May 2, 2010 | Read Time: 3 minutes
San Francisco’s Jewish federation is under attack over its new policy to no longer finance any group that it believes to be undermining Israel’s legitimacy as an independent state.
A group of rabbis, scholars, and other prominent Jews in San Francisco have placed an advertisement scheduled to appear in a national publication this week criticizing the policy by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties.
Under the policy, which the critics say sets a bad precedent for Jewish federations nationwide, the Bay Area group will not make grants to organizations whose mission, activities, or partnerships “advocate for, or endorse, undermining the legitimacy of Israel as a secure, independent, democratic Jewish state, including through participation in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, in whole or in part.”
The move was designed to counter the growing number of individuals and organizations, including many Jews, who advocate withholding support from Israel until it ends its occupation of Palestinian lands.
Marcia Freedman, a former member of the Israeli Knesset who helped organize the effort to publish the ad, said that the federation’s grant-making policy will suppress open debate and the free exchange of ideas. “The federation has enormous influence as a major funder,” she said.
‘A Dangerous Precedent’
The advertisement criticizing the federation’s policy appears in the Forward, a national weekly newspaper with 32,000 subscribers and a readership of 94,000.
The ad, which cost nearly $4,000, was paid for with contributions from Ms. Freedman and 81 other individuals whose names were all listed in the ad. The federation’s grant-making guidelines, the ad reads, “set a dangerous precedent. … The Jewish community is riven by a fateful debate over the future of Israeli democracy and the occupation of Palestinian lands. Attempting to curtail that debate will only drive it into the shadows, where it will become ever more extreme.”
The federation has defended its policy as an attempt to promote—rather than curtail—the free exchange of information about issues related to Israel. “There are two core values we wanted to express: abiding support for Israel and abiding support for diverse and broad-based expression,” said Jim Offel, the federation’s chief operating officer.
The policy, he said, was not intended to squelch grantees from expressing or exchanging viewpoints that support some form of boycotts, sanctions, or divestments as long as those actions are not a core mission of the organization.
“What we are doing in much the same way as any funder is to say that we have certain core values and one is support for the legitimacy of Israel,” he said. “If we see a program that is not in line with that core value, we reserve the right not to support it. This is not an alien concept in the world of philanthropy.”
The policy was adopted after a film festival the federation supports caused an uproar on both sides of the political spectrum when it showed a documentary film about a young American activist who supported the use of sanctions against Israel but died in a confrontation with an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza.
