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<\/a><\/p>\nMickey Gitzin, right, and Daniel Sokatch take part in a pro-democracy demonstration in Tel Aviv, part of a wave of protests that engulfed the country after the government proposed a judicial branch overhaul in early 2023. Gitzin is stepping in as interim CEO of the New Israel Fund as Sokatch, its current head, takes a year-long sabbatical. (Courtesy NIF)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Gitzin, 44, was named interim president and CEO of the New Israel Fund in December, as its longtime CEO, Daniel Sokatch, begins a year-long sabbatical. Gitzin takes over at an organization that funds progressive Jewish and Arab organizations in Israel that are often at odds with the Israeli government. As a result, it has been vilified by Israel\u2019s right and their allies in the United States as dangerously radical, even traitorous.<\/p>\n
And yet today, as Israel is led by its most right-wing government ever and anti-Zionism is growing on the American left, NIF finds itself in a different, if no less precarious, position: defending a space in the Jewish mainstream that is fiercely critical of Israeli policy while affirming a version of Zionism that aligns with democratic equality. <\/p>\n
\u201cNIF was always in the forefront when it came to the liberal progressive ideas that were later on absorbed by the mainstream,\u201d said Gitzin, the first Israeli to lead the organization, in a Zoom interview. \u201cWe are not there to be the mainstream. We\u2019re there to push the mainstream, but in order to push the mainstream, you need to be in touch with the mainstream and not give up on it, which is a very, very fine line.\u201d<\/p>\n
That position leaves NIF open to criticism from both sides. To some on the American left, Zionism of any stripe is incompatible with democracy and human rights for Palestinians and other minorities. In many parts of the Jewish center, NIF\u2019s grantees reveal political and social ills in Israel they\u2019d rather not see, and definitely do not want broadcast to the rest of an already hostile world. <\/p>\n
Yet Gitzin argues that NIF reflects where many American Jews actually are: horrified by Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7 attack, devastated by the destruction in Gaza, and alienated by a discourse that demands total allegiance to one narrative or another.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want to act in ways that fit with their values,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that we have a very powerful story to tell, that the story of Israel is being able to care about the state of Israel and fight for it and care about the notion of equality for Jews and Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n“We’re there to push the mainstream, but in order to push the mainstream, you need to be in touch with the mainstream,” said Mickey Gitzin, the interim CEO of the New Israel Fund. (Courtesy NIF)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Born in Israel to immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Gitzin grew up in Azor, a working-class development town. His first rebellion, he said, was against the politics of his right-leaning parents. His political awakening came late, sharpened by his service as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces, where he worked on Palestinian affairs during the Camp David negotiations and the Second Intifada.<\/p>\n
That \u201callowed me to understand the complexity of the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, the role that Israel plays, and the missed opportunities all through the way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Later, as a Jewish Agency emissary in South Bend, Indiana, Gitzin encountered an American Jewish world that unsettled his assumptions about liberal politics and Jewish observance, which among many secular Israelis are often seen as incompatible. \u201cI was able to jump between the communities happily, something that I\u2019ve never been able to do in Israel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Returning to Israel, he founded an organization focused on religious freedom that later became an NIF grantee. Gitzin had found his institutional home. Eight years ago he became executive director of NIF\u2019s Israel office \u2014 years that coincided with some of the fiercest attacks the organization had ever faced.<\/p>\n
Though more intense, those attacks were not new. Since the 1980s, NIF has been accused by critics of undermining Israel by funding human rights groups that promoted anti-Israel positions. In 2010, the right-wing organization Im Tirtzu said NIF grantees were helping hostile groups abroad build their case against the Jewish state. Those grantees included B\u2019Tselem, a human rights group, who said they merely reported human rights violations and left others to draw their own conclusions. <\/p>\n
NIF responded at the time that politically charged groups like B\u2019Tselem represent only a fraction of their grantees. It pointed to other grantees, including the Association for Civil Rights, the pro-democracy group Mehazkim, the civil-society coalition Citizens HQ and the Israel Religious Action Center, a public policy arm of the Reform movement.<\/p>\n
More recently, the criticism came not just from right-wing NGOs but from the prime minister\u2019s office. In 2018, Netanyahu blamed NIF for thwarting his plan to deport African asylum seekers. That same year, he accused NIF of weakening Israel by opposing the nation-state law that prioritized Jewish national identity over equal citizenship for non-Jewish Israelis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was very confusing for the organization,\u201d said Gitzin. \u201cWe\u2019re do-gooders, and all of a sudden we found ourselves in such an attack.\u201d<\/p>\n