New Israel Fund Australia celebrated ten years since its establishment last week with hundreds of supporters and donors coming together to hear from leading figures in Australia and Israel, including Labor shadow foreign affairs minister Senator Penny Wong.
Bill Rubinstein: The New Israel Fund (NIF) has been much in the news lately, with its supporters here holding high profile meetings in Sydney and Melbourne.
Both Israel and Australia face challenges regarding asylum seekers and refugees and, in both countries, there have been attempts by some to dehumanise asylum seekers.
Some time ago on J-Wire I suggested that the controversy about the appearance of the New Israel Fund in Australia might be simply resolved by publishing a list of current recipients of funding with their website addresses. It now seems that this may not be enough.
In the May issue of Commentary there appears a 15 page article by Noah Pollack detailing the harm done by B'tselem, the self-proclaimed "Information Centre for Human Rights". As one of a number of examples, Pollack notes that the infamous Goldstone Report includes no less than 56 footnotes giving credit to B'tselem for information, much of which has subsequently been found to be false or distorted.
