US government cable, February 25, 2010 – released by Wikileaks

  • Hedva Radanovitz, NIF Associate Director in Israel, former senior employee of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI): “the campaign against the NGOs was due to the ‘disappearance of the political left wing’ in Israel and the lack of domestic constituency for the NGOs. …in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic…. the NIF had no plans to build a human rights constituency within the right wing of Israeli society.”

Bret Stephens, “Israel’s Predicament,” Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2011

  • “Maybe the case of the (now former) NIF official is a relatively rare one. Or maybe it’s just rare to have such off-the-record candor find its way into the public domain. Not rare, however, is the idea that Israel’s legitimacy is a function of its moral performance, and that judgment of its performance lies in the hands of its foreign critics and their designated Israeli scolds.”

Ben Caspit, “Nothing New under the Fund,” Maariv, September 9, 2011 [original in Hebrew]

  • “In short, the New Israel Fund speaks high but acts low, maybe even very low. This proves, at least to me, that the campaign against the NIF was justified and proper, and that NIF officials are far from internalizing what the Israeli public tried to tell them. …when you run a campaign that denies Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish state, and when you cooperate with the different boycott initiatives around the world, and when you sic international tribunals on IDF soldiers and officers, the line is crossed, and it’s a shame.”

Erez Tadmor, “Wikileaks Reveals: The Fund for a Weak Israel,” Maariv, September 13, 2011 [original in Hebrew]

  • “It seems that what officials from the NIF and its grantees hide from the public they say behind closed doors in meetings with foreign diplomats. The arrogance and audacity reach new heights, when they don’t have to pose as Israeli patriots, but rather they speak freely and reveal their true intentions.”

Isi Leibler, “The Two Faces of the New Israel Fund,” Jerusalem Post, September 15, 2011

  • “It is a somber reflection on the naivety of well-intended Jewish philanthropists that they continue donating vast amounts of money to Israel’s largest NGO, the New Israel Fund (NIF)…Clearly, in these difficult times there is a need for drastic change in the personnel managing this organization and an end to the secrecy under which they operate in order to ensure that funds raised for the welfare of Israel are not diverted to organizations committed to undermining the Jewish state.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, “The New Israel Fund Steps in It a Bit (Updated),”  The Atlantic, September 7, 2011

  • “…this rather devastating portrait of the New Israel Fund’s view of the Jewishness of the Jewish state. Or at least the view of one senior NIF official.  I’m a big fan of much of NIF’s work, but if this cable from the Wikileaks trove is true, it’s very unpleasant.”

Barry Rubin, “Step 1: Get Charity Donations From Well-Meaning American Jews; Step 2: Use Money to Finance Israel’s Far Left,” Pajamas Media, September 8, 2011

  • “A newly leaked U.S. Embassy cable provides a startling revelation, not so much of the extremist anti-Israel views of one high-ranking New Israel Fund official, but of how money supposedly raised for good deeds pays for full-time radical activists and finances the Israeli political far left….The money is used for challenging Israeli policies, helping its enemies, and rebuilding the Israeli left.”

Noah Pollak, “Wikileaks Bombshell: New Israel Fund Official Endorses End of Jewish State,” Commentary, September 6, 2011

  • “It seems the “New Israel” envisioned by NIF will not be a Jewish state. Has NIF made this clear to its American Jewish donors?”
  • “At every turn, the NGOs have angrily denied these charges and smeared those who made them as being (take your pick) anti-peace, anti-human rights, anti-democracy, or extremist right-wingers attempting to silence dissent. It is a remarkable moment in this battle to see the NGOs admit in private the same things they slander their critics for saying about them in public.”

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Previous Israeli criticism over similar issues