Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Naomi Paiss
202-513-7824 phone
[email protected]

Statement on Recent Events

17 July 2014

The New Israel Fund has been following the developments of the last few weeks with concern, and strongly condemns Hamas’s repeated attacks on Israeli civilians. These attacks are inhumane, and morally and legally unacceptable.

As well as reacting to the serious damage continually threatened to the Israeli civilian population, we are also concerned about harm to Palestinian civilians. Our hearts are with the civilian population in the warzones in Israel and Gaza. A wide variety of organizations supported by NIF have been assisting the residents of the south during this difficult period. We are also supporting the work of Israeli human rights organizations who are monitoring the situation in Gaza and Israel and reporting to the Israeli authorities and public regarding possible violations of human rights, as befits a democratic country. We hope that the lives of civilians on both sides will return to normal as quickly as possible.

With the security situation dominating the discourse, we are witnessing a worrying deterioration in the fragile fabric of relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and a severe deterioration towards incitement and violence in the public sphere and on social networks. NIF and many of its grantees are currently working vigorously in order to prevent severe damage to the relations between the Jewish and Arab publics in Israel, and to stop the incitement that is raging, with the fighting in Gaza exacerbating strong feelings. We are promoting and nurturing many initiatives which have sprung up around the country over the last few weeks and whose goal is strengthening cooperation between Jews and Arabs, and encouraging shared society, partnership, and tolerance. We call on the general public to participate in these initiatives.

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