ORWELL REVISITED

In the land where black is white and white is black, last month the JFNA Board (or at least the few Board members who participated in the Conference Call meeting)  approved a Resolution extending the JFNA/JAFI/JDC 2010 Agreement. You know, the one that JFNA breached from the outset. Yeah, that one. Well, after the vote, JFNA couldn't wait to get the victory message out -- here is how the Resolution was characterized:

"Historic Partners' Unrestricted Allocations Established for Upcoming Year"

Really? How's that? Can the Jewish Agency and the Joint now count on a sum certain core allocation through JFNA? Can these "historic partners" count on JFNA for anything? If you bother to read the narrative that accompanied this Title, you learned that the Board resolved " to maintain our current allocation structure in accordance with the guidelines set out in the..." 2010 Agreement. And, that would have been fine but (1) there were no "allocation guidelines" in that Agreement and (2) only a fan of Orwell would note that JFNA now characterizes the Agreement that it has breached and breached again as "the JAFI/JDC/JFNA funding agreement." A better description -- the JFNA/JAFI/JDC defunding agreement.

That one paragraph "update" on this meaningless resolution should have been enough...but someone at JFNA (hmmm, I wonder whom that might have been?) didn't think so. Only a few hours later, over the same ridiculous title came five paragraphs of prose in a Leadership Briefing. This included a one paragraph quote from...the Board Chair asserting, among other things "...we want to be sensitive to the needs of the Jewish Agency and JDC regarding their own planning and budgeting processes." Manning is surely the mistress of irony, isn't she?

George Orwell sleeps well tonight. JAFI and JDC should not.

Also, in an Orwellian act of almost unheard of juvenile pettiness, JFNA has deleted my e-mail address from its distribution list for its Briefings, alerts etc.  Ahhh, it's time for these children to go home, isn't it? Kind of reminds me of the actions of "Palestinian leaders" who, the Gatestone Institute reported, stand accused "...of waging a campaign of intimidation...against journalists, bloggers and...opponents..." 

Rwexler