(JNi.media) The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Wednesday said it is “deeply disturbed by a video produced by the Israel-based organization Im Tirtzu, which labels leading Israeli human rights activists as ‘foreign moles’ operated by foreign governments.” Not dealing with the right-wing group’s accusation, the ADL condemns its “employing fear tactics to suppress left-leaning Israeli NGOs,” labeling the video “a form of incitement which crosses the line into hate speech.”
The video produced by Im Tirtzu (the name is derived from Herzl’s famous saying, “If you want it, it won’t remain a fable,” which became the unofficial slogan of political Zionism), titled “Foreign Agents revealed,” is about as harsh as an average negative ad in an average American election, and resembles one in its aesthetics. It depicts four members of left-wing Israeli NGOs that rely on foreign countries and organizations—many of which are hostile to Israel—for their funding.
MK Yoav Kish (Likud) is currently sponsoring a bill called the “Plants Law,” based on research showing several left-wing organizations as plants of foreign countries, promoting an anti-Israel agenda. The bill requires these NGOs to report on their activities, and prohibits any unauthorized collaboration with them on the part of the government and the army. Each request for such collaboration must receive a one-time special permission from the Justice Minister. The bill recommends a fine of $25,000 on foreign agent NGOs that fail to comply.
The video argues, in extremely dramatic fashion, that the recent Arab campaign of stabbing, rock and Molotov cocktail throwing and ramming by car of innocent Israeli civilians, is receiving aid and comfort from these NGOs, who defend passionately the civil rights of the attackers. (Only yesterday, one such NGO, Physicians for Human Rights, was successful in getting the Israeli Medical Association to change its rules on terrorist scene triage, commanding doctors to treat Arab murderers and their Jewish victims as equals—and PHR receives upwards of $2 million annually from foreign sources, according to NGO Monitor.)
Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, and Carole Nuriel, acting Director of ADL’s Israel Office, insisted that “Im Tirzu’s highly disturbing video employs fear tactics to accuse Israeli human rights activists and organizations of being culpable in the ongoing wave of Palestinian terrorism. This is a form of incitement which clearly crosses over into hate speech.” They argued that “Whether one agrees or disagrees with the mission and work of the nongovernmental organizations singled out in the video, accusing them of supporting Palestinian terror in order to delegitimize their activities is outrageous and potentially libelous.”
The problem is that these organizations mentioned in the video do support and legitimize Palestinian terrorism. And they’re doing it with funding from anti-Israeli foreign sources.
The Public Committee Against Torture is responsible for a libelous anti-Israel campaign alleging that Israeli authorities place Palestinian “prisoners in iron cages (including children),” and maintain ongoing “torture-related policies and practices against Palestinian prisoners and detainees.” PCAT co-authored a 2011 report, “Doctoring the Evidence, Abandoning the Victim,” together with Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, claiming to “reveal… significant evidence arousing the suspicion that many doctors ignore the complaints of their patients; that they allow Israel Security Agency interrogators to use torture; approve the use of forbidden interrogation methods and the ill-treatment of helpless detainees; and conceal information, thereby allowing total impunity for the tortures.” The report utilizes unreliable sources, including “testimonies” from individuals convicted or suspected of security offenses and terrorism; presents inconsistent recommendations; erases the context of terrorism in the actions of security forces; and does not provide a lexical, legal, or consistent definition for the key terms “torture” and “ill-treatment.”
PCAT donors include: EU, Human Rights and International Law Secretariat (joint funding from Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands), Dignity (Denmark), Germany, Cordaid (Netherlands), ICCO (Netherlands), Kvinna till Kvina (Sweden), UNDP and others. They net about half a million dollar annually from foreign sources.
