IDF soldiers practicing guerrilla warfare. Photo: IDF.

Over the past few months, Israel has come under pressure from places it should not have to worry about. We already know how the European Union has ramped up its efforts to boycott Israel with its labeling initiative of “settlement” products. The Obama administration remains a thorn, most recently sending hints that Israel will no longer be secure at the United Nations, and reinterpreting a 1995 proclamation to characterize Israeli products and services from Judea and Samaria as being from occupied territory.

It should come as no surprise that many of the groups targeting Israel receive backing from the New Israel Fund, which supports the boycott of Israel.

It can now be revealed that NIF money supports the alarming stories in the Local Call online magazine as well.

In it, writer Lilach Ben-David published an article on February 7 titled, “The time has come to boot the word terrorist out of the lexicon.” Ben-David then uses the term “terrorist” to describe both Netanyahu and the IDF, and suggests that what Israel does to protect and deter actual terrorists is terrorism, while Palestinians who kill police and military personnel are not committing terrorist acts.

She makes the argument: “The meaning of the word ‘terrorist’ is a ‘person who undertakes acts of violence against innocent civilians in order to achieve his political goals.’ Thus a person who only targets soldiers and policemen is not a terrorist.”

In her explanation, Ben-David suggests, “The prime minister’s persistence in wreaking havoc and wide-scale destruction throughout the Gaza Strip and deliberately targeting civilians, in order to force Hamas to surrender during the extended massacre in Gaza in the summer of 2014… turns our prime minister into a terrorist and the Israeli army into the largest and strongest terror organization in the Middle East.”

Ms. Ben-David is not the only writer to splash the pages of Local Call with such hateful comments. John Brown, in his opinion piece on the current wave of Palestinian terror, says Netanyahu is using the current violence to justify killing anyone who protests against his policies: “A controllable level of violence in Jerusalem is actually good for the right. The goal is to collect blood, blood that can be sold to the public as an appropriate national response, and this can certainly be achieved by shooting children…”

Then there is the piece by Rami Younis, comparing Israel to the Nazis.  He says, “…While Palestinians are struggling against the occupation and its injustices, Israelis are trying to maintain the propaganda machine in the post-Mufti-Hitler era…The attempts to paint these acts of violence (called ‘terror attacks’ in Zionist-speak) as ISIS-style terrorism constitutes not only another injustice by the Occupation, but more proof that ISIS’s crimes are serving Israel.”

UJA leader Alisa Doctoroff, Murray Koppelman, Karen Adler and others, along with donors such as the Moriah Fund, the Leichtag Foundation and the Rosenzweig Coopersmith Foundation, continue to stand with the New Israel Fund — and feed the very hate that Israel’s enemies use in their fight to delegitimize the Jewish state.