On September 15, 2008, the Israeli Attorney General ordered an investigation into the NGO known as New Profile for incitement to avoid military service. According to media reports, the “main reason for the probe’s launch is apparently the fact that New Profile’s web site tells people what to say to IDF mental health officers to create the impression that they are psychologically unfit for service.” One example is New Profile’s 2007 Annual Report, which states that “many CO’s [conscientious objectors], mentored by New Profile’s legal aid team or the refusers support network, decide to argue their cases via the army’s various categories of incompatibility.”

New Profile claims to advocate the “basic human right to conscientious objection” and the demilitarization of Israeli society, and provides legal and other support for “refusers” (those who refuse to serve in the military) and their families (Annual Report, 10-14). According to its charter, New Profile’s ideology is rooted in pacifism, “determined peace politics,” “feminism,” and opposition to “the use of military means to enforce Israeli sovereignty beyond the Green Line.” As in the case of many such NGOs, this group erases the context of terror and the basic obligation of all governments to provide self-defense.

New Profile is funded directly by Quakers UK, SIVMO, Cord Aid, Coalition for Women for Peace (CWP), Gush Shalom, Zochrot, and other organizations and individuals (Annual Report, 23).

In addition, the organization is an active member of the Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), an umbrella group that includes New Profile, Machsom Watch, Women in Black, and others. CWP “is committed to the struggle to end the occupation; to the full involvement of women in peace negotiations; to an end to the excessive militarization of Israeli society”; for instance, in the “Re-framing security” project, CWP “explore[d] this term [security] from the broadest feminist-civil perspective.” The coalition is an NIF-grantee (the New Israel Fund also serves as a conduit for CWP to obtain tax-deductible contributions in the US), receiving over $560,000 since 2004 (see “financial statements”).

New Profile highlights the “close connections” with Bimkom, Gush Shalom, Yesh Gvul, and other NGOs, many of which are also funded by NIF. International partners include: Jewish Voice for Peace, Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, OxfamGB, Novib (Netherlands), Quakers (UK), Quakers UN (Geneva), Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) and the World Council of Churches (WCC), Sabeel and others (Annual Report, 22).

New Profile also participates in an Alternative Summer Camp, which is described as “a safe and fun place for teenagers to deal with such complex issues as the occupation, feminism, ecology, militarism and more” (Annual Report, 16-17). A workshop at the camp run by Zochrot – a radical Israeli NGO that campaigns for the Palestinian “right of return” and to “raise awareness” about “the Naqba” – focused on “the Palestinian Naqba and how the inhabitants of Arab villages were driven out of their homes in 1948.”  New Profile partnered again with Zochrot on Israel’s Independence Day in 2007, “active[ly] participat[ing]” in public commemorations of the “59^th anniversary of the Naqba” (Annual Report, 19-20).

New Profile has also worked with groups such as the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and with Amnesty International on a “Small Arms and Light Weapons” project. Additionally, a New Profile youth group visited ICAHD’s summer camp (Annual Report, 7-8, 15).