It is perplexing and astounding that The Jewish Week should publish a JTA report that abstracts and highlights an article from the New York Times that deliberately distorts and misinforms with the headline “N.Y. Times: U.S. Tax-Exempt Donation Support Settlements” without mentioning the many indictments of this blatantly biased “news report” by groups such as Honest Reporting, Camera, Commentary and many others.
Camera revealed what is widely known, that the tax-exempt New Israel Fund heavily subsidizes Israel-based organizations, like Adallah, Machsom Watch, B’Tzelem and others, organizations that effectively work to undermine Israel’s stand in the world and promote policies that are contrary to U.S. policies, such as promoting a one-state Arab Palestine and delegitimizing Israel.
Further, Camera notes the false claims by the Times that American tax rules prohibit charitable funds for political purposes or tax deductions for direct donations to foreign charities. In addition, Honest Reporting publicized a 2009 memo by Gush Shalom, as revealed by NGO Monitor, that is very similar to the Times’ slanted story, to campaign against tax-exempt support for Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
Any way you look at it, the Times article is a premeditated affront to the very notion that the role of a newspaper is to report facts rather than manufacture news aimed at shaping perceptions and skewing debate.
The article goes to great lengths to discredit the American citizens who make charitable, tax-deductible donations to organizations that provide lawful support to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods in southern, northern and eastern Jerusalem. It paints a sinister picture of such contributions and contributors and accuses them of actively undermining U.S. foreign policy.
Contrary facts were available as noted to JTA and The Jewish Week. Yet they participated in and abetted the New York Times campaign.
Manhattan
Editor’s Note: The focus of the Times article referenced in the JTA article was that support for Jewish settlements and their residents in the West Bank is counter to stated U.S. foreign policy interests, because the American government, according to the Times, “seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank” and has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid on the settlements.
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