Glick: Israel's Holographic Nation State Law, Soros-Financed New Israel Fund Accused Of Stoking Opposition

Israel's holographic Nation State Law

There is no connection between the substance of Israel’s newly passed Nation State of the Jewish People law, and the debate its passage unleashed.

On the one hand, supporters of the law led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insist that the law is a vital step in entrenching and protecting Israel’s Jewish identity. After the law passed last Thursday night, Netanyahu declared, “This is a pivotal moment in the annals of Zionism and the annals of the State of Israel. 122 years after [Theodore] Herzl published his vision [of a Jewish state] we affixed in law the founding principle of our existence.”

On the other hand, Arab members of Knesset theatrically condemned the law and claimed that with its passage, Israel had officially embraced “apartheid.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel is the heir of Nazi Germany. PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and his deputies said the UN should reinstitute its definition of defined Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement as a form of racism.

Israeli leftists, including members of Knesset, the supposedly center-left Zionist Union Party, backed by Haaretz, parroted the Arab-Turkish talking points with Hebrew accents. The American-Jewish leadership, like the New York Times, argued that the passage of the law is proof that Israel is on the verge of rejecting democracy.

Given the unreconcilable claims of the Right on the one hand and the Arabs, the Left and American-Jewish leadership on the other, it is imperative to read the text of the law itself. In reading you discover something remarkable.

This a nothingburger without a bun, or a patty, a plate or a pickle.

It does nothing new and it says nothing new.

Israel was the Jewish state for 70 years before the law was passed and it remains the Jewish state a week after it passed.
The clause in the law which is supposed to render Israel an “apartheid” state deals with Jewish settlement of the land of Israel. Its language is weak and declaratory. It refers to Jewish settlement as “a national value.”

In contrast, the League of Nations 1920 Mandate for Palestine explicitly enjoined the British mandatory government to “encourage… close settlement by Jews on the land.”

Because it does nothing, the Nation-State Law is like a hologram. It means whatever you want it to mean. Which means that the maelstrom surrounding it tells us more about the sides to the argument than it tells us about the law.

What does the vacuous law tell us about the nationalist camp that has championed it since its first draft was written 14 years ago?
It’s possible that members of the nationalist camp that promoted the law didn’t understand what they were doing. They thought that by legislating the obvious, they were, in the words of George Orwell, performing “the first duty of intelligent men.” They thought that by legislating that “The land of Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, where the State of Israel was established,” would protect Israel’s status as the Jewish state from those who deny its right to exist.

The problem with the Right’s narrative – that Israel’s Jewish identity is under attack and that steps must be taken to protect it – is not that it is wrong. Israel’s Jewish identity is under assault from post-Zionists and anti-Zionists in Israel and abroad. The problem is that far from protecting Israel’s Jewish character, the Nation-State Law serves as a red flag for Israel’s detractors, inviting them to attack it.

This brings us to the law’s three groups of opponents: the Arabs and their would-be savior Erdogan; the Israeli Left; and the American Jewish leadership.

The Arab members of Knesset, like Abbas and his deputies are using the law as a means to sell their rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Erdogan uses his hostility and rejection of Israel’s right to exist to advance his goal of leading the Sunni Arab world.

While there is nothing new about their positions, the law has given the Arabs an excuse to ratchet up their assaults. The distressing fact that Arab lawmakers have convinced many of Israel’s Druze citizens and its Arab citizens who seek to integrate into Israeli society that the law harms their civil rights redounds directly to the Arab Israeli lawmakers’ cynical, but predictable exploitation of the law to bash the state.

Soros-Financed New Israel Fund Accused of Stoking Opposition to Israel’s Nation-State Law

The George Soros-financed New Israel Fund (NIF), a radical, foreign-funded anti-Israel NGO, is facing scrutiny in Israel over its reported promotion of organized opposition to Israel’s recent passage of the nation-state law.

The law officially calls Israel the “historical homeland of the Jewish people,” but does not change the country’s other Basic Law, which provides equal rights to all citizens.

Elements of Israel’s historically patriotic Druze community have organized opposition to the law, culminating in a protest in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Saturday in which tens of thousands of people, waiving Israeli and Druze flags, expressed opposition to the nation-state law. It was not immediately clear how many of those in attendance were actually Druze, while leaders of the Druze community were among the protest organizers and speakers.

Alleged NIF ties to the mass protest were fueled in part after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared an article on Facebook reporting on NIF’s alleged connections to the Tel Aviv rally.

The report, from Israel’s Mida magazine, documented the Forum Against the Nation-state Law, which organized the Rabin Square protest, is purportedly sponsored by the leftist Anu group, which in turn is listed as a grantee of the NIF.

The Times of Israel reported on the response from Anu and the NIF:

On response Friday, NIF president Mikey Gitzin slammed Mida as a site “that is based on lies and is a tool for Netanyahu.” He said that while the NIF has shared a platform with Anu in the past, and both organizations support the Druze campaign against the law, it did not prove they were financing the campaign.

Anu also issued a statement Friday denying it was funding Saturday’s protest.

The NIF has vocally opposed the nation-state legislation.

Reacting to the passage of the nation-state law, Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund, issued a divisive statement calling the legislation “tribalism at its worst,” a “slap in the face to Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel,” and “danger to Israel’s future.”

Sokatch vowed the NIF and its grantees would fight: “This law is a danger to Israel’s future. And no matter what extremist politicians do, the New Israel Fund and our grantees will stand up for the democratic, equitable, and shared society all Israelis deserve.”

Sokatch, writing on the NIF’s website, used the nation-state law to rally supporters.

In a piece titled, “What’s Next After the Nation-State Law,” Sokatch called for resistance:

To those who are new to this fight, and to all of us, I say: we need you. And it’s not too late. But the time for hand-wringing, frustration, and despair is over. It is not enough. Resisting neo-authoritarianism in Israel, in the US, and around the world is the great task of our time. And make no mistake: nobody is riding to our rescue. We are going to have to do the hard work ourselves.

Hacked emails document Soros’ Open Society Foundations provided the NIF with at least $837,500 from 2002 to 2015. Breitbart News found that NIF’s 2015 annual report lists the Tides Foundation as a donor. Tides is a far-left financing clearinghouse that itself is heavily funded by Soros’ Open Society nonprofit.

The nation-state law, meanwhile, calls Israel “the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.”