Love of the Land: How Akiva Eldar Twists The News

How Akiva Eldar Twists The News

Yirael Medad
My Right Word
04 May "10

Here is something from an attack by Ha-Ha-Haaretz's Akiva Eldar, on tours promoted by Im Tirzu at the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood:-

Last Friday the tour organizers were accorded a free public service announcement on the Reshet Bet radio excursions program "On the Way to Nature." Under the neutral heading "A tour on the trail of heritage sites in East Jerusalem," the editor of the program, Michael Miro, recommended a "tour in the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood". He told listeners that in advance of Jerusalem Day, Im Tirtzu is organizing tours of the neighborhood established 120 years ago by Jews from inside the city walls.

"They led a full life with synagogues and Torah, Sabbath pittas and hamin (cholent), as well as unforgettable celebrations in honor of the holy man, Shimon Hatzadik.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: How Akiva Eldar Twists The News

Love of the Land: All the News Unfit to Print

All the News Unfit to Print

Andrea Levin
CAMERA Media Analysis
18 March '10

What the New York Times chooses to cover in the Arab-Israeli conflict – and what it excludes – is a story in itself. The paper's silence, as of this writing, about an event that has rocked the Israeli media and public and triggered calls for government action once more raises serious questions about the paper's news judgment. After all, the Times reports on no other foreign nation as minutely as it does Israel, whether about negotiations, housing permits in Jerusalem, Israeli gravel-use in the West Bank or a Tel Aviv polygamist.

The story being ignored is the Im Tirtzu campaign to expose the New Israel Fund's connection to the defamatory Goldstone Report via its funding of groups that spurred the creation of and then contributed harsh commentary about Israel to the UN document. Originally founded as a student organization to counter anti-Zionist activity on campus, Im Tirtzu publicized revelations about the NIF-Goldstone ties in provocative ads across the country. The campaign began in January and has already prompted moves in the Knesset to intensify oversight of foreign political entities financing groups in Israel.

According to polls, the Israeli public by a significant margin opposes politically-based foreign funding of activity in Israel.

So why the silent treatment by the Times?

For starters, many of the very same NIF-supported NGO's under fire for allegedly helping fuel the Goldstone calumnies against Israel are also preferred news sources of the Times, quoted regularly as reliable critics of Israeli society. B'Tselem and Yesh Din, for instance, are favorites, together cited at least 25 times in the last two years, typically charging the Israel Defense Forces or other official bodies with misconduct, and sometimes prompting entire stories focused on the NGO charges.

(Read full critique)

Love of the Land: All the News Unfit to Print

Love of the Land: The New Israel Fund and Goldstone

The New Israel Fund and Goldstone

Gerald Steinberg
Canadian JewishNews
18 February '10

Ma’ariv, one of Israel’s mass-circulation dailies, recently featured a scathing condemnation of the New Israel Fund (NIF) for leading the political war to demonize Israel.The journalist who wrote the piece, Ben Caspit, is a political centrist whose tolerance snapped when he realized that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded by the NIF were responsible for most of the “war crimes” allegations in the UN’s Goldstone report on the Gaza war.

Caspit’s article amplified the Israeli debate on the role of the NIF – a Diaspora-based superpower with an annual budget of around $25 million. The accusations were publicized by Im Tirtzu, a student group promoting Zionist renewal, which also placed ads on websites and in newspapers ridiculing the organization and its leader, Naomi Chazan.

Like other politicians whose power is threatened, Chazan and the NIF leadership responded furiously, denying the evidence and threatening legal action. However, having themselves used personal and crude graphics against opponents, the threats from Chazan and the NIF lacked credibility. While claiming to defend free speech, the NIF’s fierce attacks on critics were themselves attempts to silence a much-needed public debate.

Israeli anger toward the NIF also reflects the discovery of a hidden agenda, in contrast to Im Tirtzu and other openly more right-wing organizations. In its advertising and fundraising, the NIF claims to provide broad support for different groups in Israel, but many of its actions promote a very narrow and radical agenda.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: The New Israel Fund and Goldstone

Love of the Land: More free speech follies

More free speech follies

Jonathan Rosenblum
Think Again/JPost
19 February '10

Many on the Left employ a double standard concerning free speech. They want their own advocates immunized from criticism yet have an elaborate set of rules to disallow the speech of others as incitement, Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, or McCarthyism.

Fast and furious was the reaction to the recent accusation by Im Tirtzu, a Zionist student group, that 92 percent of the Goldstone Report’s citations came from 16 NGOs funded by the New Israel Fund. David Newman described Im Tirzu’s efforts, in these pages, as “the latest campaign to trample freedom of speech and political activity within our dying democracy,” pure McCarthyism (“The politics of delegitimization,” February 10).

That statement was typical Left-academic fare, both in its casual dismissal of Israel’s “dying” democracy and in its misunderstanding of free speech.

In his classical defense of free speech, John Stuart Mill imagined a free marketplace of ideas, in which truth will usually prevail. But Newman could not be bothered to respond to a single item in Im Tirzu’s meticulously documented report on NIF funding. Instead of refutation, he offered only name-calling.

Free speech presupposes criticism, without which there can be no marketplace of competing ideas. It does not mean that no one who has won in the battle of the marketplace of ideas will ever act upon their perception. Free speech is precious precisely because ideas have consequences. The NIF would prefer its donors to think that it is involved in social welfare projects or pushing religious pluralism. It tells donors that it does not fund groups that call for disinvestment or boycotts of Israel, or who negate the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, or which advocate the Palestinian right of return, or which engage in propaganda. Each of these claims is false. Im Tirzu shone a light on the activities of the NIF that the organization would rather hide. But increasing public knowledge is precisely what the marketplace of ideas is supposed to do.

Many on the Left employ a double standard concerning free speech. They want their own advocates or professors immunized from criticism – thus Prof. Newman’s outrage at groups, such as Campus Watch, which publicize what professors say in and outside the classroom. On the other hand, they develop an elaborate set of rules to disallow the speech of others as incitement, Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, or McCarthyism.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: More free speech follies

Love of the Land: ‘Goldstone Report was our smoking gun’

‘Goldstone Report was our smoking gun’

How did Im Tirtzu go from organizing campus demonstrations to compiling a major report that has reverberated into a major scandal?


Abe Selig
JPost
18 February '10

How did Im Tirtzu-The Second Zionist Revolution, which was created less than four years ago as a small student organization to voice support for IDF reservists, go from organizing campus demonstrations during the Second Lebanon War to compiling a major report that has reverberated into a major scandal?

One of the reasons, The Jerusalem Post learned this week, was that the document the group released last month, now known as the “Im Tirtzu Report,” which listed the New Israel Fund as a main financier of more than a dozen Israeli NGOs – including: The Association for Civil Rights in Israel; Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; Bimkom-Planners for Planning Rights; Gisha-Legal Center for Freedom of Movement; HaMoked-Center for the Defense of the Individual; Physicians for Human Rights-Israel; the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel; and Yesh Din-Volunteers for Human Rights – that provided testimony used in the UN’s Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead, was the result of efforts modeled after military intelligence operations that trace and pinpoint money trails leading to terrorist organizations.

Im Tirtzu head Ronen Shoval, told the Post this week that the detailed report, which has continued to make waves both in civil society and government circles, was “modeled after the way intelligence agencies look into the financing of terror groups.”

“We invested great efforts to understand the funding strategy and ideology behind the NIF, and what we found out is just the tip of the iceberg,” Shoval said, although he declined to elaborate.

(Read full article)

Related: (Video) Im Tirtzu: Bringing about the 2nd Zionist revolution

Love of the Land: ‘Goldstone Report was our smoking gun’

Love of the Land: The New Israel Fund for Deepening the Jewish-Arab Rift

The New Israel Fund for Deepening the Jewish-Arab Rift

Israel Harel
Haaretz
11 February '10

The Im Tirtzu organization accuses the New Israel Fund of financing Israeli organizations which Judge Richard Goldstone used for information to accuse the Israel Defense Forces of "war crimes."

The fund's response, as is the wont of radical leftist organizations under fire, was to smear its critics as "fascists".Granted, the NIF's president, Naomi Chazan, signed a petition that defined the IDF's operations in Gaza as "terror against civilians" and demanded that Israel abide by "all UN resolutions relating to the conflict" (including 194, which Palestinians interpret as granting them a "right of return"). Nevertheless, the personal campaign against her is a mistake.

The NIF's many supporters in the media and among political organizations (which benefit from the fund, both directly and indirectly) have used this personal campaign to divert the debate from the fund's subversive goal (a "new Israel," not Jewish or Zionist), which it has furthered by donating more than $200 million thus far to hundreds of anti-Zionist organizations (I have a list, if anyone is interested).

Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel - has used its NIF funding to submit dozens of petitions to the High Court of Justice that seek to reduce and even abolish Israel's identity as a Jewish state. "Israel must recognize the [Palestinian] refugees' right of return, on the basis of UN Resolution 194," declares the introduction to a proposed constitution that Adalah authored. And this proposal would also abolish the Law of Return for Jews.

The NIF also finances Jewish-led groups that seek to undermine Israel's Jewish identity, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: The New Israel Fund for Deepening the Jewish-Arab Rift

Love of the Land: Confronting Jews who defame Jews

Confronting Jews who defame Jews

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking from Jeusalem
10 February '10

The time has come to draw red lines between legitimate criticism and initiatives seeking to demonize Israel.

Richard Goldstone’s infamous role as the token head of the UNHRC report accusing the IDF of war crimes is only one example of prominent Jews who exploit their origins as a way to defame their people. In fact, until recently, Goldstone was considered a respectable Jew, even a Zionist. He was blinded by hubris and ego, and allowed himself to be seduced by the bitterest enemies of his people into providing legitimization for a blood libel against the Jewish state.

Unlike Goldstone, most Jewish renegades were driven by desperation to unburden themselves from what they regarded as their repressive ethnic and cultural roots. Historian Jacob Talmon described such deviant behavior as “a Jewish neurosis” in response to centuries of oppression and pariah status.

The purported commitment of these Jews to universal and humanitarian values was usually belied by extreme attacks on their own people and association with sponsors who were outright anti-Semites.

Streams of such Jews emerged during the 19th century in the wake of emancipation. A classic example was Karl Marx, whose anti-Semitic diatribes were reflected in outbursts like “money is the jealous god of Israel, by the side of which no other god may exist… The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”

In czarist Russia, some Jewish social revolutionaries even endorsed pogroms against their own kinsmen, hoping that by venting their frustrations on Jews, the masses would ultimately turn on the czar.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Confronting Jews who defame Jews

Love of the Land: Im Tirtzu

Im Tirtzu

Im Tirtzu
20 January '10

Im Tirtzu is a moderate centrist extra-parliamentary movement that engages in on-campus Zionist advocacy, in an effort to strengthen the values of Zionism in Israel, with the aim of securing the future of the Jewish people and the State of Israel and advancing Israeli society in its struggle to overcome the challenges it is currently facing.

http://imti.org.il/en/



Im Tirtzu is the only movement that engages in public advocacy on behalf of the State of Israel and of Zionism on Israeli campuses, based on the recognition and understanding that the student population must necessarily constitute the major vehicle of Zionist renewal.

Love of the Land: Im Tirtzu

Love of the Land: Why the Truth Constitutes “Incitement”

Why the Truth Constitutes “Incitement”

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
08 February '10

As Noah noted, the New Israel Fund controversy is laying bare just how warped the “human rights” community’s definition of human rights is. But it has also showcased two particularly Israeli variants of this disease: that freedom of information constitutes “incitement,” and that freedom of speech requires financing speech you oppose. The NIF’s Israeli president, former Meretz MK Naomi Chazan, demonstrated both in response to the Im Tirtzu organization’s report that 92 percent of the anti-Israel information in the Goldstone Report came from Israeli groups funded by the NIF.

Neither Chazan nor her American parent organization has disputed Im Tirtzu’s findings: they do not deny that the NIF grantees supplied the material in question to a UN inquiry into last year’s war in Gaza, nor do they deny the Goldstone Commission’s use of it. On the contrary, Chazan said she was “ever so proud to be a symbol of Israeli democracy,” while the NIF’s American CEO, Daniel Sokatch, told the Forward that the grantees bolstered “Israel’s moral fiber and its values” by “tell[ing] the truth.”

If so, why was Chazan so upset over the revelation of the NIF’s contribution to this achievement that when the Knesset announced it wanted more information on the subject — a Knesset committee said it would establish a subcommittee to examine foreign funding of Israeli nonprofits, and one MK even advocated a parliamentary inquiry commission — she responded by accusing the Knesset of trying to “fan incitement”? Since when has the search for, and dissemination of, truthful information constituted incitement?

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Why the Truth Constitutes “Incitement”

Love of the Land: An assault of illogic

An assault of illogic

Fresnozionism.org
06 February '10

The flap over Im Tirtzu’s exposé of the New Israel Fund’s (NIF) support of left-wing Israeli organizations that contributed to the slanderous Goldstone report gets bigger every day.

Naomi Chazan, the fund’s president, was dis-invited from a speaking tour of Australia.

After Chazan threatened to sue the Jerusalem Post, the Post dropped her as a regular columnist.

There are calls in the Knesset to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the NIF and foreign funding of Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

A group of high-ranking reserve officers signed a petition supporting Im Tirtzu against the NIF.

It’s hard to exaggerate the feelings of most Israelis about the Goldstone report, which many see as a modern-day blood libel. Even many members of the so-called ‘peace camp’ feel that the report goes too far in crediting Palestinian accusations against Israel for alleged ‘war crimes’ in Gaza, while downplaying and ignoring real crimes perpetrated by Hamas. So when Im Tirtzu pointed out that the 16 Israeli groups that produced a large majority of the anti-IDF ‘documentation’ — most of which is clearly false — were all grantees of the NIF, there was immediate outrage against the US-based fund.

Supporters of the fund in Israel and the US struck back with an assault of illogic, red herrings, ad hominem arguments and manufactured outrage at Im Tirtzu’s advertisments, but did little to refute the content of its criticism.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: An assault of illogic

Love of the Land: Hey, NIF! Criticism is a democratic right

Hey, NIF! Criticism is a democratic right

It’s strange that groups claiming to be well-versed in human rights seem so unfamiliar with the concept of free speech.


Anne Herzberg
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost
03 February '10

Those who make a full-time pursuit of criticizing others probably should grow thicker skin. Yet the New Israel Fund (NIF) and its NGO grantees have launched a thin-skinned offensive against an Israeli student group that criticized them. And they have dragged NGO Monitor into the fray.

As soon as Im Tirtzu released its report detailing how Israeli human rights organizations contributed to the Goldstone Report, NIF backers unleashed ad hominem attacks against the student group and against NGO Monitor (though we were not involved in the report). NIF has threatened to sue Im Tirtzu and any newspaper that repeats its findings. It also sent a letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu calling NGO Monitor “the rotten fruit of Israeli democracy.”

The record needs to be set straight regarding many troubling aspects of NIF’s combative reaction. To avert criticism of their activities, many of the non-governmental organizations highlighted in Im Tirtzu’s report – such as B’Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel – are promoting the canard that if only Israel had cooperated with Richard Goldstone and his UN fact-finding mission on the Gaza war, his report would not have been as outrageously one-sided as it turned out to be.

In truth, there is no evidence that Israeli participation in the Goldstone mission would have changed the outcome of the widely panned report.

Goldstone’s mission was the product of a political war conducted against Israel in the UN Human Rights Council. Led by some of the world’s most abusive regimes – including China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia – this corrupt body has ignored mass atrocities such as the genocide in Darfur, the slaughter of more than 25,000 Sri Lankans and the forced starvation and enslavement of North Koreans. Indeed, the Goldstone mission was created by the Organization of the Islamic Conference to deflect attention from the horrific abuses of its member states and their supporters. In fact, according to the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Goldstone’s mission was financed by the Arab League.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Hey, NIF! Criticism is a democratic right

Love of the Land: New Israel Fund Appearance Cancelled - Consequences

New Israel Fund Appearance Cancelled - Consequences

Solomon
Solomonia.com
04 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

Whatever the conclusion, at least the NIF is a controversial issue now, and they and their friends are not helping with the tactics they've used in their counterattack: Australian groups cancel Chazan appearances

Former Israeli lawmaker Naomi Chazan's visit to Australia was canceled following allegations that the organization she heads helped provide information for the Goldstone report.

Chazan, president of the New Israel Fund, was invited by the Union for Progressive Judaism -- the Australian equivalent of the Reform movement -- to address fund-raisers next week for the United Israel Appeal in Melbourne and Sydney .

(Continue full post)

More consequences? Today's Haaretz Headline: Amid row over contentious ad, Jerusalem Post fires Naomi Chazan of New Israel Fund

Love of the Land: New Israel Fund Appearance Cancelled - Consequences

Love of the Land: Funds, horns and a thumbs-up from Hell

Funds, horns and a thumbs-up from Hell

Fresnozionism.org
03 February '10

In my last post, I wrote about how a Zionist student group in Israel called Im Tirtzu exposed the way a ‘progressive’ American foundation, the New Israel Fund (NIF), supported the Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provided 92% of the negative citations from Israeli sources in the Goldstone report.

Im Tirtzu held a demonstration in front of the home of the NIF President, former Meretz MK Naomi Chazan, and bought full-page ads in Israeli newspapers showing Chazan wearing a rhinoceros-like horn (the Hebrew word for ‘fund’ and ‘horn’ are the same, keren).

Here is the English version that ran in the Jerusalem Post:



NIF and friends are furious. NIF called it a “particularly despicable attack.” Rabbi Brant Rosen, a proud supporter of the anti-Zionist J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace, calls Im Tirtzu a “right-wing ultra-nationalist group” and describes the ad as having “anti-Semitic overtones”. J Street itself said the ad was “reminiscent of propaganda from the darkest days of recent Jewish experience.” Americans for Peace Now uses almost identical language, saying that the campaign is “reminiscent of dark times in our people’s history.” Even the center-left Ron Kampeas said

Call it keren, call it horn, this is an anti-Semitic ad. No getting around it. This makes Naomi Chazan looks like she eats babies for breakfast. For lunch. And dinner. And snacks.

Sorry, but all of these accusations of antisemitism strike me as remarkably stupid.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Funds, horns and a thumbs-up from Hell

Love of the Land: Exposing the New Israel Fund

Exposing the New Israel Fund

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
03 Februrary '10

The New Israel Fund finds itself embroiled in controversy, and rightfully so. The philanthropic group has given a great deal of moral support to the Goldstone Report, and even more financial support to the many NGO’s whose job is to manufacture the kind of allegations contained in the Report. Recently a Zionist group called Im Tirtzu released a report documenting the extent of NIF’s funding for what can only be called objectively anti-Israel groups.

This is consistent with NGO’s Monitor’s finding that “In 2008, NIF distributed over $20 million to over 300 NGOs in Israel. Approximately 20% goes to NGOs that engage in political activities related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including some that reject the legitimacy of Israel as Jewish democratic state, and are active in boycott and similar campaigns.”

And now the Ma’ariv columnist Ben-Dror Yemini has thrown down the gauntlet. Read his important piece, available here in English, below the jump.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Exposing the New Israel Fund

Love of the Land: Comedy from J Street

Comedy from J Street

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
03 February '10

J Street is “gravely concerned about escalating threats to the character of Israel’s democracy” and is worried about “a perfect storm brewing that threatens the core of Israel’s democratic character.” The e-mail that contains these warnings is titled “Swiftboating Israel’s democracy.” Time to stockpile bottled water everyone, something serious is happening! It is this: an obscure Zionist youth group has criticized the leftist New Israel Fund for giving money to leftist NGOs.

This youth group is, of course, doing something fully consistent with democratic values — participating, albeit harshly, in a political debate.

There is a group, however, that indeed doesn’t have much regard for Israel’s democracy. Leading figures in this organization have frequently expressed their wish that the United States would do more to reverse the democratic choices of the Israeli electorate. It is named J Street. Here is Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director, in an unguarded moment:

(Read full post)

Related: Im Tirzu: NIF NGOs made up bulk of Goldstone testimonies

Love of the Land: Comedy from J Street

Love of the Land: US charity paid for Goldstone spadework

US charity paid for Goldstone spadework

Fresnozionism
01 February '10

Alan Dershowitz begins his massive, detailed rebuttal of the Goldstone Report thus:

The Goldstone Report, when read in full and in context, is much worse than most of its detractors (and supporters) believe. It is far more accusatory of Israel, far less balanced in its criticism of Hamas, far less honest in its evaluation of the evidence, far less responsible in drawing its conclusion, far more biased against Israeli than Palestinian witnesses, and far more willing to draw adverse inferences of intentionality from Israeli conduct and statements than from comparable Palestinian conduct and statements. It is worse than any report previously prepared by any other United Nations agency or human rights group.

As I have mentioned before, the particularly evil aspect of the report is what Dershowitz calls the “inferences of intentionality”, that is, the conclusion drawn that Israel intentionally targeted civilian lives and property in order to inflict collective punishment on the residents of Gaza. Dershowitz writes,

At bottom the report accuses the Jewish state of having implemented a policy in Gaza that borders on genocide. It blames the civilian deaths that occurred during Operation Cast Lead not on the fog of war, not on the use of human shields by Hamas, not on the inevitability of civilian casualties when rockets are fired from densely populated urban areas, not even on the use of “disproportionate force” by Israel. Instead it blames the Palestinian civilian deaths on an explicit policy devised at the highest levels of the Israeli government and military, of killing as many Palestinian civilians as possible. It concludes that Operation Cast Lead was not designed to stop the rocket attacks on Israel’s civilians—more than eight thousand over a nine year period. Instead, the rocket attacks merely served as an excuse for the Israeli military to achieve its real purpose: namely the killing of Palestinian civilians.

What can be called the ‘Goldstone project’ is a contrivance to delegitimize Israel and preempt international support from Israel’s future attempts to defend herself against certain-to-come attacks from the Iranian-supported Hamas and Hizballah. It is part of a strategy whose goal is to eliminate the Jewish state.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: US charity paid for Goldstone spadework

Love of the Land: Im Tirzu: NIF NGOs made up bulk of Goldstone testimonies

Im Tirzu: NIF NGOs made up bulk of Goldstone testimonies

Abe Selig
JPost
01 February '10

A report set to be released in the coming days by the centrist-Zionist student group Im Tirtzu, has accused the New Israel Fund, a group that works toward religious pluralism and democratic change, of direct responsibility for the United Nations’ Goldstone Report on the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip just over a year ago.

According to the report, 92 percent of the negative citations used in the Goldstone Report to criticize the IDF’s conduct in Gaza last year came from 16 Israeli NGOs, which Im Tirtzu has alleged received some $7.8 million in financial support from the NIF in 2008-2009 alone.

Among the NGOs listed in the report are Adalah, Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Center for the Defense of the Individual, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Yesh Din, Doctors for Human Rights, Gisha, Bimkom, Rabbis for Human Rights, Itach, Other Voice, New Profile, Machsom Watch and Who Profits from the Occupation.

The report states that the above NGOs contributed “hundreds” of testimonies and other materials to the Goldstone Report, and that while Palestinian and UN sources inside Gaza were also consulted during Judge Richard Goldstone’s investigation in the Gaza Strip last summer, the bulk of the damage was done using the material provided by the Israeli NGOs.

“The Goldstone Report looks the way it does because of these 16 groups and the quotes they provided,” a spokesman from Im Tirtzu told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. “In that vein, our goal is to remove the NIF’s mask and show the public what they really are – which is a fifth column, plain and simple.”

The report, which was leaked to the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv last week, was featured in a front-page expose in that newspaper’s weekend edition and has already begun to make political waves.

MK Yisrael Hasson (Kadima), a former high-ranking Shin Bet official and member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told the Post on Sunday that the details of Im Tirtzu’s report were set to be discussed during a special Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee hearing next week, in which Hasson said he plans to investigate the claims thoroughly.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Im Tirzu: NIF NGOs made up bulk of Goldstone testimonies