U.S. Non-Profit Targeted Rights Group over Goldstone

U.S. Non-Profit Targeted Rights Group over Goldstone

By Eli Clifton

WASHINGTON, Feb 9, 2010 (IPS) - A campaign of attacks against the New Israel Fund (NIF), a U.S.-based progressive organisation that supports human rights groups in Israel, has gained attention in both the Israeli and U.S. media, raising questions about the role played by foreign non-profits and non-governmental organisations in influencing Israeli government policy.

But an IPS investigation into publicly available tax records has shed light on where funding for the attacks may have originated......

"It's baseless. It's vicious. It's ideologically motivated and it capitalises on the Israeli public's anger over the Goldstone report. We see it as part of a larger pattern to shut down Israel's human rights community," Naomi Paiss, director of communications of NIF, told IPS.

Israeli Knesset member Otniel Schneller proposed a parliamentary commission to examine the NIF and its grantees' role in "transferring false, exaggerated, and non-credible information to Justice Goldstone, thus harming the national interest of the State of Israel."......"