A second front has been opened against the New Israel Fund, the progressive philanthropic organisation.
NIF has already been under fire in Israel for funding organisations whose critical comments on the IDF’s conduct in last year’s Gaza operation were included in the controversial Goldstone report.
Now an article in the latest English-language edition of the strictly Orthodox newspaper, Hamodia, lays into the group for fostering pluralism in Israel.
Headlined “CIA Funding the Battle Against Chareidi Jewry”, it says that a main sponsor of NIF is the Ford Foundation and that most of the Ford Foundation’s money comes from the CIA.
NIF’s platform, the author A. Pe’er says, is “to transform Israel into a more pluralistic, left-wing society – regardless of the desire of Israel’s majority”.
The organisation is accused of trying to “poison” the minds of children against “traditional Yiddishkeit” and supporting attempts to recruit them to “alternative secular yeshivot”.
NIF is "spending many of the millions it received from the Ford Foundation and other groups, so that Israel's secular will receive greater funding than the Orthodox..."