[rad-green] The Rise and Fall of The Israel Project -- Jewish Currents

*https://jewishcurrents.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-israel-project/
<https://jewishcurrents.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-israel-project/>*



*Jewish Currents          February 18, 2020 *
[image: image.png]




*Josh Block, former CEO of The Israel Project. Photo: The TowerThe Rise and
Fall of The Israel Projectby Alex Kane*

*THE ISRAEL LOBBY *is in trouble. Until recently, support for Israel from
both political parties was considered ironclad. But the Democratic Party is
beginning to change, and its presidential frontrunner, Bernie Sanders,
wants to condition US military aid on Israel respecting Palestinian human
rights.

To stem this trend, groups like the newly formed Democratic Majority for
Israel (DMFI)
<https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/democratic-majority-israel-dmfi/>are
trying to frame support for Israel as a natural part of a progressive
agenda. But the downfall of The Israel Project (TIP), a once-influential
pro-Israel group that counted prominent Democrats as top supporters, offers
a sobering lesson for groups like DMFI. Once dubbed
<https://world.time.com/2013/11/11/israel-remains-suspicious-as-iran-nuclear-talks-stall/>
“Israel’s
most effective media advocacy organization” by *TIME* magazine, TIP closed
<https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Israel-Projects-closes-its-offices-597477> its
doors last August
<https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-behind-the-scenes-of-the-israel-project-collapse-as-it-shutters-jerusalem-office-1.7612478>
after
its funding dried up, with Democratic donors fleeing the organization
because of its advocacy against the Iran nuclear deal, Barack Obama’s
foremost foreign policy achievement.

TIP’s decline reflects a new reality confronting Israel’s supporters in
Washington. The group found it impossible to balance peddling Benjamin
Netanyahu’s narrative with remaining influential in Democratic circles. At
its height, TIP had deep enough pockets to publish its own news articles,
take journalists on tours of Israel, host briefings with top Israeli
officials, and feed newspaper editorial boards with a steady stream of
pro-Israel talking points—activities that helped the group forge
relationships with mainstream journalists and ensure that the Israeli
government’s perspective would be broadcast to millions of Americans. Its
abrupt closure left Washington without any comparable organization with
true bipartisan reach.

Right before TIP’s closure, I obtained a cache of documents from inside the
organization that reveals its activities in stark detail. It offers a
blueprint for how Israel lobby groups work to shape the mainstream media
narrative, combat Palestinian rights activism and diplomacy with Iran, and
use their own media outlets and social networks to spread pro-Israel
propaganda. At the same time, the closing of TIP shows the limits of those
tactics when trying to appeal to a bipartisan audience.

*IN THE EARLY 2000s,* there was no organized progressive base capable of
challenging the US–Israel relationship, and so attracting Democratic
support for a pro-Israel group was a much simpler task. “It was easier at
the time to be liberal and staunchly pro-Israel. Palestinians had been
unfairly portrayed as being so anti-American that they were dancing in the
streets about 9/11, which was nonsense,” said Mitchell Plitnick, a Middle
East policy analyst and former program director of Foundation for Middle
East Peace.

In 2002, as the Second Intifada raged, TIP was founded by Jennifer Laszlo
Mizrahi, a Democratic operative. She pitched TIP to funders as a way to
ensure that Israeli views on the Middle East were integrated into
mainstream journalism. To that end, TIP worked with journalists around the
world, from Europe to Latin America to the Middle East, bringing them to
Israel on delegations, sending out fact sheets and talking points, and
often connecting them directly to Israeli officials. Members of both
parties in Congress, among them Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Republican
Sens. Susan Collins and Mark Kirk, were on TIP’s advisory board.

Under Laszlo Mizrahi, TIP attracted the support of big donors like Seth
Klarman, a prolific donor to both parties and a hedge fund billionaire who
gave the group about $6 million in total from 2004–2015; Paul Singer,
another hedge fund billionaire who has bankrolled the Republican Party, and
who donated over $5 million to TIP beginning in 2012; and Lennert Leader, a
former AOL chief executive and donor to Republicans and, to a lesser
extent, Democrats, who gave $1.7 million from 2006–2016, according to tax
documents and a separate document listing TIP’s biggest donors.

TIP also had help from thousands of small donors—including some who worked
for the Israeli government. Officials who worked at the Israeli Embassy in
DC, at Israel’s consulate in Aruba, and at the government agency Israel
Bonds cumulatively contributed over $2,000 to TIP between 2005–2008. While
that’s a small sum of money compared to TIP’s large donors, it reflected
TIP’s close working relationship with Israeli government officials, such
that they felt compelled to personally donate to the organization. One
former TIP employee, who requested anonymity to speak critically about a
former employer, said that TIP stayed in close contact with Israel’s
ambassadors to the US, Ron Dermer and Michael Oren, and often set up
meetings between foreign diplomats and top Israeli officials, up to and
including Netanyahu.

In spite of her success as a fundraiser, Laszlo Mizrahi left TIP in 2012.
“I was completely exhausted,” she said. “I just could not do it anymore. I
ran a 24/7/365 newsroom for 10 years. I needed to be with my kids.”

According to a former employee I spoke with, some donors saw her departure
as an opportunity to turn the group into a right-wing attack machine.
Laszlo Mizrahi did not insert TIP into the middle of partisan fights over
Middle East policy, and did not attack prominent Democrats who strayed from
the pro-Israel line. But that changed when TIP hired Josh Block, a
pugnacious veteran of the Clinton administration and former spokesperson
for AIPAC, to replace Laszlo Mizrahi as CEO.

After leaving AIPAC, and before joining TIP, Block spent time working with
Lanny Davis
<https://thinkprogress.org/meet-josh-block-lobbyist-for-foreign-human-rights-abuser-bd3da5be5fc1/>,
former White House counsel to Bill Clinton, at a lobbying firm that defended
<https://thinkprogress.org/meet-josh-block-lobbyist-for-foreign-human-rights-abuser-bd3da5be5fc1/>
known
human rights abusers like the Honduran government that took power following
a 2009 coup. In 2011, Block led a campaign
<https://www.salon.com/2012/01/19/the_smear_campaign_against_cap_and_media_matters_rolls_on/>
to
smear as antisemites writers at the Democratic Party-aligned media sites
*ThinkProgress* and *Media Matters *who were critical of Israel.

Block continued to focus on giving journalists access to Israeli officials,
and publishing and disseminating pro-Israel fact-sheets and reports. But
where Lazslo Mizrahi had devoted resources to address Russian, Latin
American, and Chinese perceptions of Israel, Block shut down most of TIP’s
global operations and shifted the organization’s focus to the Washington
debate. Unlike Lazslo Mizrahi, Block came out strongly against Obama’s Iran
policy, and repeatedly slammed Obama’s opposition to Israeli settlements.

“The Israel Project under Block’s leadership became hyper-partisan and
vitriolic to anyone who questioned not only the pro-Israel line, but the
pro-Netanyahu pro-Likud line,” said Eli Clifton, a co-founder of the Quincy
Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a journalist who has long covered
Block. (Clifton was one of the *ThinkProgress* writers attacked by Block as
antisemitic.)

Block, who led the organization from 2012 until its demise, did not respond
to a request for an interview.

*THE CACHE OF DOCUMENTS* I obtained provides more details of TIP’s
activities under Block, which reflect the pro-Israel Jewish establishment’s
obsessions in recent years: media coverage of Israel; the Boycott,
Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement; and how communities of color feel
about the Jewish state.

One document, a September 2016 report to the Jewish Community Youth
Foundation, appealed for support for TIP’s “Intellicopter” program, in
which TIP paid for journalists and diplomats to tour Israel by sky. TIP
boasted of its success in giving an “Intellicopter” tour to CNN
international correspondent Will Ripley. “The impact was immediate, with
Ripley tweeting to his 20,000 followers about the flight
<https://twitter.com/willripleyCNN/status/697058904732209152> and the
insight the tour gave into the country’s accomplishments and contributions
<https://twitter.com/willripleyCNN/status/697086165250416640>,” the
document said. TIP also connected Ripley to Israelis who live on the border
with Gaza and to an expert on tunnel warfare.

Ripley went on to produce a CNN report
<https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2016/02/12/israel-gaza-tunnels-collapse-ripley-pkg.cnn/video/playlists/gaza-conflict/>
about
Palestinian militant group Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza. No context about why
Hamas might be digging tunnels, or about Israel’s devastating blockade
against Gaza, was given in the report, nor did CNN disclose that the report
was the result of a tour given by a pro-Israel organization. For TIP, the
report was a victory: “It’s accurate. It’s compelling. And it wouldn’t have
happened without the Intellicopter tour that enabled this reporter to get
the facts,” TIP told the foundation. (Ripley did not respond to a request
for comment.)

In one document, TIP appealed to the Myra Reinhard Family Foundation to
support *The Tower* <http://www.thetower.org/magazine/>, the group’s
attempt at producing pro-Israel media directly. They asked for $50,000 to
support their *Tower* fellows program—run by Block, *Tower* editor David
Hazony (the brother of prominent Israeli right-wing political theorist
Yoram Hazony
<https://theintercept.com/2019/05/05/israel-virture-of-nationalism-book/>),
and Aiden Pink, a former associate editor of *Tower* who is now an editor
at the *Forward*—which would identify “the most talented” pro-Israel
student writer-activists and bring between 10 and 15 of them to Washington
to “[equip] them for the real-world challenges of defending Israel.”

TIP also portrayed itself as being a crucial part of the effort to pass
state laws that crack down on the BDS movement by prohibiting government
contracts from going to individuals or entities that support boycotting
Israel. In a 2017 grant proposal to the Blavatnik Family Foundation for
$36,000, TIP said: “Iowa and Alabama . . . joined Illinois
<http://www.thetower.org/2050-anti-bds-measure-passes-illinois-legislature-102-0-heads-to-governor-for-signature/>
, South Carolina
<http://www.thetower.org/2126-south-carolina-governor-signs-anti-boycott-bill/>
, Arizona
<http://www.thetower.org/3114-arizona-law-bars-state-from-contracting-companies-that-boycott-israel/>
, Georgia
<http://www.thetower.org/3150-georgia-passes-bill-banning-state-from-contracting-with-entities-that-boycott-israel/>
, Florida
<https://www.facebook.com/theisraelproject/posts/10154963791672316>, Indiana
<https://www.facebook.com/theisraelproject/posts/10154823609857316>, and
Colorado to bring to nine the number that have adopted anti-boycott
legislation. TIP played a key role in coordinating messaging for pro-Israel
coalition [sic] in each state, developing and distributing talking points
for our partners’ use.” (A handful of these laws have been struck
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-judge-strikes-down-texas-anti-bds-law>
 down
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/federal-court-blocks-anti-bds-law-arizona>
by
federal judges who ruled
<https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/first-judge-blocks-kansas-law-aimed-boycotts-israel>
that
they violate the First Amendment.)

Worried about slipping support
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-poll-shows-support-for-israel-plummeting-among-u-s-liberals-millennials-and-women-1.6594182>
for
Israel in communities of color, in September 2016 TIP requested $250,000
over three years from the Jewish National Fund’s Boruchin Israel Education
and Advocacy Center in order to develop strategies to improve Israel’s
standing in minority communities. Noting that the Movement for Black Lives
platform <https://policy.m4bl.org/invest-divest/> had castigated Israel,
TIP promised to lead an initiative to bolster support among communities of
color with outreach efforts, polling to understand attitudes on Israel,
tours to Israel for prominent minority reporters and opinion writers, and
coordination of pro-Israel op-eds from progressives and civil rights
activists.

How much impact these propaganda efforts had on Americans’ perceptions of
Israel is unclear, but they do show how TIP tried to tailor a pro-Israel
message to mainstream and progressive audiences. In their messaging against
BDS, TIP claimed the Palestinian-led movement discriminated against
Israelis on the basis of national origin—bigotry that they wagered would
offend liberals, especially those concerned with antisemitism—and their
outreach to communities of color was a clear attempt to make inroads into a
key part of the Democratic Party base.

But pro-Israel messaging was always going to be a hard sell to
progressives, especially when the product was a government helmed by a
hard-right leader, Netanyahu. TIP itself recognized how much of a problem
it was that they were associated with the right-wing.

“When we hear that some see us as ‘right wing’—too close to Bibi, too close
to the GOP—we sit up and listen. We can’t be the ‘media hub’ of the
pro-Israel community if we’re seen as shills for the right,” one document,
a draft of remarks Block planned to make to TIP’s board in late 2016, reads.

But the internal contradictions of trying to sell right-wing Israeli
policies to Democrats was impossible to overcome, eventually leading to the
group’s demise as its funding flow slowed.

*TOP DONORS* like Singer continued to give to TIP, but others, like
Klarman, had stopped giving by 2016. It’s unclear why Klarman stopped
donating. “It’s our policy to not comment on any former grantee,” a Klarman
Family Foundation spokesperson said. But Klarman’s politics have shifted in
the Trump era. Where he once largely funded Republicans, by 2018 he
was publicly
declaring
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/15/opinion/sunday/seth-klarman-donations-trump-democrats.html>
he
would fund Democrats, a result of his disgust with Trump. (Donor data
<https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=desc&q=Seth+Klarman&sort=D&type=donors>
shows
that last year, the vast majority of his campaign giving went to Democrats.)

Several foundations that once funded both liberal causes and TIP had
already stopped funding TIP after Block came on board. The
Shapiro-Silverberg family foundation, a donor to causes like Planned
Parenthood, gave TIP $50,000 every year starting in 2008, but stopped after
2012, the year Block was hired. Similarly, the Gould-Shenfield family
foundation, another Jewish foundation that funded liberal causes and TIP
alike, gave TIP $6,000 in total since 2003, but stopped funding them in
2012. (Neither foundation responded to requests for comment on why they
stopped giving to TIP.)

One 2016 document shows TIP falling short in their fundraising. From
October 2015–September 2016, donors had pledged to give the group about
$5.1 million. But TIP had only taken in about $4.5 million, leaving them
$600,000 short. Tax documents illuminate TIP’s funding troubles in stark
terms. In 2016, the group brought in over $8.5 million in donations. By
2017, that number had dropped to about $5 million. Ultimately, that kind of
funding shortfall became too much to bear, and TIP closed its doors last
August, a stunning blow to an organization that in 2011 brought in nearly
$20 million dollars in a single year.

A key reason behind TIP’s fundraising troubles was their aggressive
lobbying campaign against the Obama administration’s signature foreign
policy initiative, the Iran nuclear deal
<https://jewishcurrents.org/the-iran-deals-opponents-helped-get-us-here/>.
In 2016, as the administration implemented the deal, TIP worked hard to
derail US–Iran diplomacy by feeding talking points to newspaper editorial
boards. TIP would ultimately claim credit for influencing 20 editorials
published that fall in newspapers from *The New York Daily News*
<https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/mullahs-missiles-article-1.2772004>
to *The
New York Post*
<https://nypost.com/2016/08/28/why-americas-foes-feel-safe-playing-chicken-with-the-navy/>
 to *The Richmond Times-Dispatch*
<https://www.richmond.com/opinion/our-opinion/article_634d8e53-51de-5292-a9de-5e9498754968.html>
 to *The Boston Herald*
<https://www.bostonherald.com/2016/08/04/editorial-now-redefining-ransom/>.
None of these newspapers disclosed their conversations with TIP, even as
all of them railed against decisions like the release of $1.7 billion the
United States had owed Iran for decades. In one document, TIP boasted of
“using poll-tested messaging [and] traditional and online media
dissemination” to create an “‘echo chamber’” of “opposition” to the Iran
deal.

The group had long attracted the support of both Democrats and Republicans,
reflecting longstanding Washington consensus that support for Israel should
be kept above the partisan fray. But Democratic donors stopped giving to
TIP in part “because we attacked the Iran deal,” explained Lior Weintraub,
the head of TIP’s Israel office, in an interview with *Haaretz*
<https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-behind-the-scenes-of-the-israel-project-collapse-as-it-shutters-jerusalem-office-1.7612478>.
In May 2018, Block praised
<https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/A-new-American-Israeli-Arab-alliance-in-the-Middle-East-556231>
Donald
Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran deal, a decision even staunchly
pro-Israel Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer disagreed with. Its Republican
donors, meanwhile, began shifting their donations to more nakedly
right-wing organizations, Weintraub added. (Weintraub did not return my
request for comment.)

“Once Trump was in the office, [pro-Israel donors on the right] saw a
friend. So what do you need The Israel Project for? They got the
presidency,” a second former TIP employee, who requested anonymity, told me.

TIP’s closing shouldn’t have come as a shock. As Israel became a partisan
issue in the Obama and Trump eras, TIP got caught in tough political
headwinds. The Democratic Party that TIP once appealed to is a much
different apparatus. While Democratic establishment figures like House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi still mostly avoid criticizing Israel, the new
left-wing stars of Congress, like Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, have
been much bolder.
<https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-is-not-an-ally-ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib-criticize-jewish-state-for-barring-their-entry>


Meanwhile, AIPAC is flailing in its own attempts to ensure that Democrats
remain aligned with the Israel lobby. In early February, AIPAC
published Facebook
advertisements
<https://www.jta.org/2020/02/08/united-states/aipac-apologizes-for-ad-that-said-radical-democrats-were-maybe-a-greater-threat-than-isis>
that
suggested that Tlaib, Omar, and Rep. Betty McCollum, another Israel critic
in Congress, were “maybe more sinister” than ISIS because of their concerns
over Israel’s human rights abuses. In response, McCollum published
<https://mccollum.house.gov/media/press-releases/mccollum-statement-hate-speech-makes-aipac-hate-group>
a
remarkable statement taking aim at AIPAC, calling
<https://www.972mag.com/betty-mccollum-aipac-palestinian-rights/> the
Israel lobby group an outright “hate group”—language no other member of
Congress had ever dared to use.

While AIPAC is in no danger of collapsing, its current troubles in
appealing to Democrats were foreshadowed by TIP’s failure to maintain
influence with liberals. “The Democratic Party is no longer solidly aligned
on what the US relationship with Israel should be. There’s an open
questioning of what it should look like,” said Clifton. “The Israel Project
painted themselves into a corner. They’ve become an interesting symbol for
how the pro-Netanyahu, pro-Likud lobby is not welcome in the Democratic
Party.”

*Alex Kane* is a New York-based freelance journalist who focuses on
Israel/Palestine, US foreign policy, and civil liberties issues. Follow him
on Twitter @alexbkane <https://twitter.com/alexbkane>.

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