B'tselem | First One Through

The antisemitic and anti-Israel dynamics have become so intolerable over the past months, that many people are rethinking their voting priorities to put Jewish issues before every other matter. Alan Dershowitz speaks for many when he says that he is forgoing every non-Jewish charity now and only giving to Jewish causes.

But there is a need to rethink the Jewish charities also. Some have become toxic to Israel and the Jewish people.

Let’s start with B’Tselem, the organization that claims to work on behalf of human rights.

On September 4, 2024, B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak’s addressed the United Nations Security Council, the most senior committee in the global body that has the power to pass international laws. In her prepared remarks, she lambasted Israel repeatedly calling it a vicious state of racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and violence.

Some select comments include:

“Since Israel was founded, the guiding logic of its regime has been to promote Jewish supremacy“
“the Israeli government does not want to return the hostages in a deal, but to continue the war indefinitely.”
“The current government’s guidelines state that: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all parts of the Land of Israel.””
“it [the Israeli government] is waging war on the entire Palestinian people – committing war crimes almost daily.”
“Settlers are attacking Palestinians and carrying out pogroms in broad daylight, with support from the government.”
“Palestinian citizens of Israel [aka Israeli Arabs] are suffering an almost total suppression for their freedom of expression and freedom of protest”
“[Israeli] violence is possible because Israel has enjoyed impunity for decades”
“It is time for the Council to address the opinion of the International Court of Justice on the illegality of Israel’s entire occupation and settlement project.”
“Every day the Council does not act on the court’s call to end the occupation and apartheid, is another day you are abandoning us – the people suffering and dying needlessly under this cruel and unjust regime.”

*B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak’s addressed the United Nations Security Council*

This was not a protest speech on an Israeli street corner but a damning indictment of Israel by an Israeli directed to the center of power which can impose tremendous damage on the Jewish State with a specific request to harm Israel. The smears of “Jewish Supremacy,” “apartheid,” “pogroms” and “war crimes” will be echoed on college campuses with a finger pointed to this very speech as defense.

B’Tselem is backed by a number of charities, some of which are nominally Jewish. They include the Moriah Fund, The New Israel Fund (NIF) and George Soros’s Open Society.

The Moriah Fund helps fund the anti-Israel Ford Foundation and antisemitic Tides Foundation. According to Influence Watch, “between 1999 and 2018, Moriah Fund has granted $45,718,829 to New Israel Fund,” and supports the BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) campaigns against Israel.

According to Influence Watch, NIF gives money to several anti-Israel groups including Adalah and Human Rights Defenders Fund, whose leaders have called Israel “racist,” “murderous,” and an “apartheid state.”

NGO Monitor lists various charities funded by Open Society which include IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, rabidly anti-Israel organizations whose members are harassing college students everywhere, as well as other rabidly anti-Zionist groups.

It is not enough to prioritize Jewish and Israeli causes right now: it is important to stop the funding of Jewish groups which are doing their utmost to vilify and destroy the Jewish State and Jewish communities everywhere.

ACTION ITEM

Contact Jewish foundations like UJA and donor advised funds to block donations to B’Tselem, New Israel Fund, IfNotNow and JVP, as well as other toxic antisemitic and anti-Zionist charities.

The Anti-Israel And Anti-American Woke Grows (July 2024)

“I Think We Need To Have A Real Conversation About Woke Antisemitism” (July 2024)

IfNotNow Is Racist, Blind And Lost (July 2024)

J Street Pushes US To Stop Protecting Israel At The United Nations (December 2023)

J Street Signals “Open Warfare” On Jewish And Pro-Israel Communities, Urging The United States To Take Action AGAINST Israel (December 2022)

J Street’s Ben Ami Smears Moderate Jews As Racists (July 2022)

Students For Justice in Palestine Says J Street Is The Gateway For Jewish Anti-Zionists (March 2022)

Jewish Voice for Peace Ignores Dead Jews (December 2020)

JVP and J Street Attack Foreign Affairs Committee (November 2020)

Iran’s New Favorite Jewish Scholars (December 2017)

Unity – not Unanimity – in the Pro-Israel Tent (November 2017)

Students for Justice in Palestine’s Dick Pics (May 2017)

The Evil Architects at J Street Take a Bow (January 2017)

Anti-Semitism wears many masks, the most prominent these days is anti-Zionism. The malicious malady has related hats, including denying Jewish history, distorting Judaism and opposing the rights of Jews to live in certain places.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, has locked arms with alt-left Jews in some of these sinister proclamations, especially concerning Jews living over the 1949 Armistice Lines struck between Jordan and Israel. That “Green Line” was specifically defined as never to be regarded as a border, and the 1950 Jordanian annexation of the “West Bank” was deemed illegal by the international community, marking that invisible line as a footnote in history penned in disappearing ink. No matter, anti-Semites have a long history of dictating where Jews can and cannot live, whether the Pale of Settlement in Russia or ghettoes throughout Europe.

Consider the recent BBC coverage of the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem.

*The BBC using a map produced by B’Tselem, a group which markets itself as an “information center for human rights in the occupied territories.”*

The dotted lines (at least they are dotted!) represent the 1949 Armistice Lines between Israel and Jordan, which disappeared in 1967 when Jordan attacked Israel again and lost the entirety of eastern Jerusalem and the “West Bank.” Note that the map’s legend refers to the dotted line as “pre-1967 ceasefire line,” which implies that there was a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, as Jordan is not mentioned (this is deliberately misleading). The map’s purple areas are marked as “Israeli settlements.” Are they?

In the lower portion of the map is the Old City of Jerusalem. Marked in purple is the Jewish Quarter, a place with over 750 years of continuous Jewish presence except for the window of Arab rule when the Jordanians ethnically-cleansed all of the Jews from 1949 to 1967. According to this map, any JEW – not Israeli – living east of the Green Line (EGL) is a “settler.”

There are thousands of Israeli Arabs living in EGL including the eastern part of Jerusalem. Israel gave all the Arabs in the city permanent resident status in 1967 and has afforded them the right to apply for Israeli citizenship. Thousands have already taken such citizenship and thousands more have applied. Yet the B’Tselem/ BBC map doesn’t mark the homes of Israeli Arabs in purple but only the locations where Israeli Jews live.

*Jewish men, women and children living in the Jewish Quarter of their holiest city*
*are marked with the term “settler”*

Adolf Hitler accused the Jews of being sly manipulators who steal, as he roused Germany to rout the Jews. He painted their stores with the word “Jude” and made them wear yellow Jewish stars with the word in the center, so they could be easily identifiable for insult and attack by passers-by, and interrogated and ultimately expelled for annihilation by government officials.

So it is today with the term “settler,” even in the Jewish people’s holiest city.