Student group attacks leftists in revised Yizkor

JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Israeli student group distributed a Yizkor memorial prayer with an additional passage that attacks leftists and conscientious objectors.

Im Tirtzu, a right-wing grass-roots group that calls itself the "Second Zionist Revolution," distributed 15,000 pamphlets in Israeli synagogues in time for Memorial Day, Haaretz reported Monday.

"Let the people of Israel remember those from within it, flesh from their flesh, who participated in claims against its officers and soldiers," the additional passage reads. "Those who during the time of the battle to defend Israel stood at protests and called their soldiers war criminals. Remember those in deep darkness befriended the worst enemies of Israel in order to harm the holy ones delivered their souls for the sake of the nation."

The pamphlets are part of Im Tirtzu’s renewed attack on the New Israel Fund, which it accused in a report released in February of funding most of the groups that made claims against the Israeli army that appear in the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war in the winter of 2009. The report accuses Israel and Hamas of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

A controversial Im Tirtzu advertisement that ran in several newspapers in February showed a caricature of Naomi Chazen, a former member of Knesset and head of the New Israel Fund, with a horn on her forehead for the word keren, which means both a fund and a horn in Hebrew.

An Im Tirtzu ad published Sunday for Israel’s Memorial Day read, "We remember, they persecute. Fact: The New Israel Find betrayed IDF officers to international courts."

In a strange turn of events, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which is funded in part by the New Israel Fund, is currently representing Im Tirtzu in a case in which ACRI says the student group’s freedom of expression has been curtailed in its campaign against the New Israel Fund.