Luke Ford

From Israel Hayom:

Between 2012 and 2017, European governments and U.N. agencies gave a total of $13 million in aid to Israeli organizations helping illegal aliens, a new report by the right-wing organization Im Tirtzu revealed Sunday.

As Europe deals with the worst wave of immigration ever known to the continent, EU-affiliated institutes rank first with the most aid given to these organizations, which over the past four years came to $4.7 million, followed by U.N.-affiliated institutions, which donated $2.8 million, the report said.

Germany donated the largest sum for a European country with $1.9 million, followed by Norway ($1.3 million), Sweden ($600,000), Switzerland ($490,000), England ($260,000) and the Netherlands ($120,000).

Foundations whose affiliation is split between Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands donated $580,000, while the U.S. gave $180,000 and Thailand donated $26,000. As such, the report reveals that since 2008, the left-wing New Israel Fund also funded organizations supporting illegal migrants to the tune of $12.5 million.

Im Tirtzu’s reports investigated various petitions filed with the High Court of Justice by the Israeli aid groups, discovering clear efforts to circumvent the various solutions suggested by authorities, thereby hurting both the population of migrants who are in Israel illegally as well as residents of the neighborhoods in south Tel Aviv, who are struggling to deal with the phenomenon.

“It seems that donor countries and organizations have three hidden goals,” the Im Tirtzu report claimed. “First, attempting to obtain citizenship for thousands of infiltrators; second, changing the Jewish-majority demographic, therefore changing the Jewish and democratic character of the country; and third, striving to label Israel as a racist country.”

It sounds bad, but separating groups is sometimes the best way of maintaining peace. By contrasting, living in many types of diversity tends to reduce trust and increase tension.

J.J. Goldberg writes:

A Major Jewish Philanthropist Just Published A Plan To Ethnically Cleanse Palestinians

far-right faction within Israel’s Likud-led governing coalition has endorsed a plan for Israel to annex the entire West Bank and encourage the Palestinian residents to immigrate to neighboring Arab countries. The plan would allow Palestinians who voluntarily gave up all “national aspirations” to remain, granting them limited municipal self-government, but without Israeli citizenship or Knesset voting rights.

Make no mistake about this — this plan amounts to a none-too-subtle form of ethnic cleansing. It presents Palestinians with an untenable choice: Leave your home or be stripped of basic civil rights, perhaps forever.

Despite (or because of) its draconian nature, the plan was adopted unanimously at a September 12 convention of the National Union-Tekuma party, which holds two Knesset seats as the junior partner in the religious-nationalist Jewish Home bloc. National Union leader Uri Ariel serves as minister of agriculture in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet. The party’s other Knesset member, Bezalel Smotrich, is the author of the annexation plan.

It’s a marginal enough party that those concerned with human rights or with Israel’s international standing needn’t fear the plan’s immediate implementation. But we should be troubled by the plan’s institutional backing — not just in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, but also in the heart of American Jewish philanthropy.

Smotrich’s plan was released September 6 in an 8,600-word lead essay, “The Decision Plan” (Tochnit Ha-Hachra’ah), in the fall issue of the Hebrew-language bimonthly Hashiloach, a conservative journal of ideas published by the New York-based Tikvah Fund.

That’s right — this plan’s institutional backing includes one of the most distinguished philanthropies in Diaspora Jewry. Tikvah is one of several conservative foundations endowed by the estate of the late investment fund manager Zalman-Sanford Bernstein. It is largely controlled by his widow, the philanthropist Elaine Mem Bernstein, and Tikvah’s board of directors includes some of the most prominent names in Jewish neoconservatism, among them William Kristol and Elliott Abrams.

In addition to Hashiloach, launched a year ago, Tikvah has a number of other publications, including the English-language journals Mosaic, Jewish Review of Books and the Library of Jewish Ideas, a book series published jointly with Princeton University Press. Another Bernstein foundation, Keren Keshet-The Rainbow Fund, publishes Nextbook and Tablet magazine. A third, the Avi Chai Foundation, is a major force in Jewish education reform.

Hashiloach takes its name from an early Hebrew-language journal founded in 1897 by the Zionist essayist and gadfly Ahad Ha’am and later edited by the revered poet Hayim Nachman Bialik before folding in 1919. Tikvah’s choice of that name for its journal might be deemed ironic, given the contrast between the liberal stance of the original Hashiloach, which championed a spiritual, anti-nationalist brand of Zionism, and the hard-line politics of the current incarnation.

On the other hand, the choice is in character for the Bernstein family of publications, which tend to combine their core political conservatism with a free-wheeling cultural sensibility and an openness to diverse, challenging ideas.

Still, Smotrich’s right-wing theories are a stretch even for the free-wheeling, open-ended conservatism of Bernstein-world. The notion of a mass population transfer to rid Israel of Palestinians, even if imagined as somehow voluntary, has long been consigned to the fetid corners of Israel’s radical right. If it’s now moved into the mainstream to the point where it can be taken seriously in a distinguished journal of ideas, that’s a depressing comment on the current state of Israeli and Jewish political discourse. If, on the other hand, it hasn’t gained that sort of broad respectability, then its appearance in Hashiloach suggests an alarming erosion of moral focus in Jewish neoconservative thought, as represented by the Tikvah Fund and its affiliates.