Prof. Steinberg had said he focused on such groups as Amnesty International, Oxfam, War on Want, Not In My Name, as well as the New Israel Fund.

“We are Israel lovers,” Yaari told the Jewish Tribune last week, in response to Prof. Steinberg’s accusations to the contrary.

The New Israel Fund says it is an Israeli-based Non-Government Organization dedicated to fighting social, economic and political inequality within Israel.

Nevertheless, it has opponents such as Steinberg, the chair of political studies at Bar Ilan University, the founder of the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation, and the executive director of NGO Monitor.

In a recent Toronto address to the Beth Avraham Yoseph synagogue in Thornhill, and as reported in the Sept. 18 issue of the Jewish Tribune, Steinberg  accused many NGOs – specifically mentioning the New Israel Fund – of having an agenda harmful to the interests of Israel despite its faÁade of being a human rights organization.

“Gerald Steinberg is entitled to his opinion and I respect it, but on the other hand I totally disagree with him,” Yaari said, after speaking to an audience here at the Temple Emanu-El Beth Shalom. “I believe that the work he sees as anti-Israel is very pro-Israel,” Yaari said.

Yaari said he understands why Steinberg and others might consider the New Israel Fund’s work as being anti-Israel because in their fight for a better, more just Israel, they are sometimes forced to criticize their country’s actions, including those of its military.

“No one wants to see an Israeli officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner for no reason, I’m sure,” said Yaari, himself a retired Israeli air force major, former combat pilot, with a master’s degree in public administration from the JFK School of Government at Harvard and a former reporter, editor, anchor and producer at the Israeli Broadcast Authority. “The cost is that it will be seen by the world; it is a very terrible cost but sometimes it’s the way you have to go.”

The New Israel Fund has also received criticism from Steinberg for its support of Arab Israelis.  

“We are supporting Arab groups because Arabs are citizens of Israel,” he said.
“I don’t think that Steinberg proposes to strip them of their citizenship. We don’t want to have two classes of citizens in Israel, one that has all the rights and one that only has part of the rights.”

Yaari believes that discrimination against Arabs will only cause more problems for Israel. However, the New Israel Fund’s fight to give them equal rights is too often equated with antisemitism.
 
“I don’t think that antisemites need any encouragement to hate Israel,” he said. “Antisemitism was there before the New Israel Fund and probably will be after.”
Yaari’s main focus was talking about education.

“Everything is education,” said Yaari.

For Yaari, a lack of education is the main root of inequality among Israelis. He believes that if every child is given access to proper elementary, secondary and even university education, then Israel at 70 will be a place of greater equality than Israel at 60.

His efforts were recognized recently when Tzipi Livni, the woman likely to become Israel’s next prime minister, met with him to discuss education.