New Israel Fund Under Fire For Not Having Eritrean Asylum-Seeker As Director

NIF leaders have scrambled to perform damage control amid the spread of the allegations.

Jerusalem, August 2 – A leading organization in far-left Israeli politics and social change found itself the target of criticism from former allies as word spread that despite its progressive credentials, it has failed to integrate the most vulnerable and powerless members of society into positions of power and leadership in its own ranks.

The New Israel Fund was forced onto the defensive today following robust discourse on social media regarding the organization’s dearth of African migrants occupying its senior offices, even as the NIF bankrolls and engineers social and political campaigns to force the government to grant the same rights and privileges to migrants that citizens already enjoy.

Representatives of organizations across the left portion of Israel’s political spectrum voiced concern and condemnation Thursday following a series of tweets and Facebook posts by activists within the African migrant community in South Tel Aviv who have worked with NIF-funded groups and participated in NIF-funded initiatives.

“The whole White Knight syndrome is really getting to us,” railed Mgonna Gokressi, originally from Eritrea. “These Euro- and dollar-spending blowhards swoop in and decide they know what’s good for us and for Israel, when their schtick has been rejected by Israeli voters again and again. Maybe they think they can gain a political foothold if they get us on their side and we get the right to vote, but it’s not about us, for them. We’re tools. We know that because they haven’t taken a single step toward really integrating us into their organization. The hypocrisy reeks.”

Indeed, as Ms. Gokressi’s friend Didju Siddat observed, NIF representatives talk quite a good game in terms of civil rights rhetoric that a sympathetic media amplifies, but falls short of living the values it demands that the Israeli government embrace. “If they were really serious about this, they’d be putting us in charge of how they allocate their funding,” she insisted. “But when it comes to the bottom line, all the decisions are made by a committee of Ashkenazi elites in air-conditioned offices in Jerusalem, New York, and Washington. They want our empowerment only insofar as it serves their political agenda, but you can forget about empowering us within their ranks.”

NIF leaders have scrambled to perform damage control amid the spread of the allegations. “We will immediately form a committee of the same people who made these decisions in the first place to examine this issue,” promised Director Mickey Gitzin. “Besides, if I identify as an Eritrean asylum seeker, that should be more than good enough.”

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