As I always remind our team at times like this, when hardliners and extremists target us, it means that (a) they’re worried, and (b) we must be doing something right.

This time around, NIF was accused by ultra-nationalist politicians (and their media and NGO-Mouthpieces) of supporting the efforts of “V15,” a non-partisan Get Out the Vote (GOTV) effort being coordinated by Israeli activists and American veterans of the Obama campaigns. The hardliners, rocked by numerous scandals in their own camp, claim that V15 efforts are illegitimate; V15 argues that they are engaged in permissible GOTV, plain and simple. The thing is, we had nothing to do with any of this. When we pointed this out, the lawyer for the Likud party took the extremely rare step of actually apologizing for a Likud statement linking NIF to V15.

Don’t get me wrong: we think non-partisan GOTV efforts are legitimate, indeed essential, activities in a democracy, especially when they’re focused on marginalized and minority communities. We just weren’t involved in these particular activities. So why were we dragged into this affair? Because, as every cynical hardliner in Israel knows, if you want to smear progressives, if you want deride compassion for and commitment to all Israelis as weak and unpatriotic, if you are threatened by the vision of Israel as an open, egalitarian and liberal democracy – all you have to do is mention the New Israel Fund to send your fellow extremists into a frenzy.

I have to admit that, even as this makes me sad, it also makes me very proud. (In this case, I was also rather amused that we were named as funders of these pro-democracy efforts alongside such enemies of Israel as the United States and the European Union). Because the Israel we believe in is a vision worth fighting for. And, as we’ve seen again and again over the course of these past five years, NIF has come to symbolize that vision in the minds of people on both sides of that debate.

Next week I’ll head to Israel for our Board meeting. While I’m there, NIF will cosponsor a conference on democracy with Haaretz. And while speakers from across the political spectrum will come to debate and engage over the future of a country we all love, a few on the hard-right or who have capitulated to it have decided not to attend. That’s too bad; I wish they had the courage to engage in civil civic debate with people who don’t share their views but who want to give them a hearing. Haaretz itself made that point with a two-page full-spread ad about NIF, listing all the organizations we support, in a public gesture that we much appreciate. To the politically nervous dropouts, though, anyone who doesn’t share their vision of a Greater Israel in which the Jewish aspect of Israel’s identity always trumps the democratic aspect is someone with whom you can’t be seen in public.

But in the end, it’s ok. Among those who will attend and speak at the conference is another person those hardliners have decried as an enemy of the state: President Ruby Rivlin.