–updated–
The video is a demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem that ended in arrests and detentions, which caused quite a stir back in January. Discontent in some quarters is rising in Israel over freedom of speech and assembly issues, but also the rights of women, including a dispute about bus segregation that’s turned into quite an equality tussle versus religious fundamentalists. Then there was another skirmish, with Israeli police confrontting Anat Hoffman, director of the Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), who was leading a group of women praying at the Wailing Wall. She was arrested, interrogated and fingerprinted before being released. But that’s nothing compared to the dehumanizing front page portrayal (English translation of the ad below) of NIF’s chairwoman, Naomi Chazan, bringing to mind the bad old days when right-wingers did the same to Hillary Clinton.
All of this foreshadowing another showdown over the Goldstone report, which is targeting NIF. Im Tirtzu is attacking the New Israel Fund (NIF) over the Goldstone report, alleging all sorts of things. As an aside, Christians United For Israel group, led by Pastor John Hagee, helps fund Im Tirtzu. From the Jerusalem Post:
A soon-to-be-released report by the Zionist student group Im Tirtzu, which accuses the New Israel Fund of direct responsibility for the UN’s Goldstone Report on the IDF’s Gaza offensive last winter, is “just another in a series of attempts to quash freedom of speech in the human rights and civil rights community in Israel,” the NIF’s CEO Daniel Sokatch told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
According to the Im Tirtzu report, 92 percent of the Goldstone document’s allegations criticizing the IDF’s conduct came from 16 Israeli NGOs that received some $7.8 million from the NIF in 2008-2009 alone.
Im Tirtzu members have begun a protest campaign to coincide with the release of the report, and on Saturday night they staged a mock rally of Hamas members outside the Jerusalem home of NIF chairwoman Naomi Chazan, a former Meretz MK.
Im Tirtzu has also sparked outrage – both in Israel and the US – with a full-page ad it took out in the Post’s Sunday edition that featured a caricature of Chazan with a rhinoceros horn bearing the letters “NIF” tied to her forehead.
“It’s an attack on the fiber of Israeli democracy,” Sokatch said of the report and the accompanying campaign. “And part of an increasing drumbeat of incredibly heavy-handed tactics being used by authorities and others to silence human rights and civil rights organizations in Israel.”
He pointed to the interrogation by police in early January of Women of the Wall chairwoman Anat Hoffman, who is also director of the Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), as a recent example of such tactics.
J Street is involved as well, highlighting the importance of Israel to uphold the values of its democratic society, which includes freedom and equality for everyone, no matter how much people challenge the Israeli right-wing establishment.
Nothing confronted Israel’s harsh treatment of Palestinians like the Goldstone report, which is why the usual suspects are pushing back on it. Alan Dershowitz his usual obstreperous self: “The Goldstone report is a defamation written by an evil, evil man.”
