A complaint filed last week with the New York state attorney general by T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights is casting light on the fact that an Israeli organization called Honenu has been getting a U.S. tax write-off. There is nothing alarming or unusual about that fact alone. What is of grave concern is that Honenu’s sole purpose is to defend and offer material support to Israelis accused and convicted of violent crimes against Palestinians, including murder. Also named in the complaint is the Manhattan-based Central Fund of Israel (CFI), also a registered charitable organization in the U.S., which for at least a decade and a half has funded a virtual who’s who of racist, violent Israeli extremists, including Honenu and its clients.
Following the murder by arson of the Palestinian infant Ali Saad Dawabsha and his father by suspected Jewish extremists this July, Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his cabinet were quick to condemn the attack. Netanyahu declared it to be “an act of terrorism in every respect” and announced that he had put Israel’s police and armed forces to work, declaring (despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary): “The State of Israel takes a strong line against terrorism regardless of who the perpetrators are.”