Project. Upon reading their material it beccame clear that they want Jews to fund the new gas chambers. Needless to say I gave nothing and have stopped giving money to the conventional Jewish Organizations, including AIPAC, AJC, and Hillel, who worry about building bridges to the Muslims. Now I give to organizations such as Front Page,ACT, Walid Shoebat, and Christians United for Israel.
Elle, if you wish to donate please consider donating to DAFKA.org since we were the ones responsibe for Abe Miller’s article. Front Page declined to run it. Rather than spending all our time fundraising for fancy salaries and offices, we do the investigative journalism that creates action. You can send donations to DAFKA PO Box 1911, Pittsburg,CA 94565. Donations are fully tax deductible. We promise more for your buck.
The hard left has been dedicated to the destruction of Israel since the founding of the nation. Now they think with Obama in the White House and hard left organizations fueled by Arab and Iranian money that the goal is in sight and they are pressing to the finish line. Jews are in danger everywhere and the smart ones know it. Israel needs to send out the Mossad to thin the ranks of the leftie antisemites.
Jewish communities around the world would eagerly sign a petition that would encourage the Israeli government to pursue its investigation with all deliberate speed. All you need is to organize the petitions and disseminate it through the Internets and you will see the speedy result. New Israel Fund is despicable and infuriating!
I suppose “great minds think alike”… For a local Boston connection to the NIF travesty, visit http://www.jstreetjive.com for more damning evidence against Mr. Sokatch.
Thank you for continuing to expose these seditious characters who eat away at the Jewish community from within. The moral rot runs very deep as I am sure you and many of the commenters know. Your comments, Mr. Miller, about the Muslim community are interesting, I have considered the same aspects as well. There is however a downside to the unity of groupthinkers who simply obey and nod mindlessly. They lack the capacity to change course when their leaders’ follies become too evident to ignore. After all, look at the entire Muslim world, nothing to emulate there.
Steve, You are eminently correct about the downside to “group think” and “true believers.” History and culture more than underscore the validity of your position. In a community such as ours in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the divisions are insurmountable and the other side benefits from our intensely committed and active fringe elements, one sometimes longs for a bit of “short-term” unity. Yes, ultimately we become like the Muslims at our own peril. Well said.
Abe, you’ve written yet another superb article. The only problem I ever have with your articles, however, is that they expose people who simply do NOT respond to reason – dare I say unhinged? Their ‘reasoning’ on placating the enemies of Israel and Jews simply surpasses reality. It’s like the hen handing all of her chicks over the fox in hopes this satisfy him – when all it does is make the fox hungrier.
Excellent article!
Abe Miller’s article is quite timely.
Sokatch of the New Israel Fund made a dent for himself with the SF Jewish Community Federation and has left that position for the one at the NIF. From this one might ascertain that he has an influential following, but Abe sets the record straight: Daniel Sokatch is caught in an ideological mire. While the NIF has appealed to many people who hold views consistent with what is most democratic and might improve the political situation in Israel, let us not be fooled. Of late, the people who back the NIF and their policies have not been in the best interests of Israel at all.
Though the anti-Israel voices have been the squeakiest in the past, many people in the SF Bay Area are now sick and tired of what they deem irresponsible behavior – whether subscribing to the SF Jewish Film Festival’s showing of the Rachel Corrie film with her mother speaking afterwards, or the latest in the efforts of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) proponents and their attempts to get the student governing body (ASUC) at the University of California at Berkeley to pass a Resolution that would be unfavorable to pro-Israel interests. These groups somehow work consanguineously.
It takes all the good people, and especially writers of Abe’s calliber, to expose the injustices that are occurring.
May the investigation of the NIF by Israel be successful in its accuracy, and may we hear good news!
Fantastic article. I knew nothing about this.