For more than three years Ronen Shoval and Erez Tadmor, classmates at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, have been building Im Tirtzu into a nationwide student network with chapters at nine Israeli universities.

But it wasn’t until last week, when the group ran an advertisement in several Israeli papers claiming that the much-maligned Goldstone report on Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war last winter would have been impossible without the contributions of Israeli NGOs supported by the New Israel Fund, that the pair found themselves in the international spotlight.

Tadmor and Shoval describe themselves as bookish, entrepreneurial types who have identified a gap in the Israeli psyche.

“All my life, when my friends went to parties, I read Jabotinsky and Herzl,” Tadmor said. “This is my character, my nature.”

The controversy over the attacks against NIF has thrust Im Tirtzu into a long-simmering dispute over where criticism of the Jewish state crosses the line into treason and anti-Zionism, while making the organization vulnerable to charges it is merely part of a wider effort to intimidate and silence the Israeli left and its American Jewish backers.

On the latter point, Shoval and Tadmor, both 29, make no apologies. They say that some on the left end of the political spectrum have lost their commitment to the idea of a Jewish state.

NIF’s defenders have sought to portray the duo as ideologues advancing a right-wing political agenda, but both say that Im Tirtzu is a centrist organization aimed at boosting Zionist ideals across the political spectrum.

Tadmor volunteers for the Likud Party and once worked as a reporter for a nationalist newspaper. Im Tirtzu has previously received funding from John Hagee Ministries and supporters of the settlement movement. And both founders profess admiration for Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideological father of the movement that espoused the concept of Greater Israel extending into what is now Jordan and eventually produced the Likud Party.

Shoval insists that Im Tirtzu has nothing to do with the tug of war between left and right nor the fight over land captured by Israel in 1967.

“We are fighting about the identity of the state,” he said, adding, “You can be a very good Zionist and say we must leave almost all the territories. And you can be a good Zionist and say we must stay in all the territories.”

In their bid to spark what they describe as a second Zionist revolution, the pair has demonstrated a willingness to play rough (see opposite page), but also to play for laughs (in a satirical YouTube video) and merchandising revenue (want a Herzl, Ben-Gurion, or Begin T-shirt?).

Shoval, a high-tech executive, is cagey about his future plans, a subject of speculation in the wake of the NIF incident. While he won’t rule out a future in politics, he maintains the moment is not yet ripe.

JTA

Jewish right-wing activists dressed as Arabs demonstrate in Jerusalem against the New Israel Fund on Jan. 30. Yossi Zamir/Flash 90)/JTA

JERUSALEM – A campaign against the New Israel Fund — a U.S.-based organization that funds civil society activists in Israel — has sparked a fierce debate over the limits of free speech, the financing of NGOs, the dictates of loyalty to the state, and, ultimately, over the fundamental values of Israel’s Zionist democracy.

The questions cut close to the bone on both sides of the ideological divide. For example: Are left-wingers using Zionist money to undermine the foundations of the state? Or are right-wingers trying to gag nongovernmental organizations critical of Israeli policies and actions? And to what extent are the government and its agencies involved in trying to silence their critics?

At the center of the storm is the Goldstone report on alleged Israeli war crimes during the fighting in Gaza last winter. (See related story, Will Israel's response to Goldstone be enough?.)

Most Israelis see the report as biased, based on flimsy evidence and false assumptions, and part of a concerted international campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. The attack on the New Israel Fund was part of an angry Israeli backlash against Goldstone. But was it a bona fide attack on an organization accused of undermining Israel’s international standing or a premeditated onslaught against civil society?

The campaign against the NIF was conducted by an organization called Im Tirtzu, which describes itself as “an extra-parliamentary movement to strengthen Zionist values” and boasts a video endorsement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It claimed that 16 NIF grantees — among them Physicians for Human Rights and B’Tselem, human rights organizations active in the Palestinian territories; Breaking the Silence, a group of soldiers reporting on Israeli army violations of moral norms; and ACRI, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel — had provided Goldstone with material contributing to false charges against the Israel Defense Forces in informer-like actions that were tantamount to betrayal in a wartime situation.

“The results of these groups’ activities caused significant diplomatic damage to Israel and harmed the country’s capacity to defend itself militarily,” Im Tirtzu said, adding that NIF was largely to blame because it had funded these “anti-Zionist” organizations.

In late January, young Im Tirtzu members dressed as Hamas fighters demonstrated outside the Jerusalem home of NIF President Naomi Chazan waving placards depicting Chazan with a horn emerging from her forehead. The text on the placard read: “Fact! Without the New Israel Fund there could be no Goldstone Report and Israel would not be facing international accusations of war crimes.”

The horn was a play on words, the Hebrew “keren” meaning both fund and horn, but critics say it also had obvious anti-Semitic connotations that many found offensive.

Im Tirtzu used the image as well in advertisements placed in several Israeli newspapers. The Zionist Organization of America has seconded the criticisms of the NIF.

The New Israel Fund says it knows that many of the minority rights groups it backs in the name of empowering the disenfranchised and fighting discrimination in Israel also take positions that the NIF does not endorse, such as calling for an end to Israel’s Jewish character. NIF officials say that while they do not agree with everything their grantees do or say, revoking their funding would be inimical to NIF’s goal of promoting free speech and strengthening Israel’s minorities.

“They’re using me to attack in the most blatant way the basic principles of democracy and the values of Israel’s declaration of independence; values of equality, tolerance, social justice, and freedom of speech,” Chazan declared.

In dismissing the Im Tirtzu case against the NIF as baseless, Chazan said that the materials the groups allegedly transferred to Goldstone are mostly in the public domain. And even if they were not, it would be the duty of the groups to pass on what they know — that is their raison d’être as human rights groups.

Far from giving succor to Israel’s enemies, the grantees were trying to create a better Israel, Chazan said.

The NIF and its defenders note that its work goes well beyond organizations focusing specifically on Palestinian rights. It also funds civil society groups dealing with a host of domestic Israeli issues, such as providing women’s shelters, supporting Ethiopian immigrants, and challenging the Orthodox monopoly on Jewish religious practice.

Earlier this month, a group of leading Israeli academics, writers, actors, directors, and political activists, including novelists Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, placed a full-page ad in Haaretz expressing “disgust at the campaign of incitement and hatred” being waged against Chazan, the NIF, and the organizations it supports.

Several U.S. Jewish groups on the left side of the political spectrum issued their own statements slamming the anti-NIF campaign on similar grounds. The tenor of the anti-NIF campaign was criticized as well by Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.

In late January, 13 of the 16 NIF grantees slammed by Im Tirtzu fired off a letter to President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin complaining that the Im Tirtzu attack on the NIF was part of a larger pattern encouraged by “senior government officials.” In other words, it was more than a one-off campaign by a young, marginal group but part of an anti-democratic trend for which the government was setting the tone.

They gave some examples: Interior Minister Eli Yishai backing claims that organizations that help refugees and asylum-seekers “aim to destroy Israel”; Netanyahu denying the legitimacy of Breaking the Silence testimonies on the Gaza war; Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon referring to Israeli human rights organizations as “enemies from within.”

Others see the specter of an impending clampdown against civil society.

Anat Hoffman, chair of Women of the Wall and director of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center, an NIF grantee, was questioned and fingerprinted by police in early January after taking part in an all-female prayer session at the Western Wall that involved the use of a Torah. A week later, ACRI director Hagai El-Ad was arrested while monitoring a protest against Jewish settlement in the Arab neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah in eastern Jerusalem and released as soon as the case went to court.

Were these isolated cases of police folly or part of a pattern dictated from above?

There is no hard evidence to suggest that the Netanyahu government is planning to curb civil society or that the police action had the prime minister’s blessing. What is clear is that Netanyahu is deeply concerned by what he calls “Goldstonism” — moves in the international community aimed at delegitimizing Israel.

The prime minister says he sees three existential threats: Iran; a Palestinian state without adequate security arrangements; and rampant Goldstonism. That means that Israeli organizations the government feels contribute to delegitimization of the state could be seen as serious threats to national security. But the government does not seem to be considering operative moves against them.

Moves, however, are afoot in the Knesset. The Law Committee, headed by Yisrael Beiteinu’s David Rotem, whose party has proposed that Israeli citizens take loyalty oaths, has set up a subcommittee to examine the sources of funding of NGOs active in Israel. Some of the committee members aim to ban funding by foreign countries, which is seen as interfering in Israel’s internal affairs. Most of that funding is from European countries for left-wing NGOs.

Otniel Schneller of the Kadima Party wants to go a step further, proposing the establishment of a full-fledged parliamentary commission of inquiry to probe the conduct of the NIF and its grantees. Schneller says he is against the absurdity of Israeli civil society “paying organizations like Physicians for Human Rights to slander us,” and wants to stop the NIF from supporting anti-Zionist groups.

Schneller’s proposal, which he plans to submit next week, has run into stiff opposition from the left and right.

Left-wing Meretz leader Haim Oron asked who would decide who is a Zionist or what are Israel’s best interests. Schneller, he suggested, should fight the left-wing organizations with counter arguments rather than trying to cut off their funding.

On the right, the Likud’s Michael Eitan argued that parliamentary commissions of inquiry are established on non-political issues, such as corruption in soccer or water prices.

“It is unheard of for the majority in the Knesset to investigate the minority,” he fumed.

Eitan’s stand has the support of others in the Likud, like Rivlin and Minister without Portfolio Benny Begin, and it is not clear whether Schneller can muster a majority for his proposal.

Meanwhile, Im Tirtzu’s funding also has attracted scrutiny in recent days.

Liberal organizations and bloggers have been reporting that Im Tirtzu has received money from the Central Fund of Israel, a U.S.-based nonprofit that has also supported pro-settler organizations and a group that aids militant Israeli Jews accused of carrying out violence. They also note that Im Tirtzu reportedly has received $200,000 over the past two years from John Hagee, an evangelical pastor in San Antonio, Texas, who is staunchly pro-Israel but came under fire for having declared in a sermon that God allowed the Holocaust to happen as part of a plan to bring Jews to Israel.

Hagee has expressed regret for the upset caused by his remarks and promised to be more sensitive in the future. A spokesman for the pastor criticized the tenor of Im Tirtzu’s campaign against NIF.

Meanwhile the debate goes on, with each side seeking to claim the mantle of preserving Israel’s fundamental nature.

“Today the question is not whether Israel survives, but what kind of Israel survives,” said Daniel Sokatch, the NIF’s chief executive officer.

Im Tirtzu leader Ronen Shova countered that “The debate is not about left or right. The new debate is between Zionists and non-Zionists.”

JTA

The new cultural center in the west bank city of Ariel, where some Israeli actors have refused to perform, is scheduled to open in November. Yossi Zeliger/Flash 90/JTA

JERUSALEM – By now it would seem that Israelis are accustomed to calls for boycotts of Israeli products and institutions.

Many, however, may have been caught off guard this summer when those calls came from inside Israel.

In two separate incidents over the past few weeks, Israelis issued a call for boycott or announced a boycott of an Israeli institution for political reasons. One protest came from the right, directed at an Israeli university with allegedly “anti-Zionist” professors on staff; one came from the left, directed at an Israeli theater in the west bank.

The boycotts from within may mark a new front in Israel’s political battles.

For the time being, mainstream Israeli figures are condemning both boycotts.

“Culture is a bridge in society, and political disputes should be left outside cultural life and art,” Israel’s minister of culture and sport, Limor Livnat, said in response to the theater boycott.

The latest boycott call came after several Israeli theater companies announced plans to stage productions at a new theater in Ariel, a Jewish city of 20,000 in the west bank. The $10 million cultural center in Ariel, which was built partly with government funding, is scheduled to open Nov. 8. It will be the first major theater in a Jewish settlement, most of which are smaller bedroom communities.

As the theater schedule came to light, nearly 60 Israeli theater professionals signed a petition last weekend saying they would refuse to perform at the new venue or in any west bank settlement. On Tuesday, about 150 academics and authors signed a letter supporting the petition.

“We will not take part in any kind of cultural activity beyond the Green Line, take part in discussions and seminars, or lecture in any kind of academic setting in these settlements,” the letter said.

“My contract with the theater says explicitly that I am obligated to perform within the State of Israel — and Ariel is not part of the state,” director and actor Oded Kotler, a boycott petition signer, told Army Radio.

The Ariel boycott call follows on the heels of a call to boycott Ben-Gurion University issued by the campus group Im Tirtzu, which says that professors in the university’s department of politics and government harbor anti-Zionist biases and are silencing students’ Zionist viewpoints.

Neve Gordon, the head of the university’s department of politics and government, has called for a “social, economic, and political boycott of Israel.”

University President Rivka Carmi condemned Gordon’s call but has not dismissed the department chief.

“The fact that I condemn his statements doesn’t mean I can fire him,” she told the Jerusalem Post. “You cannot fire someone for their political opinions.”

University spokesman Amir Rozenblit said that the university complies with the quality and content requirements of the Israeli Council for Higher Education, and that it hires faculty members based solely on their professional and academic qualifications, not political opinions.

Im Tirtzu’s threat to approach Ben-Gurion University donors for failing to dismiss its “anti-Zionist” staff prompted some Im Tirtzu supporters in the United States to rethink their support for the organization.

Meanwhile, Ben-Gurion University condemned the boycott call by Im Tirtzu.

“Just as university president Prof. Rivka Carmi harshly condemned those who called for an international boycott of Israel, so too the university denounces any group that calls for a boycott of any Israeli university based on the opinions of its academic faculty members,” Rozenblit said.

This week, the Israeli media were buzzing with opinion-makers debating the Ariel affair.

In Haaretz, columnist Akiva Eldar suggested that artists who oppose Israel’s presence in the west bank use the opportunity to stage performances for settlers that would prompt them to think twice about the occupation. Another of the daily’s columnists, Gideon Levy, countered that Israeli theaters would be boycotted internationally if they forced actors to perform in the west bank.

Many voiced outrage that government funding goes to the theaters whose members are now calling for the boycott.

“The theaters that suck up the state’s money owe their dose of culture to the taxpayers,” Eitan Haber wrote in Ynet. “So, first get on stage and perform, and only later you can head to anti-settlement protests if you wish, even in Ariel.”

On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister weighed in.

“The last thing we need at this time is to be under such an attack — I mean this attempt at a boycott from within,” Benjamin Netanyahu said. “I do not want to deny the right of any person, of any artist, to hold to a political opinion. He or she can express this opinion. But we, as a government, do not need to fund boycotts. We do not have to support boycotts directed at Israeli citizens in any manner whatsoever.”

Netanyahu, Livnat, and other government ministers have threatened to sanction theaters that refuse to perform in west bank venues.

The Habima, Khan, Beersheba, and Cameri theaters are all scheduled to stage productions in Ariel. The theaters each received about $2.5 million to $3 million from the ministry of culture and sport, according to an official in Livnat’s office. The ministry was not involved in funding the theater in Ariel, which is located about 10 miles inside the west bank and is the fifth-largest Jewish settlement in the territory.

The theaters issued a collective statement saying that the scheduled Ariel productions will go on, but that they would “respect the political opinions of their actors.” The theaters are consulting with their legal advisers on how to proceed with artists who refuse to perform in the west bank, a culture ministry official told JTA.

JTA