NETANYAHU'S SISTER-IN-LAW LAUNCHES "ANTI-LEFT" FUND

A relative of Benjamin Netanyahu's has joined forces with Prof. Robert Aumann for an interesting project:

NEW YORK (JTA) -- A Nobel laureate and the sister-in-law of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are heading a group of intellectuals starting a philanthropic fund to combat what they describe as a "left-wing assault" on Israeli public opinion.

Robert Aumann, a Hebrew University mathematician who won the 2005 Nobel Prize in economics, and Daphne Netanyahu, an Israeli law professor, trotted out the plans for the Israel Independence Fund last week in New York at a board meeting of the Zionist Organization of America.

According to Aumann and Netanyahu, the fund would dole out grants to nongovernmental organizations in Israel with right-wing bents in an effort to offset the plethora of left-wing groups that have cropped up in the Jewish state over the past several decades.

These left-wing groups have worked with Israeli Arabs and other communities to help turn Israeli public opinion away from Zionism, Aumann and Netanyahu said.

"Gradually the radical leftists, their views, became more extreme and their views became more mainstream," Netanyahu said. "They have views that Golda Meir, who was considered a dove, wouldn't even hear, like giving a state to the Palestinians inside of the State of Israel. She would have turned red. And suddenly it is mainstream.

"What actually is happening in Israel is a slow but not so slow, very planned attack on Israeli public mind, and the attack is coming from the left, and they are controlling all of the important posts that create public opinion and discourse."

Organizers of the Israel Independence Fund are seeking $500,000 in startup money, then hope to raise $5 million in its first year of operation. They are awaiting not-for-profit 501c3 status in the United States, for which they applied seven months ago.

I think this is exactly what's needed now, to launch a counter-fund program to combat left-wing think-tanks, and kudos to Netanyahu's relative for helping to found it.