On the same night that Israeli and international media zeroed in on the violent attacks in Amsterdam against Jewish Israeli soccer fans, extremist Jewish Israeli settlers were violently attacking Palestinians more than 2,500 miles away. NIF grantees and NIFC project partners know it is critical to keep Israeli eyes on the occupation and on the violence happening so close to home. This is why they have been focused on documenting and strategically blocking settler violence.
The central goals of NIF’s new “Vision of Security and Peace” program are to “block” moves toward entrenching the occupation and to “build” support for a diplomatic solution to the conflict that advances a vision for Israel’s future based on peace, democracy, and justice. Some of this “blocking” comes in the form of providing various supports — legal, mental health, networking, and others — to activists on the ground.
In the case of Yesh Din, an NIFC project partner, it comes in the form of documentation. Yesh Din is an Israeli human rights organization working to end the occupation and to provide legal assistance to Palestinians whose rights were violated. There has been a sharp escalation of violence and displacement committed by settlers and security forces in recent years, and especially since October 7th. Yesh Din’s reports are constantly covered in the CBC, the Times of Israel and Haaretz, and they also represent victims in court and provide research to policymakers.
Despite the fact that many incidents of settler violence have received no coverage whatsoever from Israeli news, and that their documentation likely does not capture all of the incidents of settler violence through the week, NIFC partners like Yesh Din are nonetheless dedicated to this work because, as they see it, following in the path of ignorance helps to normalize this violence, allowing it to go unnoticed — calling upon the Israeli people and all people to reject this violence as normal or turn away from it.
THIS GIVING TUESDAY, SUPPORT DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY IN ISRAEL