Here are the facts:

1) As a matter of policy, the New Israel Fund does not fund global BDS activities. Nor do we support organizations that have global BDS programs. The New Israel Fund has always supported Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

On Tu Bishvat, NIF Australia records with gratitude that the children of the late Marie Clare Frankel have donated a substantial amount from of her estate to NIF Australia for the Green Network.

Green Network, a project supported by NIF through the Green Environment Fund, aims to instil environmental understanding, awareness and sustainability as core values in education and works in 100 schools throughout Israel, both Jewish and Arab, and through twelve regional networks. Marie Frankel was a trained horticulturist who cherished values of pluralism and tolerance.

All the tweets, Facebook posts, blog entries and news clippings from David Landau's speaking tour for New Israel Fund Australia. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more updates. You can also donate to New Israel Fund Australia.

Israel's Education Ministry decided Tuesday to close down an extremist yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar because its students were attacking Palestinians and the Israeli army. 
 
Attacks from extremists on Palestinians, on Israeli peace activists, and on Israeli soldiers are on the rise. Shutting down the yeshiva in Yitzhar is an overdue -- but welcome -- sign that the Israeli government may be stepping up to address the issue.
 
It’s vital that we show Israel’s political leaders that supporters of Israel worldwide stand with them when they do the right thing.

Sign this NIF letter and show Israel’s education minister that we’re paying attention.

The New Israel Fund’s Australian branch confirmed today it is bringing former Haaretz Editor-In-Chief David Landau to Australia on a speaking tour next month. This tour coincides with NIF Australia's first project funding drive that supports important programs across the spectrum of Israeli social causes.

View all the running updates from David's speaking tour.

Mr Landau – who appeared on ABC’s Lateline tonight to discuss the release of Gilad Shalit – will make several addresses to a variety of audiences in Sydney and Melbourne between November 14 and 27.

To receive details about his speaking engagements, click here.

NIF events with David Landau:

• Inner West Sydney community event
• Eastern Suburbs community event
• Melbourne community event

Dear friend -- 

The year that is drawing to a close brought increased uncertainty in the Middle East but it has also seen dramatic, positive developments within Israel.

What started with one grew quickly to tens, then hundreds, then thousands, culminating in over 400,000 Israelis - of all ethnic origins, all ages, all religions and none – participating in the biggest demonstration in Israel’s history, chanting together “The People Demand Social Justice.”

There is greater recognition now that, despite the excellent performance of the economy, the gap between the 'haves' and the ‘have-nots’ of Israeli society has grown unacceptably large, that the equality and social solidarity that was once a distinctive characterisitic of Israeli society has been progressively undermined.

Despite the many challenges that continue to face Israel in the region, there has been a flowering of renewed concern with social justice – the need to ensure equality, basic human dignity and a fair and democratic society.  And Israel and supporters of Israel can justly be proud of that.

It is a credit too to the New Israel Fund, which has identified and championed such issues for years, and will continue to do so long after the tent cities have all been packed up.

Isi Leibler has been a dedicated Zionist for his entire career. I know that he loves Israel and is dedicated to its future. So am I. Which is why, next June, after a career that has included stints running the national UJA and a major Federation, I will become the next chair of the New Israel Fund.

“I am taking this on as the capstone of my career because I believe that the New Israel Fund is the most important organization helping Israel realize its founding principles.  And thus I must address recent attacks on the New Israel Fund, including that of Mr. Leibler’s (“The Two Faces of the New Israel Fund” September 15.)

First, it’s important to understand that Mr. Leibler’s viewpoints are embedded in a right-wing ideology, one which I’m sure he thinks necessary to ensure Israel’s survival. That said, his writings exculpating settler behavior, attacking other progressive organizations and supporting problematically anti-democratic legislation in the Knesset are a matter of record.

He should have, however, in praising NGO Monitor, acknowledged that he is on the board of International Overseers and chairs the Israel-Diaspora Committee of the Jerusalem Council on Public Affairs, the body that founded NGO Monitor.  Perhaps relying overmuch on that organization, which has long justified its existence by targeting the New Israel Fund, many of Mr. Leibler’s facts are wrong.

Ha'aretz reports on a victory for New Israel Fund grantee Adalah:

An Israeli Arab couple from Sakhnin won a six-year battle yesterday to build a home in the Galilee community of Rakefet when the High Court of Justice ordered its community association and the Israel Lands Administration to provide them with a plot of land within 90 days.

The couple, Fatina and Ahmed Zabeidat, had been rejected twice by the Rakefet community association in their bid to move to the Jewish Misgav area village but they were told that they were not compatible with the life of the community. [...]

Suad Bishara, an attorney for of Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights, expressed the hope that the Zabeidats' case would buttress prospects for the court to invalidate the admissions committee law itself. "We regret that the couple had to go through about six years of legal battle after they were not accepted into the community just because of their Arab background," the lawyer added.

New Israel Fund's flagship grantee, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, alerts us to the approval of the appalling Prawer Plan:

The plan outlines implementation of the Goldberg Commission Report of 2008 to deal with the problem of unrecognized villages and the Bedouin community in the Negev. Rather than recognizing the systemic violations of the rights of the Bedouin, the Prawer plan continues the discrimination of one of the most disenfranchised communities in Israel, during a period in which a mass Israeli protest movement has been calling for social justice for all citizens.

The Prawer Plan, which was prepared without representatives of the unrecognized villages, will lead to the unnecessary uprooting of tens of thousands of Bedouin from their homes, in clear violation of their historical and proprietary rights. An alternative master plan, submitted by the Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages and Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights, proposes to keep all 35 unrecognized villages intact and to connect them to infrastructure and services, while saving Israel massive amounts of resources necessary for uprooting villages that have existed since before the State was established.

ACRI is working vis-à-vis policy makers to ensure that this plan is implemented, rather than the Prawer plan. Only a plan based on respect for the human rights of the Bedouin population and that includes them in the process will bring about a lasting solution for all residents of the Negev, both Arabs and Jews.

For more information on the Prawer Plan, you can consult this ACRI policy brief. You can also view an alternative position, written by ACRI with Bimkom, and the Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages, which proposes "a just solution that will resolve one of Israel's most painful examples of ongoing systematic violation of human rights, and one of the most stubborn open conflicts between the state and its citizens."

If you would like to receiving continuing updates from ACRI about the Prawer Plan and other civil rights issues in Israel, subscribe to ACRI's mailing list.

You can now download a copy (PDF) of NIF's Recent Achievements flyer, August 2011 edition. This includes:

• Israel's Affordable Housing Protest Catches Fire
• Shavuot Tikkun Encompasses the Entire Spectrum of Israel Society
• Knesset Rejects “Investigation” of Human Rights Groups
• ACRI Wins Prestigious US Human Rights Award
• Israeli Government Recognizes Civil Marriages
• Racism Declines in Israeli Soccer