In recent years, a concerted, organized and well financed campaign to delegitimize Israel has intensified. This campaign, which goes well beyond criticism of Israel's policies, distorts the history of the Jewish state, ignoring the national aspirations of the Jewish people to live in peace in a homeland to which we have been connected continuously for more than three millennia.
It is within this environment -- in which Israel is repeatedly blamed regardless of the facts -- that a global network of NGOs has emerged to urge the use of Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as a tactic to isolate the State of Israel. This campaign, which has posed a significant challenge to the Israel advocacy community, has manifested itself in various spheres in which we work, including churches and campuses, as well as corporate, civic and cultural arenas. The IAI has emerged as the principal coordinating body for countering the campaign to delegitimize Israel, which has become a major priority for our community. The IAI’s efforts to counter these activities include:
Israel Still a Vibrant Democracy
Ron Dermer, Senior Advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, responds to a Time magazine article, which shed a negative light on the Middle East's only democracy.
Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011
A Response from the Office of Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu
By Ron Dermer, Senior Advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister
Dear Mr. Stengel,
I wanted to bring to your attention a recent article in Time entitled "Israel's Rightward Lurch Scares Some Conservatives." I hope that you will agree that the article's obvious bias and numerous distortions are not worthy of the standards of your prestigious magazine.
Israel is depicted in the article as essentially sliding towards fascism. Your correspondent refers to Israel's Shin Bet (the equivalent of the FBI) as a "secret police," claims that the Israeli government "increasingly equates dissent with disloyalty," and accuses the Prime Minister of "taking a page from neighboring authoritarian states."
The evidence offered for these outrageous allegations includes a preliminary vote in our parliament that would require naturalized citizens to make a pledge of allegiance, a proposal to strip citizenship from Israelis convicted of espionage and terrorism, a motion to investigate foreign government funding of local NGOs, calls on Jews to not rent property to Arabs, and demonstrations demanding prohibitions of Arab boys from dating Jewish girls.
But your correspondent did not find it necessary to inform your readers of a few facts.
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