New Israel Fund: Supporting Israel’s Destruction, One NGO at a Time?
A YouTube video of the event, narrated by popular San Francisco radio personality John Rothman, made the email rounds and further underscored the outrage. The video showed in graphic detail the crude behavior of the progressive Hitler Youth that had descended on the festival. Lawrence White, a prominent local physician, echoed the sentiments of many when he squarely placed the blame for the rift in our community on Daniel Sokatch for continuing to defend the showing of Rachel.
The film festival was not Sokatch’s only legacy. Recently, the Associated Students of the University of California at Berkeley passed a divestiture resolution against Israel. The resolution was sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine, routinely described as the most vicious anti-Israel, if not anti-Semitic, group on campus. The progressive Jewish student group, Kesher Enoshi, has worked hand-in-glove with Students for Justice in Palestine. For years, the pro-Zionist students have argued unsuccessfully that Kesher Enoshi had no place at Hillel because of Hillel’s pro-Zionist mandate.
The Jewish Community Federation is a substantial contributor to Hillel. Sokatch, as CEO of the Jewish Community Federation, was a supporter of both Kesher Enoshi and their place in Hillel. The NIF’s view of Kesher Enoshi was summed up to me by one of NIF’s local officers:
They are a group of wonderfully passionate people who are working out how to support Israel in a way consistent with their values. We should encourage their connection to Israel, which is all too rare.
The wonderfully passionate group with a connection to Israel worked with Students for Justice in Palestine to pass the divestiture resolution, and tried to overturn the student president’s veto of the resolution.
NIF’s support recently manifested elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay area, with Dalit Baum and the Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP) — an NGO supported by NIF. Baum, an Israeli, spoke in February at an event sponsored by the Students for Justice in Palestine. At the door, attendees were asked to sign a pledge that they would boycott Israeli goods. Subsequently, they were given a glossy brochure that asked for donations for the CWP, which were to be sent to the NIF’s Washington office.
The brochure soliciting contributions lists eleven CWP allies, such as Machsom Watch, which interferes with Israeli soldiers at checkpoints; Women in Black, which demonstrates against Israel’s right to self-defense; New Profile, which encourages desertion from the Israeli Defense Forces; and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a group that sponsors lectures by Anna Baltzer.
She argues that violence against Israel is a natural reaction to Israeli oppression of Arabs.
Investigative journalist Lee Kaplan, who attended the meeting, notes that Baum boasted of causing Israelis to lose billions in export and investment revenue, and that her campaign is directed not just at the territories but at Israel itself.
If you object to giving money to groups that propose to cripple the Jewish state economically and interfere with its security, and network with other such groups, then it might be appropriate to send Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an email telling him that there is no greater antiseptic for a democratic society than the sunlight of public exposure, and no group should be immunized from it.
Investigate the New Israel Fund.
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.