New Israel Fund Grant Writer Struggling To Make Office Supplies Sound Anti-Zionist

Paying the electric bill isn’t as sexy as underwriting petitions to the High Court against Israel’s security measures.

Jerusalem, March 14 – A member of the Resource Development Department at an influential philanthropic operation in Israel whose mission involves eroding Israel’s status as a Jewish state voiced frustration today as he made repeated unsuccessful attempts to characterize some of the organization’s more mundane activities and needs in terms that would appeal to pro-Palestinian, anti-religious, and left-wing donors.

New Israel Fund grant writer Mark Ketting, 29, admitted this morning he has struggled for two days to frame the organization’s administrative and other expenses in ways that resonate with the anti-Zionist sensibilities of many of the NIF’s major sources of grant money, but without success.

“Paying the electric bill isn’t as sexy as underwriting petitions to the High Court against Israel’s security measures,” he explained. “No one makes a donation with our office staff’s instant coffee supply in mind, or earmarks thousands of dollars for our paper, toner, or communication costs. Normally there would be a line item in every grant proposal to cover such things, but competition for those grant dollars is fierce, and we can’t afford to let those precious Ford or Rockefeller funds go elsewhere. So far I haven’t been able to find the right phraseology. I’ll know it when I think of it.”

Ketting has so far rejected several ideas. “Initially I thought I could just put ‘Palestinian’ in front of random nouns in that item,” he recalled. “But then I realized I could get in trouble for it. It’s simply not true that we use Palestinian coffee – there isn’t really such a thing, since it’s all imported, and our office buys the standard Israeli stuff, and we get our office supplies from the same Israeli companies that supply everyone else. And it seemed a little grandiose and out of place to request funding for ‘secular’ toner or ‘separation of religion and state’ telephony.”

“Then I figured I could take a different tack and tout our ‘non-denominational’ cleaning supplies,” he continued. “That also had the benefit of being able to note that none of the products in that category bear kosher certification from the Chief Rabbinate, which our donors wish to see abolished. But the truth is I’m not sure those are the products the cleaner keeps in stock, and there may very well be some Rabbinate stamp on the materials. You have to be meticulous with these things or donors get pissy.”

At press time, Ketting had typed the words “BDS-compliant electricity?” into his draft document.

Please support our work through Patreon.