I am under attack. I and all the things I stand for are under attack. Im Tirtzu has launched a campaign against the New Israel Fund, blaming it for the Goldstone report. “Without NIF, there would be no Goldstone report” they are claiming. Which is to say, without the Jews who support the New Israel Fund, there would be no Goldstone. Without Jews who believe in inalienable rights to safety and security, there would be no Goldstone. Without it’s staff and volunteers, there would be no Goldstone. Without you, KFJ, there would be no Goldstone. Without human rights values, there would be no Goldstone. Without the values you believe are most important in the world, KFJ, there wouldn’t be a Goldstone report.
Organizations in Israel rightly see this attack as against not just NIF, but all human rights orgs. And we progressives (rightly so!) see it as an attack on us, on human rights as a value to even begin with. The New Israel Fund is a pride and joy of my involvement with the organized Jewish community. There is no other place in Jewry where my peoplehood, my values, and my talents overlap as they do here.
Truth is, I came to Israel advocacy by accident! I went to Israel as a naive 21-year-old because I felt obligated to my people. After I saw the occupation, I got involved not because the country did anything but horrify me, but because my God told me to fix a problem. Even if there weren’t an ethnic conflict between two peoples, there would still be enough economic injustice there to last a lifetime of fixing. And at my resistance, but God’s insistence, I pledged my every talent to fix it. For as long as it takes.
The State of Israel defied everything I expected it to be. Righteous indignation fueled my work. Until I met Israeli human rights activists, under the auspices of the New Israel Fund. Mizrachim, Ethiopians and Bedouin, and plenty Ashkenazim who leave their privilege behind to take up their neighbors’ fights. Soldiers who weather taunts of “traitor.” Lawyers who forsake the good life for the good fight. Again reluctantly, I fell in love with a quality of their spirit that I can only label as “Israeli.” There is an innocent chutzpah in their own righteous indignation that I find aggravatingly charming. I’m in awe of all of them for bold-headedly creating what we take for granted in America: civil rights legislation, public interest law, grassroots advocacy in myraid sub-fields of social justice.
By day I work in Israel education. By night I lead in progressive Israel advocacy. By the midnight lamp, I blog the excess energies about (yes) saving Israel. Some nights I am not sure what I’m saving — a state? A people? A nationality? Principles? Jewish values? My own conscience? But I never forget who I’m doing it for: not myself, and not even Israelis at large. I’m working myself day and night to preserve something I’m not totally convinced is worthy. I work to save not Israel abstractly, but the incredible souls who are her human, civil and social rights activists that I have met through the New Israel Fund.
And now — with the blessing of the government, the military brass, and Christian Zionists — Israel will say to me that Israeli society doesn’t believe in human rights? That human rights are a threat to Israel? That I and everything I stand for are traitors?


