The New York City-based New Israel Fund, which provides financial support to progressive and anti-Israel groups, has accused “right-wing messianic forces” of seeking to seize control of the kibbutzim in southern Israel attacked by Hamas-led terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023.
The New Israel Fund awarded a $150,000 grant to a project of Israel’s Kibbutz Movement that claims to “safely return Negev kibbutz residents to their homes, encourage kibbutz members from central and northern Israel to settle in the communities near the Gaza border,” Channel 14 reporter Yishai Friedman uncovered on Tuesday.
According to the New Israel Fund, or NIF, the project aims to “support the residents and work to prevent right-wing messianic forces from forcibly taking over the kibbutzim by establishing right-wing religious communities there.”
Channel 14 News spoke with several residents of the Gaza border area, including a former head of the Eshkol Regional Council, who said they did not know of any plot by right-wingers to seize control of the towns.
The NIF said in a written response to the broadcaster: “We are proud to do what should have been obvious to the Israeli government, which is to support kibbutzniks returning to their homes and starting to rebuild their lives after being abandoned to their fate. We call on everyone who supports putting life back on track to donate to the New Israel Fund.”
JNS reached out for comment to Eshkol Regional Council head Michal Uziyahu and the Religious Kibbutz Movement, which counts among its members Kibbutz Alumim and Kibbutz Sa’ad near the Gaza border.
Sa’ad, a religious community less than three miles from the border, was hit by rockets but not directly invaded by terrorists during the Oct. 7 attacks, as the entrance gate of the kibbutz was closed for Shabbat.
In Alumim, the civilian security squad prevented an invasion by dozens of terrorists, who instead killed 17 foreign workers from Thailand and Nepal while taking several others back to the Gaza Strip as hostages.
While for most Israelis, Oct. 7 was a wake-up call to the dangers of a Palestinian state—a Jan. 10 poll found 74% opposed to the idea—within weeks of the massacre, an NIF-supported think tank started to promote the idea of a two-state solution in which the Palestinian Authority would become the government of the new country.
Documents published on the website of Mitvim–The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies showed the group schemed to present the P.A. as the “only alternative” to Hamas. According to the files, the think tank sought to create a distinction in the minds of Israelis between Hamas—pro-terrorist and against any kind of settlement with Jerusalem—and Ramallah, portrayed as opposing terrorism and in favor of a deal.
The NIF previously provided some $660,000 to protest groups opposing the now-shelved judicial reform agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. The organization helped ignite the violent rallies, funding the first major protest on Jan. 7, 2023, in Tel Aviv.
