New Israel Fund Grantees Pool Money For Defense Of Paris Suspects

“Right now there are a bunch of young Muslims in Europe whom we expect to use their ethnic origins in court to justify their violence, and we need to support that because it hits home for us.”

Jerusalem, November 16 – Civil society organizations receiving funding from the New Israel Fund will contribute to a central kitty to be used to help pay for the legal defense of those accused in this past weekend’s massacres in Paris, which left 132 dead.

The NIF announced an initiative today to help its grantees support the suspects in the coordinated shooting and bombing attacks Friday night, noting that many of the Fund’s recipients wished to do something constructive to show solidarity but were thwarted by the NIF’s standard grant conditions limiting expenditure of grant money to within Israel’s 1949 boundaries. In response to the extenuating circumstances, NIF Executive Director in Israel Rachel Liel said the organization had received approval from stateside headquarters to make a temporary exception to that provision.

“It is crucial that our grantees be free to express their political opinions and aspirations without restraint,” said Liel. “While under normal circumstances we are bound by the terms we lay out to our donors, which call specifically for social change within Israel, the executive board approved this measure so that an issue dear to the hearts of so many of our grantee organizations can receive at least some of the support it deserves.” She said the NIF expected to collect upwards of $700,000 from its grantees and other concerned parties in Israel.

“We were contractually mandated to spend $14,000 on a series of projects to integrate Bedouin women in the Negev into the economy, but that’s going to have to be put on hold,” said Aihait Jouze, Director of Indigenous Souls, Indigenous Sellers (ISIS), which works to help Bedouin women launch microbusinesses from their homes. “But sometimes a more urgent cause emerges, a cause that speaks to the core of our partners’ identities, so we’re sure the women won’t mind that they’re not going to learn basic bookkeeping or income tax procedures this year, if at all. Right now there are a bunch of young Muslims in Europe whom we expect to use their ethnic origins in court to justify their violence, and we need to support that because it hits home for us.”

“I hope we raise enough to make a difference,” said Liel. “If our grantees don’t come through, though, we can probably divert funds from other projects. Does anybody really think immigrants from Ethiopia need to be properly integrated into Israeli society when there are so many other, more worthy causes?” She denied, however, that the organization was seriously considering diverting money from an initiative to integrate illegal African migrants into South Tel Aviv, which the NIF deems a sacrosanct effort.