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1. Activist Describes New Israel Fund Desert Seminar from Hell
by Gil Ronen
A new chapter in the New Israel Fund controversy was written this week, as a left-of-center activist related her harrowing experience in an NIF seminar that brought her to tears. The NIF, which purports to be a pro-Israel fund, has been under fire since a damning report published in February by a Zionist student group exposed its aid to groups that slandered the IDF following the 'Cast Lead' Gaza counter-terror operation.
The letter from the activist to NIF CEO Daniel Sokatch was first published in Hebrew by journalist Ben-Dror Yemini in his blog on the Maariv-NRG website, and later translated into English.
The activist, who identified herself by the pseudonym Shlomit, told a story that appeared to corroborate Im Tirtzu's depiction of the NIF as a sinister radical group that hides behind a facade of pro-Israel Zionist morality.
Loyal to the Fund
Shlomit, 36 and a mother of three, described herself as “religious left-wing” and said she voted for dovish-religious Meimad in the last elections. A former spokesperson for an organization promoting women’s rights, she is currently employed in an organization that helps the disabled.
She described herself as “very connected” to Shatil, an organization that operates under the auspices of the New Israel Fund, mentoring NIF-supported groups and helping them apply for funding from other sources. “Within my professional framework, I have always been aided and assisted by the services of 'Shatil' from the outset,” she explained.
“The report of the 'Im Tirzu' movement created somewhat of a shockwave amongst me and my colleagues,” Shlomit elaborated. “On the one hand, we thought that if there was an element of truth in it then the Fund should do some soul-searching and we assumed they would. However, we were not prepared to cast aspersions on our loyalty to the Fund and to Shatil.”
Elated and grateful
She was offered a scholarship for “a week in the desert along with fellow activists, with professional guidance from America,” and saw it as “an opportunity for empowerment and growth.”
Other participants hailed from Amnesty International, Sikkuy (The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel), AJEEC (Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation), Neve Shalom, Itach (Women Lawyers for Social Justice), Moussawa (Advocacy for Arab Citizens in Israel) and additional groups.
Feeling “so elated and grateful that they were willing to invest in me in such a way,” she accepted.
"That turned out to be a mistake,” she wrote Sokatch.
The nightmare
“It has now been two weeks since the program ended and I am still struggling to get back into routine both at home and at work. The level of the shake-up I experienced was so powerful that it led me to write this letter especially to you. I found myself in the desert under laboratory conditions, cut off from the world, cut off from Internet, with Palestinian and Jewish human rights activists who negated the State of Israel's existence. With people who want to annihilate the State without ruling out violent means, who believe that the State of Israel was born out of sin and who apologize for its existence, who loathe Israel and its symbols, who justify harming Israel, its soldiers and all its institutions, who devote their lives and efforts towards turning Israel into a bi or multi-national country. In fact the above is inaccurate. These people are fighting for one nationality alone – Palestinian. These same people oppose communal or civil national service for Arabs within the State. They also equate Israel's actions with those of Nazi Germany.”
“It was hard to hear the constant denouncing and loathing of the existence of the IDF, when back home, all of my friends irrespective of their political views, had left their families and small children at home (and will continue to do so) to join fellow soldiers in the protection of Israel from missiles that were being fired on its citizens. It was also hard to hear the hatred towards a country that to me represented one of the biggest miracles and acts of justice that mankind has ever known. I could not tolerate being in an atmosphere where my Jewish identity was being paralyzed in a way that I had never felt before in my life."
She decided to express her feelings to the tutors. "I then turned to them and with tears in my eyes and tried to explain the hurt that I was feeling.”
"'I love my country,' I cried. 'I don't always agree with everything that my government decides, but I love the country and its symbols. I have devoted my life to building it. Every social activity I have ever undertaken has been motivated by Zionism especially for equal rights and developing amenities for Arab society. Over here I wouldn't dare exclaim out aloud that that I have a strong Jewish identity and that I am a proud Jew and Zionist. This was how life was in the 1930s just like my late grandmother used to describe it'.
A plea to the NIF
In an impassioned plea to Sokatch, she asked: “Do the supporters of the Fund have any idea that the numerous organizations benefiting from its support and counsel are putting all their effort into negating Israel as a Jewish and democratic state? Is the Fund itself openly working towards removing the 'Jewishness' from the State? Is the Fund trying to turn Israel into a 'country for all her inhabitants' [i.e. Israeli euphemism for not being a Jewish state, ed.] alongside a Palestinian state? Is the Fund backing the fact that the aim of the Palestinian society sector within 'Shatil' is to strengthen the expression of the Palestinian nation, and that on the Jewish side of the spectrum the aim is to strengthen freedom of religion and not Jewish identity and the national expression of the Jews in their homeland?”
The New Israel Fund's response, as quoted by Yemini, said that the Rockwood Program which Shlomit participated in is based on pluralistic and open dialogue. The 19 other participants in the seminar did not hear any of the things Shlomit quoted, the Fund said, and the program was not focused on political matters at all. “We regret that Shlomit came back with a negative feeling after the program, because all of the other participants who were there came back from the program with an empowering positive impression.”
Shlomit, it should be noted, said that she was shaken up by the general tone of the program, and not necessarily by specific things said by tutors or participants. “Since I have been home, I have not been able to sleep well,” she wrote. “I have been playing this week over and over in my mind trying to find what hurt me and what shocked me. I have to say that this was an excellent program with a wonderful content. The overall mood amongst the participants was one of accepting and empowering. Were it not for the presence of politics, we all would have had so much in common. But the radical left was so present in the room that it seemed obvious that everyone was speaking with one voice.”
'Victims of the NIF'
Ronen Shoval, chairman of Im Tirtzu, told Israel National News in response: "Shlomit, like many other good people, fell victim to the activities of the New Israel Fund, which hides under a sheep's skin but is in fact a wolf with one purpose: to turn Israel from a Jewish state to 'a state of all its citizens [euphemism for non Jewish state, as above, ed.].' Any decent and Zionist person must cease cooperation with the New Israel Fund.”
2. IDF Thwarts Attempted Attack on Samarian Town of Barkan
by Hana Levi Julian
IDF soldiers stopped a group of Arabs from carrying out an attack on the Samarian Jewish town of Barkan in the early hours of Thursday morning.
[map:37]
Soldiers from the Ephraim Brigade spotted a group of operatives approaching the fence around the perimeter of the community after having set an ambush nearby. There have been reports of repeated attempts to infiltrate the community in recent weeks.
Once the soldiers had positively identified the individuals approaching the fence as suspicious, and believing that at least one was armed, troops called on the Palestinians to halt – and when the order was ignored, they opened fire. One of the would-be infiltrators was killed, but his companions managed to escape.
IDF soldiers are continuing to search the area for the suspects.
In the wake of the incident, Civil Administration head Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai turned to his Palestinian Authority counterparts in the Kalkilya region to carry out a joint investigation of the incident. Mordechai also asked PA commanders to restrain the local Arab population and their own forces in the area in response to the incident, according to the IDF communique. Within hours, PA commanders had sent a representative to the site of the attempted infiltration.
According to the IDF, initial evidence indicates that the motive for the attack may have been criminal, rather than nationalistic. This is standard procedure unless the terrorists are known or their actions make terrorism an obvious motive.
Gershon Mesika, Shomron Regional Council chairman, congratulated the IDF, saying the infiltration could easily have been a terrorist attack. Another resident said that the town of Barkan is not afforded sufficient protection, explaining that “for some reason, it is categorized as a low-risk area – even though there have been attacks here in the past, and robberies in recent weeks.”
Barkan, located in southern Samaria, is a short ride from Petach Tikva, approximately 10 kilometers east of Elkana, next to Highway 5, the “Trans-Samaria Highway” and slightly west of the Samarian city of Ariel. Founded in 1981, the town includes a large industrial park featuring at least 120 businesses and factories that employ more than 5,000 workers, including many PA Arabs, to whom the industrial park gave much needed employment, but who will be unemployed if Abbas' plan for banning PA Arab work for Israelis goes into effect.
3. 87 Countries Join to Fight Anti-Semitism
by Hillel Fendel
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon presided over the signing of an international Memorandum of Understanding uniting 87 nations in the fight against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.
The cooperation agreement was signed Wednesday between the ITF (Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research) and the ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem. The ODIHR is an operative branch of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe).
This year marks the first time that Israel has been chosen to head the ITF and global education on the Holocaust. ITF chairman Dan Tichon, a former Knesset Speaker, and ODIHR Director Janez Lenarcic of Slovenia signed the memorandum of understanding.
The agreement "multiplies the strength" of the global forces fighting anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, Ayalon said. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has acted, and will continue to act, against these manifestations of hate," he said, "and will promote any initiative whose purpose is to eliminate them."
In a reference to nuclear power-pursuing Iran, Ayalon noted that there are "elements that deny the Holocaust and are preparing the next one. We must preserve the memory of the Holocaust so that similar horrors and hatred will never be repeated and the world will become a safer place."
The ITF was founded a decade ago at the initiative of the Swedish government. Its purpose is the preservation of Holocaust remembrance through education, research and memorial sites. Currently with 27 members, mostly European, it sees the cooperation agreement as very important.
The ODIHR, which has 57 members, deals with educational programs and follows up on instances of xenophobic - primarily anti-Semitic - hatred. For this reason, the cooperation agreement is likely to help promote Holocaust remembrance, including the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and the fight against Antisemitism.
Ambassador Janez Lenarcic is a senior diplomat who served in the past as advisor to the prime minister of Slovenia. The ODIHR joins six other organizations belonging to the Task Force whose representatives serve as observers: the UN, DPI, UNESCO, the EU, FRA, and the European Council.
4. Lebanon to Accuse Israel of Espionage in UN
by Elad Benari
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Lebanon’s Information Minister Tareq Mitri said on Wednesday that his country will raise accusations of espionage against Israel at the United Nations Security Council.
In the last month Lebanon has detained two employees of the state-owned telecom company Alfa and two men have been sentenced to death. All four were convicted or suspected of spying for Israel.
Ali Mantash was sentenced to death on July 14 after he was convicted of transferring classified information to Israel that was used against Hizbullah in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Mantash was arrested in April 2009.
On the same day that Mantash was sentencted, Alfa executive Charbel Qazzi was charged with spying for the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. Two of Qazzi's assistants were also been arrested by security forces, and their equipment was confiscated. In June, a senior technician at Alfa who reportedly had access to “sensitive information” was arrested on similar charges.
Qazzi allegedly admitted that he had planted programs and special electronic chips provided to him by Israel in the company's transmission stations, according to a report in the As-Safir newspaper. If convicted, Qazzi could also receive the death sentence as Mantash did.
Lebanese President Michel Sleiman said at the time of Qazzi’s arrest that was just one link in a chain of Israeli agents arrested by the Lebanese Army. In fact, more than 70 people have been arrested in Lebanon in the past 15 months, all on charges of spying for Israel. The arrests have included a number of high ranking military officials.
Earlier on Wednesday (on the same day that Lebanon announced its intents regarding the UN) another man, Hassan Ahmed al-Hussein, was sentenced to death after having been convicted of providing information about Hizbullah to Israel in 2008. Among the charges al-Hussein faced were: giving Israel the names, addresses and details of houses of Hizbullah officials in the Lebanese village of Qantara, and providing information about other targets. Information Minister Mitri, who spoke after a cabinet meeting, was quoted in Reuters as saying that the ministers in Lebanon’s unity government agreed unanimously “to raise a detailed report on the file of the agents to the (United Nations) Security Council."
5. Russian Gift to PA: 50 Armored Personnel Carriers
by Hillel Fendel
Russia has delivered 50 armored personnel carriers to Jordan for use by Palestinian Authority security forces. A Russian government statement said the vehicles are now waiting “until the Palestinian and the Israeli sides agree on the time and ways of their transfer to the western bank of the Jordan River.”
The vehicles are a gift to the PA, and come with training for drivers and mechanics.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority several weeks ago, announcing at the time that 50 Russian troop carriers would soon be delivered to the PA. He said then that Moscow had offered the APCs a few years ago, "but Israel refused to hand them over." Israeli sources said the delivery of the APCs would be discussed in face-to-face negotiations between Israel and the PA.
The armored carriers in question can easily be turned into combat vehicles. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in his famous Bar Ilan University speech last year expressing support for a Palestinian state, made it very clear that the PA state to which Israel would agree could only be a demilitarized one.
MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) wrote at the time that there is no such thing. “Of course, I don't mean nano-states such as Andorra or the Vatican,” Eldad wrote, “which have themselves chosen not to maintain an army. There is no real state in the world defined as a demilitarized state.”
Eldad noted that nearly 100 years ago, after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany must remain demilitarized – but “what happened? Did the ‘demilitarized’ status prevent the Second World War and, worst of all, the destruction of European Jewry?” German and Russia signed an agreement that secretly helped Germany become quite militarized, and the lesson that was learned, Eldad wrote, is simple:
“There is no political power that can prevent a sovereign state from doing whatever it wants… Netanyahu knows that if ever a Palestinian state should, Heaven forbid, be established, Israel will not be able to declare war on it if it should choose, for instance, to sign… a transfer-of-technology agreement with Iran. If pipes are manufactured in [a PA city], Israel will not be able to start a war that can be justified in the eyes of the world if steel cutters turn the pipes into Kassam rockets…”
6. Syria Bans Face-Coverings in Universities
by Hillel Fendel
Syria has banned Islamic face-coverings for university women. Middle East expert Dr. David Bukai says Israel should do the same.
“It’s not surprising that Syria has taken this step,” Bukai explained to Arutz-7’s Hebrew newsmagazine, “because it is run by a secular Baath regime. [President-Dictator Bashar] Assad, like other Arab leaders, feels threatened by increasing Islamicization, and this is one way to stop it. You’ll note that the ban is only in universities, where there is a danger of political unrest. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the ban soon reaches other public places as well...”
Interviewer Benny Tucker asked, “How will this measure strengthen the stability of the regime?”
Bukai answered, “The Islamic extremists are a danger to many Arab regimes; Bin-Laden wants to take over Saudi Arabia, and his deputy wants to control Egypt. Syria is threatened as well. By stopping the burkas, the government has more supervision and control over the extremists.”
Pressed to explain further, Bukai said, “It has to be understood: The Islamic successes in recent years have come not from military jihad, but from propaganda and symbols, known as Dawa. There are more mosques, and more burkas, and a mosque at Ground Zero [the site of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks] – which is a symbol of a clear Islamic victory there – and other outward symbols such as dress, and all of this brings more followers. It is this that Syria is trying to put a stop to.”
“In Israel, too, it should be banned,” Bukai said. “At present, the Syrian ban does not cover the head-scarves, but only those that completely cover the face except for a small slit for eyes. Here in Israel, we don’t see those face-coverings – yet. But in our universities there are many more hijabs (scarves) than before. We must ban them just like Syria did – first of all because of the security dangers, but also because of the Dawa dangers, the symbolic boost that it gives Moslem extremism.”
“When the IDF forces arrest terrorist cells, that is very good,” Bukai said, “but our real danger from Islam is not from them - but from the Dawa. Islamicization is getting stronger, there is more praying and more fasting, and this leads to more extremism. Turkey is a perfect example. Turkey was always a Moslem, democratic state, with a separation of church and state - but when extremist Islam became stronger there, look what happened. The same in Iran, Sudan, and elsewhere.”
Ten Years of Democratic Education Down the Drain in One Evening
“In Israel as well," Bukai continued. "Israel can send its Arab pupils to public schools, and invest ten years of education towards democracy – but it will all go down the drain in one dramatic event at the Temple Mount, which the Islamic Movement does for all the graduating classes, where the students take a vow to protect Jerusalem in the name of Islam. Such events have a bigger influence upon them than all the preceding years of education to democracy.”
7. Vilna Gaon's Student's Grave Found on Mt. of Olives
by Hillel Fendel
The discovery of a two-century old gravesite on the Mt. of Olives was particularly exciting for Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin, a descendant of a colleague of the deceased.
The City of David (Ir David) Association, working to uncover the Ashkenazi section of the Mt. of Olives cemetery, discovered the gravesite under a pile of earth that covered it since the times of the Jordanians, between 1948 and 1967. The hand-chiseled gravestone states: “This is the burial site of the holy pious one, R’ Saadiah Ashkenazi of holy blessed memory, died on the 25th of Av, 5513.” The deceased is none other than the famous Rabbi Saadiah of Shklov, the top student of the Gaon of Vilna.
Rabbi Saadiah immigrated to the Land of Israel, together with other students of the Vilna Gaon, at the behest of his teacher in 1809. Among others who immigrated at that time and created a strong Ashkenazi presence in the Holy Land were Rabbi Yisrael of Shklov, author of Pe’at HaShulchan, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Shklov, for whom a street in Har Nof, Jerusalem is named, and Rabbi Hillel Rivlin of Shklov – ancestor of present-day Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin.
Speaker Rivlin paid a visit to the Mt. of Olives cemetery on Wednesday, and said that he was very moved to be standing at the gravesite of Rabbi Saadiah. “It was Rabbi Saadiah who basically established the first Ashkenazi settlement in Jerusalem,” Rivlin said. “He was a legendary figure in my eyes, and the uncovering of his grave after 197 years under a landslide of earth is very moving and exciting for me.”
Rivlin lit a memorial candle at the site and recited several chapters of Psalms. He said that it is told about Rabbi Saadiah that his son, Natan Neta, became very ill, and Rabbi Saadiah prayed to G-d that he be taken sick instead. And so it happened: Within a few days, Rabbi Saadiah became ill, and died soon afterwards, while his son recovered and lived.”
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