The New Israel Fund is committed to a democratic Israel in which progressive voices are not intimidated, threatened and misrepresented. The coarsening of discourse in Israel is an issue that many thoughtful commentators have raised, as is the unprecedented series of attacks on the Israeli-Arab community exemplified by the proposed Nakba and loyalty-oath legislation.  Disgraceful behavior by some who disagree with our values or actions only demonstrates their real objective – to silence dissent and mute unpopular voices, particularly in the human rights community.

Washington, DC: As fewer and fewer secular Israeli couples register for rabbinic marriage, the founder of Israel’s first feminist-Orthodox group, “Kolech,” recommended that secular Jewish women boycott the institution entirely. In a recent conference on “chained women” who cannot obtain religious divorces, Kolech leader Chana Kehat raised a stir by stating that the more distance women maintained from the rabbinate, “the better for the whole nation.” Kolech, known in English as the Religious Women’s Forum, aims to improve the status of women by deep-seated change in the Orthodox community, is a major grantee of the New Israel Fund, and also participates in NIF/SHATIL’s Pluralism Project.