Americans right-wing groups are financing another destructive pro-settler, anti-peace organization in Israel, this one fomenting trouble on university campuses. It's just what the Middle East doesn't need: another extremist group stirring racial, ethnic, and religious conflict at a time when moderate Israelis and Palestinians are trying to find a road to peace.

The new organization, known as Im Tirtzu, created a "Zionist Index" with which it evaluates Israel's university professors. Its preposterous claim: "On average 80% of the courses offered in political thought at Israel's major universities are highly skewed towards anti-nationalist and anti-Zionist thought." The group, which claims 1,000 members, sponsors lectures by right-wingers, such as the recent talk at Hebrew University by Moshe Ya'alon, the notorious Vice Prime Minister in the current rightist regime, who last August  called the human rights group Peace Now "a virus."

The same group spread a false rumor that Haifa University invited Palestinian activist Raed Salah to speak and barred Jewish students from attending. This lie was repeated in media throughout the world, including this account in something calling itself the Canada Free Press, which at least had the decency to publish a letter from the university's head of communications refuting the inflammatory account, asserting that "nobody was banned from entering the auditorium based on their being Jewish."

The organization's student thought police are copying what they see in the political right wing, according today's account in Haaretz, which quotes the editor of the student newspaper at Hebrew University, Eli Osheroff: "Their tactics are borrowed from [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman, which means sowing hatred, factionalism and violence. For example, during Operation Cast Lead there was a demonstration by Arab students at the university, and Im Tirtzu activists shouted things at them like 'We will burn your village,' and 'We will meet in reserve duty.' But it doesn't stop there. Every lecturer who proposes a different way of thinking about the situation here is accused, not of being a post-Zionist - which is the usual allegation - but of engaging in 'anti-Zionist incitement.' The goal is to frighten and intimidate everyone who thinks differently from or dares to criticize them."

Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism, whom Newsweek named America's most influential rabbi, issued a statement supporting the New Israel Fund and its "long, accomplished history of defending human rights, civil liberties, religious pluralism, and social justice. Its efforts have helped make Israel a more equal, more just, more fair and more compassionate society."
Liberal Israeli and American intellectuals are outraged. Wrote Amir Paz-Fuchs, a professor at Israel's Ono College of Law:

This is McCarthyism, pure and simple. Now more than ever we must remember the words of Edmund Burke: 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.'

The American journalist Philip Weiss describes this as "the war between Israelis over the right to dissent from misguided state policies."

Im Tirtzu's most notorious action to date [as chronicled by Neil Ugerleider here on True/Slant] is a personal attack on the distinguished international academic and liberal Israeli women's leader, Naomi Chazan, who heads the New Israel Fund, a progressive foundation respected around the world. [Check out Chazan's bio, which includes a stint at Harvard and service in the Knesset, here.] Im Tirtzu's protestors picketed during the night outside Chazan home in "Hamas" costumes, published a shocking ad campaign depicting her as a beast with horns, and spread a "study" claiming that NIF-funded NGOs were anti-Israeli. As Professor Chazan told Haaretz:

"I've seen everything," she said in a phone interview this week of the posters released by the movement depicting her with a horn emerging from her forehead and labeling her Naomi Goldstone Chazan. "I don't know why they chose me - I can think of plenty of human rights supporters they could pick on. But I'm ever so proud to be a symbol of Israeli democracy. No doubt about it."

"They're using me to attack in the most blatant way the basic principles of democracy and the values of the Declaration of Independence: Values of equality, tolerance, social justice and freedom of speech," she added.

Ironically, as Neal pointed out, funding for Im Tirtzu comes from one who has made blatant anti-Semitic statements: Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United for Israel organization. Haaretz has some additional info on right-wing sources of Im Tirtzu's funding:

"The main channel for donations to Im Tirtzu is the Central Fund of Israel. In addition to Women in Green and Im Tirtzu, it supports Honenu, an organization sponsoring legal defense to radical right-wing activists in trouble with the law. Honenu boasts of financially supporting the families of the Bat Ayin underground, convicted for trying to bomb a girls' school in East Jerusalem in 2002; of Ami Popper, who shot four Palestinian laborers during the first intifada; Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed participants in a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem in 2005; and Haggai Amir, brother of Yitzhak Rabin's assassin Yigal Amir."

[Read more on the Central Fund of Israel and its financing of extremist settler activities in the occupied West Bank here on Phil Weiss's blog.]

Haim Oron, head of Israel's Meretz party, entitled his Maariv op-ed this week about Im Tirtzu's action, "Before Fascism Strikes," and noted:

"Ironically, their thuggish campaign draws its graphic inspiration from the worst anti-Semitic propagandists. And maybe it's not so surprising that both have a common denominator, since hatred is hatred, racism is racism, and fascism is fascism, whether it's directed against Jews by the haters of Israel, or whether it's directed by Jewish racists against the objects of their hatred."

To me, this intimidation campaign bears a resemblance to another right-wing organization claiming to be an independent watchdog, NGO Monitor, which is run by Gerald Steinberg, a professor at the politically  conservative Bar Ilan University. NGO Monitor and Steinberg have continually criticized liberal and moderate nonprofits funded outside Israel. Yet NGO Monitor, which promises "independent and critical analysis" of nonprofits' activities, has never analyzed the powerful network of right-wing NGOs active in Israel-Palestine - including millions of dollars funneled by American millionaires such as Irving Moskowitz into Israel's extensive network of pro-settler NGOs. Last month, Steinberg announced that he was initiating a lawsuit against the European Union for funding NGOs in Israel. Just this week, one of Steinberg's associates published a Jerusalem Post op-ed attacking the NIF.

It's sad to see the Middle East's traditional media getting involved in this. The Jerusalem Post has just told Professor Chazan that it is discontinuing her column - one of that paper's few liberal writers. Not surprising, I guess: It was the Post that ran the Im Tirtzu ads depicting Chazan with horns.

Cross Posted from True/Slant

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