Simone Susskind

During my trip to the Middle East, I took part to the New Israel Fund board meeting (http://www.nif.org/). Since a few years I am a member of the International Council of NIF.

The New Israel Fund (NIF) is the leading organization committed to democratic change within Israel. Since 1979, NIF has fought for social justice and equality for all Israelis.  The vision of NIF is that Israel should live up to its founders’ vision of a state that ensures complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, without regard to religion, race or gender.

During the Board meeting, an important part of the discussions focussed on how the NIF and the Israeli civil society, as well as the progressive forces in the Jewish Diaspora should fight back the grave attempts within the political echelon as well as the media, to delegitimize its action.

A symposium organised during the Board, attracted many Israelis, leaders of civil society around a speech given by Peter Beinart, a young US Jewish intellectual who shook the American Jewish leadership when he published last June in the New York Review of Books an article under the title: “the Failure of the American Jewish Establishment”(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/)