welfare

The New Israel Fund’s director, Eliezer Ya’ari, recently denied charges that his fund, and its Shatil subsidiary, are exploiting the single mothers’ protest to promote a radical leftist and anti-Zionist political agenda, and that they have patronizingly imposed the unelected Knafo group as “representative leadership.”

He insisted that the NIF is “an apolitical civic organization” assisting “social change” and human rights, providing a voice to weakened sectors. Ya’ari never defines what kind of “social change” the NIF promotes, but the fact that almost all of the many organizations Shatil has spawned among immigrants and “development-town” residents espouse a radical leftist ideology, while none are centrist or right, makes it clear.

It is now certain. The heart-rending march of Vikki Knafo and the single mothers’ protest were not spontaneous but an effort organized and manipulated by several bodies with a political ax to grind.

One of the chief organizers of the protest, Vered Bracha Steinberg, helped secure for Knafo tents and food from Meretz and from the Histadrut, and transportation from the Modi’in municipality. According to her these bodies, and above all Shatil, the crypto-Marxist executive arm of The New Israel Fund, recognized the political potential of Knafo’s protest, and proceeded to cynically exploit it. By its own admission, Shatil used Knafo to foment a ‘social revolution’ designed at least to undermine Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s economic reforms and perhaps even bring down Sharon’s government.

Vikki Knafo, the single mother determined to foment a “social revolution” in Israel, is obviously a can-do person.

In a normal social and economic environment her energy and determination would probably have enabled her to build a successful career despite being a divorcee raising three children. But the Israeli welfare state and the leftist ideology that inspires it have made Vikki a victim.