There is so much news today—the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammad Deif. The U.S. House of Representatives voted—as you’ll read in my op-ed below—to give Trump ever more authoritarian power to undermine American civil society. Yesterday, the United States Senate voted down a bill spearheaded by Senator Bernie Sanders to block offensive arms to Israel. But every day, you can be sure that the New Israel Fund will be there, standing up for the values of democracy, equality, and insisting on a future that is better for everyone—both here in the United States, and across the Atlantic, in Israel.
The column below was published in The Forward.
The House of Representatives is trying to pass a bill, under the guise of pushing back on terrorism, that would hand President-elect Donald Trump a cudgel with which to attack American civil society organizations.
H.R. 9495—titled “The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act”—already failed one House vote last week. Its bipartisan cosponsors won’t accept defeat so easily, and are bringing it to another vote on Wednesday. The bill would hand the secretary of the Treasury—who, in just two short months, will be a Trump appointee—the authority to unilaterally revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a “terrorist supporting organization.” In other words, shut them down.
As the CEO of the New Israel Fund, the premier funder of progressive, pro-human rights and democracy organizations in Israel, I know just how dangerous this measure is. For more than 15 years, progressive Israeli civil society has worked—with the aid of nonprofits like ours—to advance equality, justice and safety for Jews and Palestinians alike, while fending off the kinds of accusations this bill tees up. And after facing endless delegitimization campaigns aimed at painting them as traitorous—not to mention the reams of anti-democratic legislation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hardline allies have pushed in an effort to quash their efforts—we know how important it is for Congress to vote down this bill.
Americans do not need this. They do not need another to give Trump yet another autocratic weapon with which to endanger American civil society.
Even if I don’t always agree with the organizations likely to be targeted under this bill, I believe in their right to engage in nonviolent advocacy. The next four years will present a challenge to all of us who care about freedom in the U.S., and for the civil society that guards those freedoms. Take it from an organization that has been supporting Israeli civil society for over four decades: We must remain steadfast in defending the right to protest and dissent, because Trump and his lackeys will likely do everything he can to chip away at our resolve.