A few months ago we had a big kerfuffle about the New Israel Fund (NIF). At the time I wrote extensively about it, and was honored to host a couple of NIF spokespeople who tried to defend their organization: it does lots of fine things, they said (and no-one disagreed), and the allegations that they also supported enemies of Israel were unjust, unfounded, and were a McCarthy-like threat to Israeli democracy (none of which was true).
The other day I was surprised to see banners castigating the NIF on various websites, including Haaretz. I clicked, and learned that NGO Monitor was behind the campaign. So I asked its head, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, why his team was running the campaign, and why now. He told me the NIF had been attacking him and his organization in less than civil tones, so a supporter had felt there needed to be a response. Here it is, and also here. Judge for yourself, or ask your local NIF people if they'd like to respond. If Naomi Pass or her staff would like to explain their position on this blog, I would again be honored.
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36 comments:
The NIF is an organization that's unaccountable to anyone or anything. They think that because they make utterances that often sound nice and once in a while do good works, that it affords them the freedom to be insane. They are the Jews' Hezbollah against the Jews. Sure sure Hezbollah runs schools and is a social welfare organization etc etc. but mostly they are what they appear to be and use their 'soft' arm to recruit people into their 'military wing'. The NIF is the same. They recruit young softheaded children by promoting peace and tabouli and whatnot and then select the true soldiers from that group to wage war on other Jews.
thanks for this one Yaacov
when I tried to poke around a bit in how NGOs get funded I landed in dead end after dead end
- after a while both funding from my government to your NGOs as well as charities funding NGOs felt so much like muddied water that I decided I better stay out of it. And everything I read and hear about IHH tells me that there are people in that business whom it is smart to avoid.
Certainly one private person like myself will not be able to crack a system that seems to be intentionally designed to be uncrackable by hiding stuff "in plain sight".
For example as my foreign office told me they leave the financing decisions to their individual departments of which there are a bit less than 400. And that ministry is only at the top of the ladder. Also it is quite possible that they do not fund NGO's directly, their website knows none of the names I tried in all transcription variations I could come up with.
I guess it to be likely that they rather fund "clearly defined" projects, finding out the names for these projects is likely to be impossible across the language barrier and after bureaucrats may have fiddled with their naming so they fit in their budget slots. Also these projects may well be joint ventures by several NGOs.
After I had suffered this defeat I decided that from now on will pay special attention in my podcast hearing pastimes to this topic, which means that maybe in a couple of years I may get a clue. After all no matter how well veiled they operate they have to communicate with the public in order to get funds and thus tell me something. That way I can go on while at the same time avoid to come close to them.
To date I know already that a word that sticks out on account of frequency is independent and so that word makes me suspect that besides the wish to avoid taxes there may be a wish to interrupt the chain of command.
Silke
I think Yaacov has commissioned this article from Walter Russell Mead because he wanted an "outside opinion" on the subject of the damage done by do-gooders.
It is a veritable J'accuse against peace movements from a man who knows his history and who is at 58 practically a youngster;-)
I have only 2 disagreements:
IMO it is no longer Iran alone that is on the prowl it is a triumvirat of Erdogan, Ahmadinejad and Putin. If they should manage to have outlined a workable "gentlemen's" agreement on whose sphere of influence is which while they met today in Istanbul heaven help us all.
The second is a minor objection to WRM's labelling Churchill who certainly was a grizzled old British imperialist but not of the worst kind, he had a moral compass and a code of honour. When he was in conflict, however, because the perpetrator was England then he rooted for his island. (reading him is to me like hearing him talk/dictate and when he has to describe an atrocity I can practically hear him pause before he glosses it over in the sparest terms possible i.e. he stops for a moment being his voluble self)
I sincerely hope that even co-book-lover Alex will read this piece and after that thoroughly check whether WRM wrote the truth about the 20s and 30s and the lessons one should draw from that
(Israel is not mentioned in the piece)
Silke
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/06/08/goo-goo-genocidaires-the-blood-is-dripping-from-their-hands/
in case somebody should conclude NGO-nutters are an exclusive Israelis problem read this
"Does the ACLU want to see the Predator operator who took out al-Qaeda's third in command prosecuted for murder? The ACLU has already gone after CIA interrogators -- surreptitiously photographing these covert operatives and sharing the images with al-Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo. CIA drone operators may soon be in for similar treatment."
wow would have Churchill gone after those guys and gals - you bet he couldn't stand those lacking in patriotism.
Silke
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/07/AR2010060701986_pf.html
now this is finally something that is an explanation that sounds plausible even to me because it synchs with the fact that before last week NOBODY would have considered the Turks as a STATE openly assigning herself with Jihad (which somehow all the slowly waking up smarter pundits still seem reluctant to admit)
and of course I object to Rubin not drawing Iran and Russia into the picture
Silke
"Erdogan assured Israel that the ship's passengers were peaceful and there would be no violence. That's why Israel approached taking and diverting the ship in the manner it did. Is this true? I don't know but it is definitely a story to watch."
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/06/major-new-development-flotilla-story
here is an article a day older from Steinberg for the WSJ available for free here and with lots of interesting stuff about another heinous outfit called ISM
Silke
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/the_war_against_israel
But this moral façade hid a strategy of engaging Israel in a bloody confrontation to exploit the "halo effect" (automatically granted to groups claiming moral missions) and to reinforce the image of Israelis as "war criminals."
The “Free Gaza” group is a potent example of how the new alliance between radical-left Western groups and Jihadists is waging this new war.
In 1997, before the Islamist AKP came to power in Turkey, a police raid on an IHH building in Istanbul found weapons, explosives, and instructions for making improvised explosive devices widely used by insurgents and terror groups.
Just a few days before the attack, the terrorists (British citizens) had spent time with a group of ISM members.
ooops forgot
this sentence from Steinberg is a bit mysterious for me but makes me ask, if there were Brits involved shouldn't they have made a bit less noise about the Dubai passport thingy?
"Just a few days before the attack, the terrorists (British citizens) had spent time with a group of ISM members."
and here are Audios with Steinberg and Mark Regev
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/prof_gerald_steinberg_on_bbc_the_gaza_flotilla_and_the_abuse_of_moral_rhetoric
Silke
I picked one of their criticisms at random:
NIF grantee B’Tselem ($785,285 in 2006-2008) uses the word “apartheid” as a way of “mobilizing people because of its emotional power.” It has characterized “the situation in the West Bank” as “worse than apartheid in South Africa.”
The quoted words come from a 2003 interview with B'Tselem's Executive Director, Jessica Montell:
Apartheid has symbolic value because of the South African context. You can draw plenty of similarities, and you can also see lots of differences between apartheid South Africa and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I think the word apartheid is useful for mobilizing people because of its emotional power. In some cases, the situation in the West Bank is worse than apartheid in South Africa.
We can agree that Montell's comments are ridiculous. But there's no suggestion there that B'Tselem uses the word "apartheid" at all, whether to mobilize people or to do anything else. Nor do they accurately report what Montell said about "the situation in the West Bank."
It would have been easy enough to accurately report Montell's comments in a way that might have been just as effective (as indeed they did on their website). But Steinberg apparently felt that wasn't damning enough to be useful for playing "Six Degrees of NIF," and ended up totally distorting the meaning. Not a great way to maintain your credibility.
Well, someone does seem to have a reading comprehension problem....
RK
how do you like it that Israeli NGOs have access to funds from state financed German Heinrich Böll Foundation at NIF?
Doesn't that strike you as a bit "Un-Israeli"?
Given the problems any probing into their finances presents I think Steinberg did an excellent job and hopefully he gets lots of voluntary probing assistants from this action. The field's murkiness stinks to heaven (stinkt zum Himmel).
I have the strong suspicion that if one could really decipher their stuff that one would find lots of foreign government meddling. All those Europeans (Kouchner?) who cherish their anti-American-feelings probably have a ball getting at the US via a proxy.
(I have a confirmation in writing from our foreign office that it does funding and no there is no comprehensive list which makes it as good as unfindable unless you ask all almost 400 departments individually each one of them will probably tell you that they have no comprehensive list because the funding is decided on by one of their own sub-departments which - surprise - incidentally have their own budget for such stuff)
Given my learning curve as to how almost impenetrable the field is presenting itself I think one shouldn't succumb to supporting their sophistry.
Silke
Yaacov, thanks for the personal invitation and for providing open space for people who disagree on key issues to comment.
Basically, we see NGO Monitor as anything but. It doesn't "monitor" in any objective way, but specifically targets human rights groups and others who criticize Israeli government policy. Never has NGOM supported the findings or conclusions of an Israeli or international human rights group; never has it "monitored" the extremist settler groups such as Elad or the Hebron Fund whose activities are disrupting the peace process and the US-Israel relationship, and whose funding is entirely opaque.
NIF has been around for 32 years now and the causes we espouse that are controversial today often become mainstream tomorrow. Yes, we were the first funder of civil society groups in the Arab Israeli sector, and they've won victories on the ground for Israel's most marginalized minority, frequently in the High Court. The prohibition on torture in civilian interrogations was the product of the NIF family of organizations; so is Israel's equivalent of the Americans for Disability Act, countless environmental and social justice reforms, and essentially the development of the active, vibrant civil society that allows Israel to insist on its status as a democracy.
NGOM's own funding is opaque, there is no complete list of their donors or their board of directors. Ours is transparent, available to everyone who visits our website -- both the money we raise and the money we grant. Although Mr. Steinberg pleads for "civility," his own actions and that of his organization are anything but. NGOM repeats allegations that have been consistently refuted, from the responsibility for an admittedly provocative and irresponsible poster (not an NIF-funded group) to linking Adalah-NY, an entirely separate organization, to Adalah in Israel, which we support.
The question of delegitimizing Israel is a complex one that goes beyond soundbites, and I won't insult the intelligence of this audience by attempting a facile defense. Let me just say this for now -- blogging at 7 AM can be a challenge.
Our funding standards are rigorous. We fund groups that meet all the requirements of Israeli law and that accomplish social change on the ground. We don't agree with some groups we fund about theoretical questions about the character of the state of Israel; like most funders and certainly appropriately for Israel's largest pro-democracy group, we value diversity of voices and opinions. We fund what our groups do to accomplish specific things to advance democracy, equality and social change in Israel.
We are proud progressives and people are free to disagree with our agenda, but our agenda is open. We support Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, explictly and often. Some of our groups do not, but any thoughtful observer must pause and ask how we could expect Israeli Arab groups to espouse the Zionist narrative. IF that were our standard for funding, we could not fund that sector at all -- a sector now, finally, being supported by mainstream Jewish groups through the Israeli-Arab task force, twenty years after NIF began its work there.
NGOM can spend its time and money attacking. That's what it does. It is a guerrilla media organization with murky funding and an ideology associated with Israel's extreme nationalist right-wing. They're entitled to their opinions, but basically that's all they are, is opinions, same as anyone posting here. They have no track record of accomplishment in Israel, they have not achieved anything except to escalate the already polarized rhetoric in both Israel and the Diaspora Jewish community.
We build a better Israel every day and there are plenty of women, immigrants, LGBT activists, single parents, youth-at-risk and so on that will agree with us.
And I think that's enough from me for now...thank you sincerely for the invitation, Ya'acov.
Naomi
the latest list of donors you post on your website is from 2008
http://www.nif.org/about/financial-information/
searching for Heinrich Böll who informed me that there existed a co-operation with you got me 92 results, the first 5 of which proved unproductive.
so my very first impression is again that it is like the info I got from my own Foreign Office, totally transparent and inaccessible at the same time, i.e. employing the revered through the ages bureaucratic tactic of hiding in plain sight.
When next I have time I'll check up on NGO-Monitor's according to you opaque financing - I admit to be prejudiced but that is due to a very formal information from my own government ministry.
so sorry you had to get up early in the morning and start thinking (I hate that too) but a cursory glance at your website told me that there was already materiel available to help you in not having to do it all from scratch.
Silke
Naomi
by your recommendation I had a first glance at NGO-Monitor's donor information. From a lay-woman's point of view it is a wee bit easier to find than yours.
Other than that it seems to be as opaque or as open as seems to be the standard with at first glance non-shady outfits.
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/articles.php?cat_id=17
I find confidence-building for me though that donations are tax-deductible in Israel
- i.e. they are likely to have been scrutinized by some - hopefully patriotic and sovereignty-problems conscious - Israeli government paid accountant.
You seem to name on your site only US-taxes.
Do I read that correctly?
If yes does that mean no Israeli government accountants checks your books?
Silke
As with all US-incorporated NGOs, we're a year behind. Our 2009 annual report will be ready shortly and have the new financials, donor and grantee listings, etc. We keep our 990s up to date. We're rated (well) by Charity Navigator and Better Business Bureau.
We're incorporated in the U.S. as a c(3)organization. We have no relationship with Heinrich Boll (?) at all. Our organizations seek funding in a variety of places and, just as many right-wing groups are funded by individuals and groups outside Israel (Central Fund, CUFI etc) some of our groups get funding from EU sources. Again, our groups must be transparent both to qualify under Israeli law as amutot and to qualify for NIF support, and if you want to see ACRI's donors, for example, just go to their website.
NGOM is famous for cherrypicking statements out of context, but again, that's their line of work. Not ours.
Naomi
sorry but for a lay-woman your explanation is all but unintelligible and believe me I tried.
As to Heinrich Böll ask their bureau in Israel, that's where I found the information.
I don't collect and store the information I gather other than in my head I am no sleuth I am bent on getting a general feel for what drives your corner of the current Zeitgeist.
Silke
Silke,
Let me try to explain, since I suspect some of the terminology might not be familiar to non-Americans.
In the U.S., public charities like NIF are often referred to as 501(c)(3) organizations, referring to the section of the IRS (tax) code that grants them an exemption from income tax. Such charities have to file a Form 990 with the IRS disclosing their financial information.
Charity Navigator is a well-known (maybe the best known) non-profit that rates other charities' efficiency in order to help people make decisions about where to donate. The Better Business Bureau is another consumer protection agency, which rates businesses in general, not just non-profits.
As for my early comment, my point was simply that Steinberg tore the statements out of context in such a way as to change the meaning, when it would have been easy enough to report the statement accurately. That makes me question the credibility of the rest of his article (which I don't have time to check for myself).
I surely didn't mean to be unintelligible!
Let's see.
A C(3) organization is an educational nonprofit under American law. That's what we are.
We only fund Israeli "amutot" -- the designation for a non-profit, that complies with all Israeli laws governing non-profits.
A "990" is a reporting requirement of the US government that lists (exhaustively) all sorts of things about NIF -- our board, officers, expenditures, budget, you name it.
There is more information here:
http://www.nif.org/about/frequently-asked-questions.html
thanks RK and thanks Naomi
from my own attempts to learn something about NGO funding I have come away perfectly convinced that everything is above board and water-tight tax wise but strangely enough that wherever I tried to go one level or two levels beneath the surface I came onto a dead end.
Maybe that explains why whenever the authorities manage to nail somebody to having donated to an unacceptable charity the amounts unearthed seem to be such negligeable pittances.
I haven't come across anything from which I could conclude that anybody discussed here is drinking from that fountain but neither has anybody convinced me that inadvertently and innocently they may do nonetheless. My office life has gotten me often enough into contact with very smart tax declaration doers so that is an argument that doesn't console me much.
But I am beginning to realize that it is a situation that can only lead to accusations hurled back and forth without anybody ever being capable of proving anything.
But it remains that I am by my trained through decades of clerking gut's principles not happy that NGOs in one country are funded by entities (governmental or otherwise) which are not subject to scrutiny in the receiving country. That may be common practice but believe me it is highly unsound and questionable practice.
- --- remember the still ongoing outcry at the CIA funding of that Paris outfit - Partisan Review was it?
It is all so similar to what I realized around the year 2000 i.e. that the age old tool for the clerk i.e. look at the invoices and then check what item by item stands for and by the end of one year or two you'll have the matter at your bureaucratic fingertips had become useless and unapplicable because in the mania for doing everything via subcontractors the stuff had been hidden in such ample legalese that it would be like looking for the needle in a haystack to find out which of these contracts for example included the cost for maintaining an URL. (that change happened in the context of flat hierarchies becoming all the rage)
The more I look at this charity stuff the more it reminds me of that office experience which seemed to frighten nobody like myself and some other old hands at the time but which I find these days strangely mirrored in all I read about mortgages and credit card contracts. (we tried to stop the mania but who could then or even now? stop uncritical computer enthusiasm? - 5 year models tell you anything you need to know anybody?)
The above may seem to you way off topic but for a clerk all paper is handled according to the same principles and when century if not millenia old principles get declared old-fashioned and discarded no matter in which field she gets shivers down her spine. Game changers of that magnitude have always bode ill for "little" people.
After all the above I have just decided I come off my fence and side with NGO Monitor - I admit it is a pure gut thing and I may find myself duped in the end, but that's the kind of risk one has to take
- I don't like states meddling with other states within their borders and to the best of my knowledge to date that is exactly what is considered normal and even de rigueur these days (including by my own government)
Also I think WRM doesn't exaggerate one bit in his telling of the 20s and 30s (in another Yaacov post today) and so by another gut reaction on that basis I am extremely weary of anything that sniffs of "plant a tree, create a ruckus" or "without-borders". (for RK Germany is the country of the peace of Westphalia and what happened before that my teachers went on about continuously - so I kind of imbibed that borders are better than the alternative from a very early age on)
Silke
The question of delegitimizing Israel is a complex one....
But not for everyone, surely.
one of these days I will have heard or read the word "complex" one time too often.
It is used most of the times when my betters want to tell me that I am too dumb to get it and thus should better stay out of it. Thus in a wider context it is a class thing: "little" one shut up.
Silke
for RK Germany is the country of the peace of Westphalia and what happened before that my teachers went on about continuously - so I kind of imbibed that borders are better than the alternative from a very early age on
It looks like you're directing this remark at me, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it's referring to. Did I make some sort of goof about the Thirty Years' War or something?
RK
for one reason or another I probably wanted to reaffirm it "extra-strong" why I am so hung up on sovereignty, the respect of borders and the whole thing. In my book this whole cross-border chariting is threatening to demolish the system established in 1648 in Westphalia.
Sorry, I seem to be unable to find your remark which made me feel that that I had to say it in that way.
Silke
I just read a piece by James Surowiecki from this week's New Yorker (link below) who explains a lot better than I ever could why I am so underimpressed by all the scrutiny NIF subjects itself to.
After what I have learned due to the "crisis" about the performance of the still considered to be completely trustworthy rating agencies and all kinds of other revered outfits, why should I, a member of the common public, still put any trust in any such outfit.
And looking at it from a viewpoint of NGOs there is now the disaster with the lauded by the Turkish government IHH which certainly must make them all open to suspicion.
Come to think of it to date I have read no full-throated condemnation of IHH by a charity - by my last count I am not even sure whether IHH's headquarter is in Germany or Turkey or both.
Couldn't charities who surely know more of eachothers' doings not tell the public everything they have heard about this colleague of theirs?
That there is the claimed by the media increasing loss in trust is for real, seems to me confirmed whenever I hear people talking - nobody sane seems still to believe anything and the others root for conspiracy theories.
And why should NGOs be exempt from all this after one of them was involved in the Gaza flotilla?
It seems I have made another discovery that makes me fear that we live in interesting times. All institutions seem to loose it, one after the other.
Silke
"These failures weren’t accidents. They were the all too predictable result of the deregulationary fervor that has gripped Washington in recent years, pushing the message that most regulation is unnecessary at best and downright harmful at worst. The result is that agencies have often been led by people skeptical of their own duties. This gave us the worst of both worlds: too little supervision encouraged corporate recklessness, while the existence of these agencies encouraged public complacency."
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/06/14/100614ta_talk_surowiecki
Dear Naomi
You have nothing to apologize for. I personally support the delegitimization of the zionist entity as well as the NIFs efforts, and feel that support of both of these are internally consistent. The ziocons will have a bit of egg on their face when Goldstone and Erdogan share the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. My inside sources inform me that they are leading contenderes
Hi Tony Rabbi
I like that one about the Peace Nobel it seems very likely to me
But could you please ask "dear Naomi" from me
a) how come that her total transparency outfit doesn't know anything about a cooperation with Heinrich-Böll
b) how come that she seems to have no interesting gossip on IHH to share with us. Everybody else I have ever come across was full of gossip about all others in his/her field of expertise - but charities are different? They don't do gossip? I find that hard to believe.
So please ask her, maybe she'll consider you to be worthy of an answer.
Silke
So what if NIF accepts cash from Heinrich-Boll or IHH. I would take money from them if it were offered to me
that's all you can come up with Tony Rabbi?
really! - seems to me your little grey cells aren't up to it any longer.
Silke
1. We're not delegitimizing the "Zionist entity" at all. As we support Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. We think the delegtimizing -- and interesting how quickly that became a synonym for legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies -- is mostly because Israel is not behaving as a liberal democracy in so many areas. We work to try to correct that.
And NIF funds more than 400 groups if you count the groups that do not receive core funding from us but for which we are a conduit for donor-advised funding. All of those groups receive funding from other sources as well, and I'm not personally familiar with the hundreds of organizations that fund them. However, to receive NIF funding or DA funding through us, an organization must be transparent and accountable, meaning all their funding must be visible. If some organizations are receiving funding from Heinrich Boll, please direct your questions to them.
NIF is on par with responsible funders worldwide. Organizations we fund are not subsidiaries or puppets but autonomous groups with their own policies, procedures and funding sources. Our standards for funding are rigorous, but we do not "own" these organizations and question about other funding sources are properly directed to them.
Thank you Naomi
1/2
your answer to my Heinrich-Böll question confirms my guess that your claim to "total" transparency is just a claim and that you are as opaque and most likely given to hiding in plain site as all the others I had a look at and maybe it is in the nature of the NGO business that it has to be that way i.e. when foreign government vetted organizations take it upon themselves to nanny and teach another society manners it is better one can refer obnoxious inquirers down the chain of command. I understand that perfectly. All bureaucracies at all times and anywhere have always used that evasion.
BTW don't you find it strange that to the best of my knowledge there never was a New Germany Fund. You re-educated us and after that you left us very much alone. From your answer I conclude that you consider Israelis other than Germans in need of something like permanent re-education and nannying?
2/2
As to your evading an answer to my second grievance with your organization: I think it is a bit weak i.e. too much akin to McKinsey-style wool-over-eye-pulling and doesn't address my question at all, i.e. to whom do you tell what the grapevine of the charity industry gossips about IHH?
Silke
I'm not evading anything, just patiently trying to answer your questions on a Sunday morning. I don't know anything more about IHH than anyone else does who reads the paper. We're incorporated in the U.S. and work exclusively in Israel, how would we interact with a charity that is apparently Turkish? Any 'charity industry gossip' would be just that, anyway.
thanks Naomi
I am flat out on the floor that's how honoured and gratified I am by your patience with me especially on a Sunday morning ...
Gossip is important and in my field what one talks during seminars and work-shops while sipping coffee during breaks is highly informative but of course people in the charity industry are different from anybody else, they would never ever sink so low as to swap insider-news during coffee breaks and then after Israeli soldiers have been bad injured rat on their co-charity-workers, especially not if their only objective is to do good to Israel. Never mind Israel, that's not how one behaves in polite company, n'est-ce pas?
I've got it that you work only on correcting and ameliorating and what else Israeli behaviour but still, why do you consider them in need of such special attention by an organisation with no Israeli oversight?
And one thing else:
if I remember correctly you claimed in an earlier post that your organisation was superior in transparency to NGO-Monitor. I hope you realize that you have nulled that claim at least for me.
Silke
Naomi
The only thing you have to apologize for is being inconsistent. You claim to support isreael, but you know better than I that it is a theocracy created by ethnic cleansing and historical myths. In comparison, even Pakistan comes out smelling like a rose.Why do you have to answer critics you will never satisy.? Why not come out of the closet and say what all progressives truly know_that israel is not a democracy and can never become one? I love the work that you do but why keep aplologizing?
Tony Rabbi
great tongue twister that one is - thanky youy!
Silke
ooops - I meant that one of course:
aplologizing
Silke
Hi Naomi,
I really do appreciate your coming by. However, you might want to note that responding to comments more than a week after a blog post went up, especially on a small blog such as this, is probably not a good way to spend your time. At this stage there can't be more than four or five people who'll ever read your comments, and one of them is our in-house jester the Rabbi Tony.
I'm puzzled however by a comment you've just made, about how "Israel is not behaving as a liberal democracy in so many areas. We work to try to correct that."
Do you have any evidence for this puzzling statement? For the life of me I can't imagine what it might be, since the statement is not true. Flat, black-and-white wrong, with nary any wriggle room. It's simply calumny.
What is true however is that the NIF and its grantees, by eagerly disseminating this falsity, are defaming the state of Israel, and are eagerly being cited by our many enemies.
thanks Yaacov
for that reminder that I one should never start overreading such accusations just because they are repeated ad nauseam
Silke
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