US tax-exempt organization seizes Jewish women that choose assimilation

By Yaniv Reich on January 16, 2010

Where to begin? Regular readers of this blog will undoubtedly know about the severe problem of Israeli racism against Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. But this story leaves even me incredulous.

Meet Yad L’Achim (Hand to Brothers), a Jewish NGO whose goals, as described on their website, are to “fight with intensity for both the Russian Jewish immigrant who has become a regular at the missionary center in Afula and the Jewish woman who is married to an Arab. There are no ‘lost causes.’ Yad L’Achim will continue its rescue activities, together with its efforts at Jewish outreach, as long as the problem of missionaries and Jewish-Arab marriage persists.”

Founded by Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifshitz, this organization has a US branch, Yad L’Achim Peylei Israel, based in Brooklyn and listed with the IRS as a public charity to which one can give donations with 50% tax deductibility.

Lifshitz explains the organization’s motives in more detail on his chairman page:

“To our great sorrow, the phenomenon of Jewish girls getting involved with Arabs has reached startling proportions. . . . I’m sure you’ll find the information presented here to be eye-opening. It’s important that you not only become aware, but that you get involved. We must all raise our voices to demand legislation that puts an end to missionary activity and assimilation in Israel! Jewish girls are not free for the taking and must not become enslaved to Arab men.”

The level of racist hatred on the website is simply mind-blowing.

The organization’s background page, for example, describes their focus on assimilation and their dedicated Anti-Assimilation Department.

This department deals with women and teenage girls who have become involved with Arab men. In most cases, these relationships lead to marriage, which then deteriorate into violence. Among the many serious problems that result from such relationships is the identity of the children. They are Jews, but are raised as Arabs. Thus, entire generations are being lost to the Jewish people.

[…]

Though it was once thought that this could not be a problem in a Jewish country, not even for the secular, the tragic facts show an increasing number of Jewish girls getting involved with foreign workers and, even more so, with Arab men. Indeed, Yad L’Achim gets some 1,000 calls a year reporting such cases. Our Anti-Assimilation department responds to all such calls.

Military adventurism to “rescue” Jewish girls from assimilation

A number of these thousand calls per year result in “military-like rescues from hostile Arab villages and setting the women up in ’safe’ houses around the country, where they can build new lives for themselves.”

In the description of these military methods, the website explains how “Yad L’Achim’s activists literally risk their lives to rescue the women from hostile villages. These operations are organized and run by veterans of elite IDF combat units and require careful planning.”

When we press [“H”, the head of Yad L’Ahim’s rescue unit] for some insight into what it’s like to enter hostile Arab villages to extract Jewish women, he prefers to speak of the team effort that contributes to Yad L’Achim’s success. A: “I’m not alone in this,” says H., a former member of an elite combat unit in the Israeli army. “There’s a whole team of volunteers who work with me. Each member of the team plays a crucial role. In some cases they receive a just few hours’ notice. They leave their families and businesses and put all their energies into getting a Jewish woman out of an Arab village, at risk to their own lives.” Q: What’s it like in the moments before they enter the village? A: “Before we get to that point, I’ve sat with our staff and pored over updated maps of the area. We have to be able to get in and out of the village, together with a frightened Jewish woman who often has a child or two. We’ve got to know all the routes in and out of the village and be prepared for all eventualities. Only when we have all the answers do we embark on our mission. “Many times these preparations take place under pressure, but we have to keep our cool and act responsibly. “On the instructions of Harav Shalom Dov Lipshitz [founding chairman of Yad L’Achim], at the moment we enter the village we all say together, quietly, chapter 121 in Tehillim, which begins, ‘I raise my eyes upon the mountains; whence will come my help?’We say the last verse – ‘G-d will guard your departure and your arrival, from this time and forever’ – out loud. This gives us a feeling of confidence that we will succeed in our mission.” Q: Does he have a recent story he can share with us? “Two weeks ago, the hotline at our Jewish Women Rescue Division received a call from Umm el-Fahm, the Arab town in the Galilee. On the line was a hysterical young woman who had married an Israeli Arab and was desperate for a way out. She grew up in a town in central Israel, where she met the man and, against the advice of friends and family, married him and even converted to Islam. Once she took that fateful step, she was expected to be completely subservient to her husband, in keeping with Islamic practice. “In the hospital, after giving birth to her baby, she met a Jewish woman who could see that she was in distress and slipped her a piece of paper with the number of Yad L’Achim’s hotline. One day, an opportunity presented itself and she called. During the course of the conversation, it emerged that she had one day a month when she was allowed to leave home – the 28th, when the National Insurance Institute deposited her welfare payment into her bank account. We decided that that would be the day of the rescue. “On the designated day, we showed up at Umm el-Fahm in three cars, one to do the rescue, and the other two to provide back-up. Based on a predetermined signal we identified the young woman, dressed from head to toe in Arab garb, with her baby in her arms. In order not to raise suspicions, she had left home with nothing but several layers of clothes on the baby. “She entered the rescue car and we sped out of town. We took her to an apartment in a secret location that was equipped with food and clothing for mother and child, as well as warm, supportive social workers. “Despite the difficulties and dangers, the rescue is the easy part. Then comes the rehabilitation.” Q: Why does H. continue to put himself in danger in these missions? A: “It’s impossible to stand by when you see the kind of danger a young Jewish woman is in,” he answers, challenging the rest of us to do our part as well in rescuing these women in distress and their children.

Is this legal? According to Tsipora Gutman, the official in charge of Jewish-Arab marriages in Yad L’Achim headquarters in Bnei Brak, the answer is sensitive but everything gets approved by Yad L’Achim’s legal department.

‘Some thing worth knowing’, according to these racists

How serious of a problem is this (in the lunatic minds of these fundamentalists)?

The website’s “Some things worth knowing” provides their answer.

“It’ll never happen to me,” we like to say. But experience shows that it does happen, in the finest of families, and young girls should be made aware of the facts before they get involved in such relationships. Blood is thicker than water, and if the man is Muslim or Christian, sooner or later he will seek to undermine the relationship. It’s important to understand that the Koran relates to a husband’s treatment of his wife very differently from Western norms. What a western woman would regard as a breach of her rights, Muslim women find perfectly acceptable.

[…]

It should also be stressed that children who are born to a Jewish mother and a Muslim father suffer from a serious lack of basic identity. They are Jews in the eyes of the Arabs, and stigmatized, but have no knowledge of their Judaism.

Elsewhere, the website publishes an interview with Shifra, one of Yad L’Achim’s social workers. She explains to concerned Jewish parents how to prevent their lovely Jewish daughters from falling victim to predatory Arab men.

Q: Jewish outreach workers of ours who man a booth in a major city in Israel report seeing young Jewish girls regularly entering cars of Arabs and going with them into Arab villages. Can you help us understand what leads these girls to engage in such dangerous behavior? A: They are in distress, mostly on an emotional level. Some were victims of abuse as children, others witnessed violence at home between their parents. Many are the “black sheep” of the family and have never felt accepted at home. They grew up feeling that their parents didn’t understand them and didn’t love them. Unfortunately, such girls have low self-esteem and little confidence. Many come from a low socio-economic background; all their friends have the latest-generation cell phones and new clothes, while they have nothing. These girls connect up with Arab men who are seeking to “have a good time” in a way that isn’t acceptable in traditional Arab society. Even so, the girls don’t understand the danger they’re getting into? In the beginning there’s a lot of denial. They tell themselves, “Nothing will happen to me,” “He’s not like the others,” or “Why be racist?” Things are good for them at the start, and they don’t think about the long-term. Their Arab suitors pamper them, buy them things, drive them around in fancy cars and make their drab lives much more interesting. Q: Give us an idea of the scope of the problem. How many girls in Israel are involved with Arab men? A: At Yad L’Achim we’re getting more than 100 calls a month for help. The phenomenon, I’m sorry to say, is only getting worse. And we know that those who are crying out to us for help are just a drop in the bucket. Q: Tell us about the rescue operations from Arab villages. A: These rescues are coordinated with the army, police and welfare agencies. They don’t always involve extricating a girl from a remote Arab village. Sometimes it can be a girl or a woman trapped in an apartment in the center of Haifa or Tel Aviv-Jaffa, which have large Arab populations.

In the Arutz Sheva article on one of Yad L’Achim’s recent “rescues”, the recent story is told of a Jewish mother escaping from Gaza with her children, who would be re-given Hebrew names now that they live in Israel. The organization carefully coordinated this escape with the army and with Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas party).

One IDF official told Yad L’Achim: “I donate to your organization regularly and I feel that it is in that merit that I was privileged to be able to participate in this rescue today.”

Ending tax-deductible support for such overt racism

Although I am no expert on non-profit tax law, I would be willing to wager that the activities of this NGO fall well outside the acceptable range of activities granted charity status by the IRS. As always, I encourage people to conduct their own research into this organization and its shady activities. And if you find out anything interesting, please leave a comment and/or write me directly. I would love to know more about this disgusting group.

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