Alpher answers questions on the current wave of political intolerance directed at the left in Israel, and what to do about it.
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst, co-founder and co-editor of the Israeli-Palestinian internet dialogue bitterlemons.org and Middle East roundtable bitterlemons-international.org. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, and a former senior official with the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Americans for Peace Now or Peace Now.
Q. How do you explain the current wave of political violence and intolerance directed primarily at the left in Israel?
A. Undoubtedly it has multiple causes emanating from diverse directions, some of which it will take time for sociologists to ferret out. Supreme Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinish, herself a recent victim of violence (shoes thrown at her in court), recently blamed the vulgar "talk-back" culture on the internet.
But there are more veteran factors at work, too. Settler violence toward Palestinians has been around for a long time--certainly since the settlers encountered a violent Palestinian reaction to their presence on what Palestinians claim as their land, but more recently since settlers encountered moves by Israeli governments to dislodge them. And settlers and their sympathizers have targeted the Israeli left at least since the 1995 Rabin assassination. In this connection, it is striking to note that, at a time when settler violence is increasing in reaction to the partial settlement freeze, Israelis are experiencing relatively little Palestinian violence.
Another major factor in right-wing violence and intolerance toward the political left is undoubtedly the right's frustration with its inability to rebuff the steady trend of de-legitimization and isolation of Israel on the international scene. The causes of this trend are complex. Here and there, they undoubtedly comprise unfounded accusations and even in some cases obvious anti-Semitism. But the ongoing occupation or, in the case of Gaza, the international perception of occupation, are clearly primary catalysts.
A worrisome sector of Israelis, including many settlers who are obviously threatened by the prospect of ending the occupation but also centrists who simply fear the security consequences of being forced to end the occupation of the West Bank under precipitate international pressure, have chosen to focus their counterattack not on the international community per se, not on Israel's malfunctioning political system and not on the occupation--but on the Israeli left.
That the sector of Israelis who are perceived as "left" or who define themselves as left has lately dwindled in numbers and in political clout makes this offensive that much easier in the public eye. The fact that the Knesset is today dominated by the right and that the settler leadership, many of whose members consider themselves mainstream and even elite Israelis, is increasingly bowing to the right-wing messianic fanatics their movement has spawned, renders the overall atmosphere that much more intolerant.
Never mind that the left gave us the two-state solution which most Israelis support, and that it was the first to put Israel on notice that maintaining the country's Jewish character requires the emergence of a Palestinian state. All of a sudden the left, in its virtually exclusive role of defending human rights, is, according to this combination of narratives, somehow complicit in maneuvering Israel into its current isolation.
Thus the offensive is not defined by its perpetrators as being directed against the Israeli left per se but rather against those Israelis who are ostensibly suspect of lending their support to international efforts to criminalize Israel's efforts at legitimate self-defense in the territories or in wartime. The left is the scapegoat for Israel's troubles: not the occupation, not the settlers themselves and not the international efforts to isolate Israel. Left-wing human rights campaigners are a convenient target because they are so available and so visible.
I have no doubt that there are, among the Israeli human rights community, a few who reject Zionism and harbor a pathological conviction that Israel is always wrong. There are also a few who deliberately or mistakenly distort the issues. But I also have no doubt, because I know many of those involved, that the vast majority of Israelis dealing with human rights issues and peace advocacy are people of the highest integrity whose concern is that Israel function as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state in the very best sense of those terms.
All those involved in human rights work should be open to criticism and their sources of funding should be transparent. But criticism should be civil and fair and proportional, and the critics should ensure that their own motives and sources of funding are transparent, too. Sadly, of late the critics have seriously exceeded these bounds. They are running scared and choose to blame the most vulnerable target rather than thinking through the issues. They have now stooped to embracing McCarthyist tactics of innuendo and guilt by association and even anti-Semitic symbols (horned Jews). Herein lies the current dilemma.
Q. Can you be more specific about how this works?
A. The initial instigator of a witch hunt against Israeli human rights advocates and their funders was apparently NGO Monitor. That group now looks tame compared to Im Tirtzu, the group that has accused the New Israel Fund of treason and in effect put out a "contract" on its president, Naomi Chazan. Yet the causal link between these two groups and everyone in between--like that between the settler "establishment" and the anarchistic "hill youth" who carry out pogroms against Palestinians--is clear.
NGO Monitor, established a few years ago by Bar-Ilan University Professor Gerald Steinberg, presents its objective as seeking to "end the practice used by certain self-declared 'humanitarian NGOs' of exploiting the label 'universal human rights values' to promote politically and ideologically motivated anti-Israel agendas."
The original concept was not without merit. NGO Monitor has indeed exposed the manipulation of some non-Israeli human rights campaigns to malign Israel unjustly and even to undermine its viability as a Jewish state. This was dramatically confirmed last October, for example, when HRW founder Robert Bernstein wrote critically in the New York Times about the negative way in which "Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch's criticism."
But NGO Monitor long ago abandoned any hint of objectivity and began targeting virtually any and all human rights monitoring of Israel. It ignores the importance for Israeli democracy of Israeli organizations that maintain the country's integrity in the context of its ongoing occupation of the West Bank. Since it has little of substance to criticize, it stoops to innuendo and guilt by association.
For example, last October it attacked B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (whose reports the IDF recently used in its response to the Goldstone report), because it "regularly minimizes Israeli security concerns" and "its political agenda is evident in the minimal attention it gives to intra-Palestinian human rights abuses". But Israeli security concerns and Palestinians killing Palestinians are not part of B'Tselem's mandate; there are plenty of other civil society organizations that do that. Then it noted that B'Tselem is funded by the New Israel Fund. Then, typically, it added that a B'Tselem speaker was hosted at J Street's recent convention in Washington. Finally, it tells us that the Ford Foundation helps fund the New Israel Fund. By now we are to understand, via insinuation and guilt by association, that J Street, B'Tselem, NIF and Ford are all somehow anti-Israel. From here it requires merely an additional dose of vulgarity and spinelessness for Im Tirtzu to smear New Israel Fund head Naomi Chazan as a traitor with horns (the Hebrew "keren" means both fund and horn).
Israel's human rights NGOs are by and large quite transparent about their funding. Not so Im Tirtzu and NGO Monitor. The former's website says nothing about the sources of its funding, but it has acknowledged American evangelical support. The latter lists among its supporters Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum Education Project, whose website tells us without blinking that its work is "made possible through anonymous grants". Nor do NGO Monitor or Im Tirtzu with their staunch patriotic rhetoric ("Im tirtzu" are the opening words of Herzl's "If you will it , it is not a dream") seem in the least interested in investigating Israeli violators of human rights like the settlers and asking which evangelical and right wing Jewish Americans fund them--and why.
Note, too, that when Steinberg and settler leader Yisrael Harel, whose Institute for Zionist Strategies has also gotten into the act of attacking Israeli human rights NGOs, write for the bitterlemons publications that I coedit (and I make a point of hosting everyone from Hamas to the settlers), they have no problem accepting payment provided for bitterlemons by the very same funders of Israeli human rights groups that they attack: the European Union, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute and the Swedish International Development Agency. It's okay when the donor money goes to right-wingers.
I don't always agree with B'Tselem's findings. I did not support the Goldstone report, though I, like many Israelis, left and right, recognize that Israel itself should have cooperated with the report's drafters in order better to explain its actions. Nor am I always happy when the New Israel Fund gives money to Israeli Arab organizations that, in addition to promoting Arab women's rights and Arab participation in Israeli civil society, also seek to undermine Israel as a Zionist Jewish state. On the other hand, I fervently identify with NIF's support for religious pluralism in Israel.
But these controversies are not the issue here. Israel needs human rights monitoring. The Israeli right, whose messianic settlement movement shares responsibility for a lot of the international isolation and de-legitimization we find ourselves in, is not interested in an objective discussion. It is mounting an offensive to demonize Israeli human rights monitoring for insupportable partisan political reasons.
Q. What can readers of this Q & A do to combat this ugly trend in Israeli civil society?
A. Right wing organizations like NGO Monitor and Im Tirtzu are funded to a considerable extent by extremist Jews and evangelicals in America. You can work to reveal the funders and combat them through legislation and enforcement of existing American laws. Some of NGO Monitor's funders (see their website) appear to be more mainstream. Contact them and explain the damage that NGO monitor's McCarthyist tactics are inflicting. You can also make your dissatisfaction known to the government of Israel through its representatives in the US.
If a widely circulated newspaper like the Jerusalem Post deems it proper to publish an attack ad portraying Naomi Chazan with a horn and branding her a traitor and then cancels her weekly column, you can cancel your subscription or protest in some other way to the newspaper, which depends on North American readership.
And you can increase your contribution to the New Israel Fund, B'Tselem and similar organizations that deal with human rights and societal issues in Israel with a high degree of integrity.
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Groups like Im Tirtzu go lock, stock, and barrel with the teabagger ilk we have here in America. Israel could be the canary in the coal mine for us regarding whether we remain a democratic nation or slip into the abyss, NOT of Jewish far-right facism, BUT Christian fundamentalist facism. It is little wonder that the settlements in the West Bank are fervently supported by the Right and Im Tirzu is given the green light. Afterall, didn't Sarah Palin say that the settlements will continue to grow and grow and grow?
In his effort to show balance, Alpher unfortunately maligns Human Rights Watch. Bernstein was answered by many others in HRW and independent academic analysis did not demonstrate an anti-Israel bias in HRW work. Unfortunately, Bernstein was stampeded by the same right wing forces that Alpher is exposing.
Can you expand (or direct me to a reliable resource) on the risks to Israel by propaganda supported by American evangelicans.
How much influence have they had on the attitude of Israelis in recent years.
Are they related to Memri or to other organizations that are trying are constantly beaming hatered of Arabs in Israel?