Commentary
Israelis Who Hate Israel -
And The Christians Who Fund Them
W
hile most Israelis celebrat-
ed 67 years of indepen-
dence last month, a fringe
Israeli non-governmental organization
(NGO) hopes this year will be the last
for the Jewish state.
Zochrot, a tiny radical anti-Zionist
group, was estab-
lished with the aim of
"rais[ing] public aware-
ness of the Palestinian
Nakba ('catastrophe' in
Arabic)" and "recogniz-
ing and materializing
the right of return," an
agenda equivalent to
calling for the abolish-
ment of Israel as the
nation-state of the
Jewish people. With no local support
base or constituency, Zochrot oper-
ates only through funding from for-
eign Christian aid organizations.
Using church funds, Zochrot pro-
motes a "de-Zionized Palestine,"
meaning free of Jews. The group's
founder, Eitan Bronstein, advocates
for Jews to abandon Israel en masse.
He dreams of a time "when the
refugees return, Jews will become a
minority in the country ... There may
be Jews, most of them of European
origin, who won't be able to adjust to
a non-Zionist reality and prefer to use
their passport to move elsewhere."
Last month, together with
Palestinian NGO BADIL, Zochrot
embarked on a speaking tour across
the U.S. to promote the "histori-
cal overview of the Nakba and the
Right of Return." Several years ago,
BADIL awarded a prize to a blatantly
anti- Semitic cartoon, featuring a
grotesque caricature of a Jewish man
standing over a dead Arab child and
holding a pitchfork in the shape of a
menorah dripping with blood. BADIL's
anti-Semitic history apparently does
not concern Zochrot or its funders.
Last year Zochrot commemorated
Israel Independence Day by launching
a smartphone app called "iNakba"
to delegitimize the Jewish state. The
app, an interactive map and photos
of Palestinian Arab villages from
pre-1948, was featured by the New
York Times, proving the real influence
of a small fringe group armed with
millions of shekels of foreign funds.
In 2013, Zochrot hosted a costly Tel
Aviv conference titled "From Truth
to Redress: Realizing the Return of
Palestinian Refugees."
These activities would ordinarily be
out of reach for a group its size. But,
due to the largesse of nine European
Christian aid agencies, Zochrot
doesn't lack resources. Foreign fund-
ing for 2014 and 01 of 2015 totals
about $740,000. Of that, about 93
percent comes from the Christian
charities.
These charities, both
Catholic and Protestant,
receive funding grants from
their respective governments,
mostly European. The charities
are Bischoefliches Misereor
(Germany), Broederlijk Delen
(Belgium), Christian Aid (U.K.),
Finn Church Aid (Finland),
HEKS-EPER (Switzerland),
ICCO (Netherlands), Trocaire
(Ireland), the Mennonite Central
Committee and the United Church of
Canada (both from Canada).
That these Christian groups sup-
port the abolishment of Jewish
Israel is deeply troubling. The mod-
ern Zionist movement emerged in
response to 19th-century anti-Semitic
pogroms often caused by the anti-
Jewish incitement of Christian clergy.
Israel was established in the immedi-
ate aftermath of the Holocaust, the
road to which was paved by centuries
of anti-Semitic Christian teachings.
Following the Holocaust, a num-
ber of the world's leading Christian
theologians began a comprehensive
reconsideration of Christianity's
attitudes toward Jews and Judaism.
They undertook a process of renounc-
ing and reformulating centuries of
Christian teachings that led to anti-
Jewish violence over the centuries.
Yet in the last two decades, some
churches have partnered with anti-
Israel activists to reverse these
theological reforms, by introducing
a "Palestinian liberation theology"
— a fusion of Palestinian nationalism
and Christian theology that seeks to
undermine Jewish claims, religious or
historical, to sovereignty in any and
all parts of the Land of Israel.
Zochrot serves as perfect win-
dow dressing for this theological
onslaught on the right of the Jewish
people to sovereign equality. Without
its Christian backers, Zochrot and
its pernicious agenda would cease to
exist.
Yitzhak Santis is chief programs officer of
NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research
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