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2020-08-10 -Short Attention Span Theater-
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Lawfare: Activist targets New Israel Fund for ‘electioneering’ via anti-racism groups
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From last week. [IsraelTimes] David Abrams’ lawsuit alleges the group violated its tax-exempt status by supporting grantees in Israel who are vocal on political issues.
A pro-Israel activist has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service that, if successful, could severely restrict freedom of speech for non-governmental organizations.
David Abrams’ lawsuit alleges that the nonprofit New Israel Fund
Continued from Page 6
...a foundation that finances numerous anti-Israel NGOs, originally provided financing and training by President Obama’s State Department and paid Democratic Party operatives to help Israel’s labour socialist party in concert with the so-called Joint List of Arab parties beat Bibi Netanyahu in that election. They failed then, and now that Labour is down to around 5% of votes and the Arab Joint List is falling apart, they’ve turned their attention to Antifa-style protests against Bibi’s premiership. But who is funding them now that the State Department belongs to Donald Trump? “electioneered" in violation of its tax-exempt status by supporting grantees in Israel who are vocal on political issues. Among other things, the lawsuit cites the NIF for supporting Israeli organizations that have sought to have candidates barred from running for office for being racist, for calling candidates racist and for praising candidates who embrace their initiatives.
The suit, filed on behalf of an organization Abrams leads, The Zionist Advocacy Center, seeks $110 million in damages from NIF, which, under New York state law, Abrams would be entitled to as much as 30 percent of as a whistleblower. The NIF must file its objections by Friday.
Critics say the NIF activities Abrams is targeting are routine for many nonprofits, Jewish and otherwise, and that if he is successful it would impede the efforts of those groups to work on behalf of political issues they care about.
If they were only working issues, sure, but given that their genesis targetted driving out Bibi, all since is fruit from the poisoned tree. Abrams could "undermine a lot of the work that nonprofits do both in the United States and around the globe to promote the value of constitutional democracy," said Brian Hauss, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined the case in June.
The ACLU would think so, since all their work is likewise targetted against anyone or anything labelled as conservative. Abrams has long sought to use legal means to restrict the activities of anti-Israel groups. As a registered foreign agent with an Israeli legal outfit that has ties to the Israeli government, he has largely focused in the past on organizations he sees as acting against Israel’s interests.
But this time he is turning his guns on a group that sees itself as pro-Israel,
...for given definitions of pro- that loathes everything about the current incarnation, and of Israel that is a Palestinian- rather than a Jewish-majority state... by employing a weapon that, if unleashed, could cripple the sort of issues-based activism that is the bread and butter of scores of American Jewish nonprofits.
Marc Stern, the general counsel for the American Jewish Committee, said that if Abrams wins it would unleash internecine warfare among Jewish organizations already polarized by the Trump presidency.
It’s time to force clarification on those who prefer obfuscation, especially where deep-pocketed donors are involved. "It’s basically a good thing for the Jewish community that people can’t challenge the tax-exempt status of others because it would lead to guerrilla warfare against your ideological opponent," Stern said.
In an email exchange, Abrams said that it was up to the government to decide whether he was going too far with his filings, known as qui tam, an abbreviation of a Latin phrase which refers to private citizens who initiate or assist a prosecution.
"The government has wisely included checks and limitations on these types of lawsuits," he said. "Among them, the government retains an unfettered right to settle or even dismiss qui tam lawsuits despite the objection of the private citizen who filed the lawsuit. This has happened to me on numerous occasions and will assuredly happen again in the future."
Abrams is at the vanguard of a right-wing pro-Israel movement
...center-right, actually... that has successfully used the courts and laws to inhibit advocacy on behalf of causes it sees as threatening to Israel.
In 2018, he compelled Norwegian Peoples Aid to pay a $2 million settlement because it chose not to challenge Abrams’ claim: money it spent on democracy training in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
Strip and mine clearing in Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
was tainted by associations with banned terrorist groups.The organization had accepted US State Department money for separate projects, unrelated to the Gaza or Iran projects.
Why is the U.S. Department of State giving money to a Norwegian NGO over which it cannot possibly have proper supervisory authority? A separate Abrams action succeeded in forcing the home rental website AirBnB to unblock listings in West Bank Jewish settlements.
Some of Abrams’ challenges have been dismissed, like his complaint that The Carter Center (President Jimmy Malaise Carter
 ...only the second worst president ever...
’s nonprofit) was supporting snuffies because it provided "physical assets of fruit, cookies, bottled water, and presumably other food and drink" at a conflict resolution workshop that included representatives of Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Paleostine, both US-designated terrorist groups.
With his NIF action, Abrams is bringing this fight within the Jewish community, targeting an organization that has attracted liberal Jewish American donors for its support of pro-democracy movements in Israel
...as if Israel’s feisty, raucous democracy needs any aid from outsiders... and which has become a bugbear for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies, who accuse its grantees of interfering in Israel’s internal affairs.
...because they are, or at least are seriously attempting to. Daniel Sokatch, NIF’s CEO, linked Abrams directly to efforts by the Netanyahu government to silence its critics, citing Abrams’ work on behalf of the International Legal Forum, an Israeli-government founded organization that combats the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Does that mean, Mr. Sokatch, that you stand with the PLO effort to unperson Israel? "David Abrams is a practitioner of what they call lawfare,
...true... which are bullying and inappropriate lawsuits that are meant to chill freedom of expression, essentially terrorize nonprofit organizations into silence or settlement, when they disagree with his extreme hardline vision of what Israel is and should be," Sokatch said in an interview.
Lawfare is an Alinsky-style tool intended to force an organization to live up to its and society’s rules. Interesting that the leader of the New Israel Fund resents its use against his organization. In his complaint, Abrams cites the NIF for actions that are commonplace among nonprofits. For example, he accuses NIF grantees of using the courts to lift a ban on some candidates or to ban others from running, but Jewish nonprofits have also sought to limit the electoral prospects of politicians and the ACLU itself has represented candidates seeking to be included on ballots.
In Israel? This lawsuit is about attempts to influence the politics in a foreign nation, not here at home in America. Abrams cites an NIF grantee for listing candidates who support its pledge to protect trees, but nonprofits routinely single politicians out for praise who embrace their initiatives. And he says calling a candidate a "racist" or a "fascist
...anybody you disagree with, damn them...
" amounts to electioneering, but that too is commonplace among US nonprofits.
Again, there is a huge difference between political actions at home and those imposed on the polity of a foreign country. "American Jewish groups do not hesitate to call out candidates who engage in anti-Semitic or racist speech," the AJC’s Stern said. "That’s pretty much across the spectrum."
In an email, Abrams maintained that it was rare for tax-exempt nonprofits to engage in electioneering, though he acknowledged the line isn’t always clear.
"The line between what is and is not electioneering can be fuzzy at times; and it appears to me that the New Israel Fund has clearly crossed that line," he wrote.
Abrams’ hoped-for $110 million penalty is unlikely. Typically, successful qui tam lawsuits result in penalties in the low seven figures. In any case, Hauss says that while he does not believe that Abrams’ case has a chance of succeeding, damage will still be done if Judge Gregory Woods of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York does not dismiss the case outright and allows costly pre-trial phases to go-ahead.
"Discovery is very costly to litigate, it’s very basic to an organization’s privacy," he said, referring to the stage where litigants exchange information that might be pertinent at trial. "The lawsuit itself is dangerous because I think it’s clearly designed to harass the New Israel Fund for its protected views."
Not if they are engaged in illegal interference in another country’s politics — hey, I winder if this wouod be appleid to George Soros’s little foreign adventures? For his part, Abrams, who runs a separate law practice, said he is dedicated to his cause because he is a "passionate Zionist."
"I would appreciate it if you would mention that I am strictly an amateur, i.e. nobody — domestic or foreign — provides any financial support for what I do," he said in an email. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2020-08-10 00:00||
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