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Friday December 7, 2007

New fund to combat ‘left-wing assault’

by jacob berkman
jta

new york | A Nobel laureate and the sister-in-law of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are heading a group of intellectuals starting a philanthropic fund to combat what they describe as a “left-wing assault” on Israeli public opinion.

Robert Aumann, a Hebrew University mathematician who won the 2005 Nobel Prize in economics, and Daphne Netanyahu, an Israeli law professor, trotted out the plans for the Israel Independence Fund last week in New York at a board meeting of the Zionist Organization of America.

According to Aumann and Netanyahu, the fund would dole out grants to nongovernmental organizations in Israel with right-wing bents in an effort to offset the plethora of left-wing groups that have cropped up in the Jewish state during the past several decades.

These left-wing groups have worked with Israeli Arabs and other communities to help turn Israeli public opinion away from Zionism, Aumann and Netanyahu said.

“Gradually the radical leftists, their views, became more extreme and their views became more mainstream,” Netanyahu said. “They have views that Golda Meir, who was considered a dove, wouldn’t even hear, like giving a state to the Palestinians inside of the State of Israel. She would have turned red. And suddenly it is mainstream.

“What actually is happening in Israel is a slow but not so slow, very planned attack on Israeli public mind, and the attack is coming from the left, and they are controlling all of the important posts that create public opinion and discourse.”

Organizers of the Israel Independence Fund are seeking $500,000 in startup money, then hope to raise $5 million in its first year of operation. They are awaiting nonprofit status in the United States, for which they applied seven months ago.

The fund, which already is incorporated as a nonprofit in Israel, is accepting donations through American nonprofits. Though the fund is not yet giving out money, the organizers presented a list of possible groups they might want to support.

Aumann, who won the Nobel for his work in game theory, told ZOA leaders that the rise of the left has put Israel on the brink of destruction as it was just before the Six-Day War in 1967 — especially if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert goes through with his current peace plan.

“If we follow the path of Olmert, we will return to those days,” Aumann said. “We will be faced with physical annihilation.”

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