Among the beneficiaries of NIF largess have been radical homosexual militant organizations in Israel, radical feminist groups, including the Israel Women's Network of far-Leftist feminist Prof. Alice Shalvi, and even the viciously anti-Zionist "Women in Black", who have never met a terrorist of whom they do not approve. NIF has been the main, and probably only, funder of "The East for Peace", a Communist Party front group of pro-PLO Sephardic Jewish intellectuals (you can guess what sort of constituency THEY have). Oh and of course the Leftist anti-Zionist Israel-bashing partisan group Betselem, which pretends to be a human rights watchdog and also rationalizes Arab terror and demands Israel return to its 1949 borders, is almost entirely a financial creation of NIF.

The latest scandal involving NIF was of course its attempt to push the Smithsonian Institute into running an Israel-50 event that would have consisted of a one-sided panel of anti-Zionists screaming about the evils of Zionism and Israel and justifying Arab terror. The proposed panel would have been "balanced" only in the sense that it would include both Arabs and Leftist Jews who want Israel destroyed. No one representing anything anywhere near the Israeli electorate's center would have been present.

The main proposed Smithsonian Court Jew present would have been Prof. Ehud Sprinzak, a Tel Aviv University far-Leftist who has devoted his last few years of academic inquiry to proving that the Israeli Anti-Oslo Right is fascist, that the Likud and especially Netanyahu murdered Rabin, and that settlers in the "occupied territories" are worse than Nazis. The main Arab to represent Israel at the proposed panel would have been Knesset Member Bashara, a member of the Stalinist Communist Party Hadash before he broke with it due to the excessive moderation of Hadash. Bashara has long supported Saddam Hussein, including Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, has often demanded Palestinians escalate violence against the Jews, and was famous last year for calling on people to boycott Rabin's memorial ceremonies because (he said) Rabin was a mass murderer of Arabs. Somehow this did not disqualify him in the Washington of the Shalom-Chaver Clintons.

Yes, that is the balanced non-political panel the NIF wanted the Smithsonian to run, to mark Israel's 50th birthday. The Smithsonian Leftists, who gave us such museum atrocities as Columbus-as-Western-racist-and-murderer, and the Smithsonian's promotion of the Communist Party's theory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (all a matter of American racism and cussedness), were later forced to back down and cancelled the planned anti-Israel assault.

SO that just gave the NIF a new "cause". In recent days, Norman S. Rosenberg, the Executive Director of NIF, has been spamming the Jewish press and the e-ways with a letter charging NIF's critics as being "Jewish McCarthyists". You see, to criticize leftists is McCarthyism. (This was also long the refrain of the ilk of Michael Moonbeam Lerner and the Breira crowd, for whom a cry of "witch hunt" has long displaced the need for thinking.) To express disapproval of a one-sided vicious celebration of Arab terror and an assault on Israel's legitimacy at the Smithsonian, THAT is McCarthyism.

And what is NOT McCarthyism? Why, the prosecution of anti-Oslo dissidents by the Labor and Meretz allies of the New Israel Fund, the jailing of non-Leftist people for expressing their opinions, the interrogation of people -- including Rabbis -- who oppose Oslo, the labelling of all non-Leftists as murderers of Rabin, the labelling of all anti-Oslo dissidence as "criminal incitement and sedition", the staging of show trials for leaders of anti-Oslo demonstrations. That is just defending progress and democracy, you see.

The NIF has NEVER spoken up about any of THAT McCarthyism by its ideological allies, some of which are funded by NIF. And of course denying the right to representation to representatives of the bulk of the Israeli electorate, denying representation to speakers for the bulk of Jewish opinion, the restricting expression to anti-Zionist extremists, all this at a national event at the Smithsonian Institute (an institution paid for by American taxpayers), that -- the NIF whines -- is simply free expression and SURELY not McCarthyism.
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