Call to Ban New Israel Fund Lecturers from IDF Bases

Attorney Doron Nir Tzvi, from the Lavi organization submitted an urgent request to the director-general of the Defense Ministry, Gen. (ret.) Ehud Adam, to bar access to IDF bases to lecturers from organizations financed by The New Israel Fund, the Hartman Institute and Binah and to prevent them from speaking to officers.

Nir Tzvi cited statements made by these lecturers which he said were tantamount to incitement against elected officials and contended that their conduct was offensive to entire sectors of the Israeli public.

“Their ways are completely counter to the spirit of the IDF and democratic values…and the connection with them such be severed,” he said in a statement.

Nir Tzvi quoted Daniel Hartman, head of the Hartman Institute, who said in a recent interview: “If only the problem was just Netanyahu. So yes, Bibi is living in Germany of 1938, but the challenge is one of education- to deal with the distorted roots in the society.”

In another context, Hartman said that “Israel appears to the world as the realization of anti-Semitic stereotypes, and exposes Jews in the Diaspora to criticism from their neighbors who connect the state of Israel with Jews who support it.”

Lior Tal was also cited as a lecturer who should be banned from speaking on IDF bases. A former leader of Meretz party and a founder of Binah, Lior Tal said of the appointment of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman:

“At this terrible moment, we must all go out into the streets to stop this fascism in our midst, as in Austria. Yes, the comparison is hair-raising; but it is real. The citizens of Austria were able to summon enough sanity to prevent at the last moment, and by a single vote, a fascist presidency.

In an article for Ynet, he wrote: “Placing individuals under the authority of a rabbi or posek is dangerous and forbidden… The lesson I have learned from world atrocities is that a person cannot place himself fully under any authority be it G-d, man, or state. There is no holy authority,” Lior Tal wrote.

In his letter to Gen. Adam, Nir Tzvi noted that there is ample precedent for the banning of speakers deemed unsuitable for the soldiers and officers of the IDF, and that those mentioned above were in some cases worse than those who have been banned in the past.

The Lavi organization also noted that in recent years the Defense Ministry has allowed The New Israel Fund to provide lecturers on “values and identity,” and that individuals and groups such as these, “who sew division and hatred against the prime minister and the defense minister should have no place in the IDF.”