Links
Israel: Attacks on new Israel fund, critical groups, threaten civil society
The growing harshness of attacks by Israeli government officials on nongovernmental organizations poses a real threat to civil society in Israel, Human Rights Watch said today.
The most recent attacks center on the New Israel Fund (NIF), which supports a wide range of Israeli civil rights and social welfare organizations, including some that provided information to the United Nations fact-finding mission under Justice Richard Goldstone that investigated abuses by both sides in last year's Gaza conflict.
"What we're seeing in Israel is a greater official intolerance of dissent," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "One of Israel's outstanding strengths has been its vibrant civil society and its flourishing public debate, so these developments are particularly worrying."
In response to a private report accusing NIF of supporting groups that gave Justice Goldstone information relating to abuses in the Gaza conflict, Member of Knesset Otniel Schneller proposed a parliamentary commission to specifically examine the conduct of NIF and its grantees in "transferring false, exaggerated, and non-credible information, to Justice Goldstone, thus harming the national interest of the State of Israel." The debate and vote on this commission is slated to take place the week of February 8, 2010. A parliamentary subcommission has already been established to examine foreign funding of Israeli organizations in the wake of similar allegations that local groups provided information to Goldstone's inquiry.