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The New Israeli Government and Ultra-Orthodox Parties – More of the Same and It Isn’t Good

03 Sunday May 2015

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We Jews are good at worrying, and I’m worried.

When speaking about the state of Israel, American Jews always need to remember that we’ve chosen to live here and not there and so we must be deferential to our Israeli brothers and sisters who are on the front lines and not second-guess them. They are the ones who must make the tough decisions and live with the consequences. They have done so in free elections last March and are now forming a new ruling coalition government.

Though Israelis have every right living in a democracy to choose their leaders, what Israel does affects Jews living in the Diaspora too, and it is on this basis that we living here have a right to speak and be part of the conversation. This conversation, of course, isn’t easy. We are, after all, a complicated people living in a complicated time, and Israel is situated in a dangerous region of the world.

Though the Israeli right-wing prevailed in this last election, I don’t believe that liberal Zionism is dead. Liberal Zionist values are still held by the majority of Israel’s political center, center-right and center-left. Israelis still want a Jewish democratic state. Though racism and anti-democratic trends are intensifying in certain segments of Israeli society egged on by elements in political parties that will be part of the ruling coalition government, and extremism is growing, Israelis as a whole are neither racist nor extremist.

A free press and independent judiciary are still alive and well in Israel, and every issue is debated thoroughly out  in the open. Human rights organizations advocating and working on behalf of immigrants, asylum seekers, women’s rights, civil rights, religious freedom, democracy, and pluralism are doing their work without interference.

As he strives to form a government, Prime Minister Netanyahu is making deals with small parties in exchange for their support. My fear is what those deals mean for the health of Israeli society, its open Jewish character and its democratic institutions all of which will affect continuing support for Israel in the international community and in the United States, and that support has a direct influence on Israel’s security.

The last Israeli ruling coalition government, for the first time in Israeli history, included no Orthodox religious parties. Consequently, progress was made in the Knesset to reduce the amount of money automatically granted to support ultra-Orthodox synagogues and yeshivot. The goal of that policy was to force thousands upon thousands of non-productive Hareidi students to learn general studies in order to be able to enter the Israeli work force and thus reduce the unfair financial burden carried by Israeli tax-payers having to support them and their very large families indefinitely.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has brought back into power the very ultra-Orthodox Religious Parties (i.e. Shas and United Torah Judaism) that opposed this policy thus representing a major step backwards and a threat to social and economic fairness and equality, religious pluralism, and diversity in Israeli society.

Hiddush, an Israeli organization committed to the separation of church and state in Israel, just published an analysis of what the new coalition agreements with the Ultra-Orthodox religious parties mean. Among its findings are:

1. 4 billion NIS of Israeli taxpayer money once again will be diverted to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students at a time when Israel’s middle class is squeezed and poverty in other sectors is increasing without equal redress. Unfair preferential and discriminatory use of public funds will be given to the Hareidi population, declared illegal by Israel’s High Court of Justice. Netanyahu’s agreement with these parties undermines efforts to reduce massive subsidies and removes incentives for yeshiva students to seek gainful earning potential and not rely on welfare thus handicapping them from integrating into an education-based workforce.

2. Public transportation – There is no public transportation available anywhere in the state of Israel on Shabbat and Holidays. Hiddush shows that public support (among the adult Jewish population) has reached an all-time high of 74% in favor of public transportation on Shabbat and Holidays including 72% of Likud voters (PM Netanyahu’s own party). This is important because the very people at the lowest end of the economic ladder who cannot afford a car are discriminated against. But the Orthodox parties are against it, and the current prohibition will likely continue.

These are but two consequences in bringing in the ultra-Orthodox parties back into the government. There will likely be more.

You can access Hiddush’s findings here:

1. “Hiddush analysis of new coalition agreement with United Torah Judaism”  

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=c2d9440b24&view=pt&search=inbox&th=14d0d0c8bfef89ae&siml=14d0d0c8bfef89ae

2. “74% of Israelis want to change the status Quo – What gives Israel its Jewish character? Is it liberty, justice and peace, as taught by the Hebrew Prophets, or is it the lack of public transportation on Shabbat, which greatly restricts the weakest sectors of Israeli society?” 

http://hiddush.org/article-12729-0-Support_for_public_transporation_on_Shabbat_at_highest_level_ever.aspx

As My Mother Disappears Before My Eyes

27 Monday Apr 2015

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As my mother nears her 98th birthday in June, the dementia that has consumed her brain is taking more and more of her away. It’s as if there’s been an invasion of a body snatcher.

My mother is, on the one hand, still there. She sounds, smells and feels the same. But increasingly, she has entered into oblivion.

In my last three visits, she didn’t know who I was – I, her son of 65 years.

In my visits these days, I try and discover where she is and what she thinks about and remembers. I’m no longer asking her if she knows who I am. She may indeed know, but I don’t think she easily remembers my name.

One of the tragedies of advancing dementia is the utter isolation that sufferers progressively experience as they move through the fog left by lost memory. It’s also difficult and painful for us who love them because we can’t help but grieve as we watch them disappear.

My mother’s world has become so very small. She had always lived an active and fully engaged life invigorated by family, friends, people, Jewish community, causes, and ideas. Then, she began to forget things. She couldn’t find the words that had once flowed so easily past her lips. She couldn’t recall the memories that made her who she was and defined her world. She didn’t know the names of the people she loved. And she couldn’t recognize anyone in the room.

My mother has always been exceptionally verbal, and though she still talks up a storm, her words are nearly impossible for me to understand, and I know her better than most people.

I’ve asked myself what is actually left, what remains of all that she was, learned and knew. Thankfully, certain things haven’t yet left her. She retains her essential sweetness, gentleness, kindness, generosity, and joy when she looks into my face and has some recognition that I’m an important and familiar person to her, but I wonder what the content of the familiarity is.

For those who suffer with dementia, it’s as if the life cycle has been reversed. They undergo a great unlearning, an unmaking of themselves, a reversion to a uncluttered brain – but this time, the mind is shutting down and not opening up.

Sometimes, nevertheless, my mother offers a pearl of wisdom. Last week she said, “We all have to love each other – for what else is there!?”

Because my mother can’t hear, can’t see and can’t walk, I sit very close to her when we interact, touch her constantly, look into her face from five or six inches away, and speak very loudly into her left ear, the better ear of the two. If I’m able to break through the fog of her confusion, she may know me, but most of the time I’m not sure that she does.

In being with people with dementia, it’s important for us to remember that when the mind goes our bodies carry powerful memories too that may remain. A mother never forgets the vibrations, smell and energy of her child, and I, her son, certainly have never forgotten my mother’s vibrations, smell and emotional presence.

After all the years, what’s left between her and me has come down to this – the purity of a love between a mother and a son. I cherish this and pray that she still does too.

Each time I leave her I kiss her and say directly into her ear: “Mom – I love you!”

“I love you too,” she always says.

I hope she knows that it’s ME who has spoken those words, and not just some stranger showing her love and kindness.

Yom Haatzmaut – Reflections 2015

22 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Who could have imagined 67 years ago that Israel would become as economically viable, politically and militarily strong, technologically advanced, and creatively cutting-edge as it is today?

Who would have dreamed that Israel’s Jewish population would grow from 600,000 souls in 1948 to nearly 6 million today?

Who would have thought that after having had to fight seven wars, endure two Intifadas and bear-up against ongoing terrorist attack that the Jewish state would remain democratic and free despite little peace with its neighbors and no resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

All told, even with her imperfections and serious challenges, Israel is a remarkable nation, testimony to the spirit, will, ingenuity, aspiration, creativity, and sacrifice of generations. Today Israel is like none other in the world, more culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse, more intellectually, artistically and academically productive. The depth and breadth of her accomplishments are nothing shy of breath-taking.

On the occasion of Israel’s 67th Independence Day, Jews the world over are well to take stock, celebrate her massive accomplishments, mourn and honor her dead, and ask what unique place the Jewish state holds in the innermost heart, mind and soul of the Jewish people.

This is no easy task. Permit me to offer some thoughts as I reflect on Israel’s meaning:

Israel is far more than a political refuge as envisioned by political Zionists. It is more than the flowering of the Jewish spirit as dreamed about by cultural Zionists. It is more than the fulfillment of Jewish memory and religious longing as experienced by the entirety of the Jewish people.

Israel starts with the land, with Jerusalem at its heart, for the land has been a key focus of Jewish consciousness for three millennia. The land of Israel is at the center of our history and is an essential element of our Jewish faith. But Israel is far more than land.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it this way in his moving volume Israel – An Echo of Eternity: “Israel reborn is an answer to the Lord of history who demands hope as well as action, who expects tenacity as well as imagination.” (p. 118) “The inspiration that goes out of Zion today is the repudiation of despair and the example of renewal.” (p. 134)

In this spirit the Zionists sought to create a new kind of a Jew, at home in the land, self-activated, self-realized, independent, creative, and free. They understood, however, the limitations of their state-building endeavor. Heschel said: “The State of Israel is not the fulfillment of the Messianic promise, but it makes the Messianic promise plausible.” (Ibid. p. 223)

In other words, the political state is not and cannot be regarded as an end in itself. Rather, the Jewish state represents a challenge and a promise that will rise or fall based on how our people and Israel’s government uses or misuses the power that comes with national sovereignty. With this in mind a Jewish state that was founded upon the principles of democracy and that is worthy of its great mission must challenge our individual and communal ethics, our nationalism, our humanity, and our faith.

May Israel be an or lagoyim, a light to the nations, and may her citizens and all the inhabitants of the land know justice and peace.

What We Jews Can Do In Their Name

19 Sunday Apr 2015

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We Jews are living this week between two significant holidays of commemoration. Last Wednesday evening and Thursday the Jewish world mourned those who perished in the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah. This Wednesday evening and Thursday we will mourn those who died defending the people and state of Israel on Yom HaZikaron.

The breadth and depth of the losses of the Jewish people in the Shoah (The 6 million plus 5 million others) and the land of Israel since 1860 (25,000 Jews killed with many more thousands injured and maimed) to our people confounds the mind and breaks the heart. It doesn’t matter whether we were alive or personally affected in our own families by the events that these holydays commemorate. Just knowing about them creates familial memory.

We are a people defined, in part, by memory. The good and noble deeds our families and forebears performed during their lives, upon their deaths, pass to us as zechut (merit), and we live in the after-glow of their accomplishments, decency and nobility, and we dwell in the shadow of their suffering and unjust deaths.

How ought we to remember our people’s history of suffering?

In the wake of so much tragic history, how ought we to understand our lives today?

What ought we do to emulate that which was most noble in their lives?

The Talmud teaches that miracles ceased with the Temple’s destruction, but since, miracles of another sort have occurred.

When we’re seen and heard for what we really are as Jews, is this not a miracle?

When we love our people and tradition fully, is this not a miracle too?

Now that the Jewish people has lost so many innocent and righteous men, women and children to violence and hate over time, what ought we to do in their memory?

We can speak in their place, and pray in their name.

We can do what they are no longer capable of doing and let our lives be an extension of theirs.

We can learn and live our people’s tradition, language and history since they can no longer learn, speak and carry forward the life of our people.

We can love and support the state and people of Israel because their hands and hearts have been stilled.

We can comfort others who grieve loss because they can no longer offer solace.

We can be happy since they can no longer laugh, love our children and all children because they can no longer love, and carry their memory and good deeds forward so they will be remembered and the world will become kinder, more just, and more peaceful in their name.

Zecher tzaddikim livracha! May the memory of the righteous among the Jewish people be a perpetual benediction.

Vote ARZA Slate Before April 30 in WZC Elections

17 Friday Apr 2015

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If you have not already done so, please click now onto this link https://www.reformjews4israel.org, register and vote for the ARZA Slate (i.e. the Association of Reform Zionists of America).

As a delegate on the ARZA Slate (I am #25), we America Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis and leaders of the Union for Reform Judaism represent 1.3 million American Jews.

Here is the complete Slate of ARZA Delegates: https://www.reformjews4israel.org/slate/

There is a one-time only administrative charge of $5 for young Jews (18-30) and $10 for Jews (over 30).

I love this video by a fellow ARZA delegate – great video from slate member Yael Dadoun!

Questions and Answers!!!!

What is the World Zionist Congress? The Parliament of the Jewish People representing all of world Jewry.

What is the ARZA Platform?

  • Support for gender equality in the State of Israel
  • Support for religious equality in the State of Israel
  • Support for peace through commitment to a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Why does it matter that you vote for ARZA?

ARZA currently holds 39% of the US representation in the World Zionist Congress based on the results of the last election for the WZC. Consequently, over the past five years $20 million has been given to the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ) to support its programs, congregations, rabbis, outreach, and social justice work. The Israeli government has also provided 4 new buildings for Reform communities around Israel because of our large American Reform Zionist representation.

The government of the state of Israel does not give any money directly to the Reform movement except through special programs. However, the government does fund generously orthodox schools and synagogues. This is not only unfair; it is a violation of the spirit of Israel’s own Declaration of Independence. We American Reform Zionists support our movement and others in Israel struggling through the courts to be treated equally under the law.

In the meantime, we must raise money to support our Israeli Reform movement, and our success in this WZC election is one sure way to do that.

Note that the Israeli Reform movement is a significant leader in support of the Israel Religious Action Center in Jerusalem and our 45 congregations, 2 kibbutzim, strong youth programs, nursery schools, Tali schools, and pre-military programs all over the country.

Our movement supports civil marriage unions in Israel without having to involve the Chief Rabbinate, egalitarianism at the Western Wall, anti-Racism laws, anti-Poverty activism, and many other social justice causes.

A vote for the ARZA slate will also deny funds for settlement building in the West Bank.

ARZA needs your vote and I am asking that you and every Jewish individual in your household register today at the above site, pay the $5 or $10 administrative fee depending on your age, and then vote for the ARZA Slate. Thank you in advance!

If you have trouble voting, please call (844) 413-2929 or email AZM@election-america.com

Rabbi John Rosove, Delegate – ARZA Slate #25

When an Unsure Jew Falls in Love with a Religious Christian

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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This week I spoke with a young man who was raised in my synagogue but who I haven’t seen since he became Bar Mitzvah. He is now 24 years old, kind, openhearted, intellectually superior, and well-educated. He is a grandchild of survivors of the Holocaust, feels Jewish in his heart, but has arrived at an important crossroad, which is why he called me.

He is engaged to be married to a young woman who seems to be his equal in heart, mind and soul. She is a religious Christian whose father is a pastor of a small evangelical church. For two years they have been in love. In that time they have talked deeply about God, faith, the soul, love, and marriage.

He acknowledged that he is not knowledgeable about Judaism. He said that he believes in God and that Jesus is “the son of God.” I asked, “Does this mean that you believe that Jesus’ ‘essence’ is fundamentally different from the essence of any other human being?”

Classic Christianity affirms that Jesus was both wholly divine and wholly human, whereas all other people are wholly human but not divine. My young friend acknowledged that though he believed that Jesus was a deeply unusual and inspired man (according to Paul and the Gospel writers), he did not believe that Jesus was “divine” any more than he or I are divine.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I had feared that he had become already a religious Christian.

I have studied Christianity seriously and respect it as a substantial faith tradition. However, I explained to my former student that I love my mother just as he loves his mother, but I am not required to love his mother, nor is he required to love mine. In this way, Christianity is not mine for all kinds of good reasons, just as Judaism does not belong to Christians for an equal number of good reasons.

I told my young friend that based on his understanding of Jesus, he was not a Christian, and that he owed it to himself and to his fiancé to understand not only Christianity as deeply as he can, but Judaism as deeply and as fully as he can as well. I intimated that he simply didn’t know enough to honestly turn away from his own 3500-year religious, ethical and cultural tradition and history and take on another religious faith without serious thought and study.

I told him that there are some people who were born Jewish who now claim to be “Messianic Jews,” that is, they identify with Jewish culture and ethics but have accepted Jesus as the “Christ Messiah.” Those people, I explained, are, truth to tell, no longer “Jewish” by any Jewish definition despite their claimed origins. They are Christians, pure and simple.

Jews believe that the messianic coming will occur only when peace, justice and compassion characterize all aspects of human affairs, and not before.

I also explained that the reason we Jews do not accept the idea of God incarnate is because such a notion is, according to all streams of Judaism, idolatrous. For Jews, God is always beyond comprehension, beyond form, beyond concept, beyond ideas. God is infinitely and eternally greater than anything that even the greatest minds and spirits can imagine or intuit. Though the idea of God incarnate was a brilliant theological innovation initiated by Paul of Tarsus and developed by the Gospel writers and early Church Fathers in order to help people understand that which is beyond comprehension, it is not, for us Jews a true Truth.

I told my young friend that, with respect, he needed to learn Judaism, and that both he and his fiancé needed to more fully understand each of their religious traditions and how they fundamentally differ from one another. I urged them to learn Judaism together, talk about everything honestly, openly and directly, and find a Jewish community in which to experience, as adults, the richness that Jewish religious life offers.

I recommended that they read a sermon I delivered on Rosh Hashanah in 2012 on intermarriage, its risks and dynamics, so that they could understand more fully the context in which my former student himself was living as an American Jew – See http://www.tioh.org/about-us/clergy/aboutus-clergy-clergystudy

I recommended, as well, two books that hopefully would stimulate their thinking and address the yearnings of their hearts and souls:

Christianity in Jewish Terms – Essays by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer. 2000. Westview Press. An exploration into the meaning of a set of Christian beliefs as understood by some of our most thoughtful Jewish scholars and thinkers.

God in Search of Man – by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Among the most important rabbinic figures of the 20th century. Rabbi Heschel was a profound theologian, philosopher, rabbinic and mystic scholar, poet, social activist, interfaith and Zionist leader.

I invited my friend to call me any time, that I cared about him and his family, and wished him only happiness and fulfillment.

Hunger in America– For Your Passover Seders

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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In the United States, there are 48.8 million Americans (32.6 million adults of whom 6 million are seniors, and 16.2 million children – equaling 16.7% of all American men, women, and children – nearly 1 in 6 – 14.5% of all American households) who are “food insecure,” defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a “lack of access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.”

There are many government programs and charitable organizations that seek to address the “temporary emergency” that these 48.8 million Americans face every day. MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger reports that in FY2011, the Federal government spent $94.8 billion in food and nutrition assistance programs, and America’s largest hunger-relief organizations spent $1.2 billion, and still nearly 49 million Americans today are food insecure. Clearly, neither the government nor charitable organizations have been able to feed all those in need.

During the Passover Seder we say “Let all who are hungry come and eat!”

How are we to respond to this mitzvah?

The answer isn’t just to give of our charitable dollars to the poor and hungry in our neighborhoods and communities, but to support local, state and national hunger policies that seek to to make it easier for poor working families and individuals to get the food and nutrition that they need.

MAZON offers a reading for our Seder meals with specifics on what we can actually do in the fulfillment of the mitzvah to feed the hungry.

Ha Lachma Anya

This is the bread of poverty and persecution that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. As it says in the Torah, “Seven days shall you eat matzot, the bread of poverty and persecution so that you may remember that you were a slave in Egypt.”

Let all who are hungry, come and eat.

Let all who are in need, come and share the Pesach meal.

At its most fundamental level, the Passover Seder is meant to remind us that we know firsthand the suffering and degradation faced by those who are poor. We know the sharp pain of hunger, the slavery that is poverty and persecution; and we also know that this memory, this shared experience, compels us to act.

Ha Lachma Anya. This is the bread of poverty.

17 million children face a constant struggle against hunger, and hungry kids can’t learn or grow to their full potential.

Let every hungry child come and eat, with a Reauthorized Child Nutrition Act that improves and expands school meals and summer, afterschool and childcare nutrition programs.

Ha Lachma anya. This is the bread of poverty.

Six million seniors face food insecurity and 35% of seniors must make the impossible choice between paying for food and paying for heat/utilities.

Let every hungry senior come and eat, with a Reauthorized Older Americans Act that increases funding for Meals on Wheels and senior congregant feeding programs.

Ha Lachma Anya. This is the bread of poverty.

49 million Americans struggle to put food on the table and feed their families.

Let every hungry family come and eat, with adequate funding for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition assistance Program).

Ha Lachma Anya. This is the bread of poverty.

This is Passover, we say Dayeinu.

We have had enough.

This year, we will work together so that all who are hungry can finally come and eat.”

Write your congressional representatives and ask them to support the tReauthorized Child Nutrition Act, Reauthorized Older Americans Act, and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition assistance Program).

For more information, see Mazon’s website: http://www.mazon.org – Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger is the only organization in American Jewish life devoted solely to the issue of hunger.

Chag Pesach Sameah!

“The Impact of the Likud Election Victory on the Israeli Political Landscape” by Jim Lederman

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

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I am grateful to my colleague, Rabbi Dow Marmur of Jerusalem, for passing along to me this in-depth analysis of the just-completed Israeli election called “The Impact of the Likud Election Victory on the Israeli Political Landscape” by a long-time foreign correspondent, Jim Lederman at http://www.jimlederman.com/

Lederman’s essay is an insightful and comprehensive analysis of how PM Netanyahu won the election and the cross-currents of political interests that are now at work in his trying to form a ruling coalition government. Correspondent Lederman also considers what has taken place between President Obama and Congressional Democrats vis a vis Netanyahu following the Prime Minister’s speech to Congress and as a consequence of statements Bibi made and the strategy he used in his successful election campaign.

This is a 15-page blog that is well-worth reading to better understand the challenges both PM Netanyahu faces domestically and what Israel faces internationally behind his leadership.

Jim Lederman is the longest-serving foreign correspondent in Jerusalem. In the past, he has been the Israel correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., NPR and the New York Post. Since 1992, he has been the Senior Israel Analyst for Oxford Analytica, specializing in the political, military, economic, social and religious movements in the Middle East. He is the author of Battle-Lines: The American Media and the Intifada (Henry Holt, 1992), and his articles have appeared in a wide variety of major newspapers and journals.

West Bank Settlement Policy Today – Questions and Answers

29 Sunday Mar 2015

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“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s settlement policy resembles his predecessors’ in many ways, but it is a march toward permanence in a time when prospects for peace are few.”

So wrote Jodi Pudoren and Jeremy Ashkenas in a NY Times piece called “Netanyahu and The Settlements” (March 12, 2015). (See link below for full article).

In the spirit of Pesach, I pose a series of questions and answers:

• What is the current status of settlement construction beyond the Green Line? Lior Amichai, Deputy Director at Jerusalem’s Shalom Achshav Settlement Watch Project, reported to the J Street National Conference in Washington, D.C. last week that between 2009 and 2014 Israel began construction beyond the Green Line a total of 10,858 housing units. In that time Israel also proposed 5711 tenders for future building, promised to submit 13,077 plans for future projects and changed the status of 20 illegal “outposts” to “legal settlements.”

• Since the Oslo process began in 1993, what is the Jewish population growth in the west bank? In 1993, 110,300 settlers lived on land over the Green Line. Today, the Jewish population totals 356,500 settlers. 12% of Israeli settlers control 60% of west bank land and the Palestinian Authority controls the other 40%.

• How are Palestinian Arabs and Israelis who live beyond the Green Line treated by Israel? Palestinian Arabs who live beyond the Green Line enjoy none of the rights of Israeli citizenship because those territories, taken by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, have never been formally annexed or incorporated into the State of Israel. The legal status of west bank Palestinian Arabs is therefore different than Israeli Arab citizens who enjoy all the rights and privileges that Israeli Jewish citizens enjoy. West bank Palestinian Arabs are subject to the Israeli Military Authority without the same democratic rights and protections enjoyed by Israeli Arab citizens living within Israel itself. Israeli confiscation of privately owned Palestinian land in the west bank is the most serious inequity. It is estimated by Israeli human rights organizations B’tzelem and Shalom Achshav that one third of all land held by Jewish settlements in the west bank is built on Palestinian deeded land. Israeli settlers in the west bank, however, enjoy all the same rights of citizenship as do those Israeli citizens (Jewish and Arab) who live within the Green Line.

• What is Israel’s budget for settlement construction beyond the Green Line? Labor MK Stav Shafrir is now conducting an investigation as a member of the Knesset Budget Committee to determine exactly how much money has been allocated for settlement construction in the past and on an annual basis. She reported to the J Street National Conference last week that, in truth, there are two Israeli budgets – one public and one she called “secret.” MK Shafrir estimates that at least 1 billion NIS has been allocated in the last couple of years to build settlements and infrastructure (e.g. roads, electricity, water) with money that shows up nowhere in Israel’s official budget and has not been approved by the Knesset.

• What are the policies of the different American Jewish Federations regarding funding projects beyond the Green Line? J Street U (J Street’s college division) is investigating the policies of America’s largest Jewish Federations about funding projects in Israel beyond the Green Line, if it is done at all. That report will be published once information has been collected and analyzed.

• What is the future of the large settlement blocs in a two-state agreement? Israeli and Palestinian negotiators last year reached a consensus that the large Israeli settlement blocs and neighborhoods surrounding Jerusalem will be part of the state of Israel in any two-state agreement, with corresponding land swaps given by Israel to the future state of Palestine. This means that 75% of all Jewish settlers living now in the west bank beyond the Green Line will be absorbed inside the borders of the state of Israel. The remaining small Jewish “outposts” and settlements not inside the settlement blocs in the west bank where approximately 90,000 Israeli settlers now live will either be vacated or will come under the authority of the state of Palestine. Despite this consensus amongst the negotiators, PM Netanyahu recently declared (see NYT below): “I do not intend to evacuate any settlements.”

• Will the Palestinians file charges against Israel in the UN International Criminal Court? Martin Indyk, the chief American negotiator in last year’s failed talks and once a leader of AIPAC, has charged that PM Netanyahu’s “rampant settlement activity” has a “dramatically damaging impact,” so much so that next month the Palestinians may file a case in the UN International Criminal Court charging that Israeli settlements are an ongoing war crime.

• What ought to be the role that liberal American Zionists play? Our role ought to be to support our Israeli brothers and sisters who protest against continuing settlement construction except, perhaps, in the large settlement blocs that likely will remain in Israel once a two-state agreement is attained, and to continue to support all efforts to bring about an end-of-conflict agreement of two states for two peoples.

This NY Times piece “Netanyahu and the Settlements” includes maps showing exactly where the settlements and outposts are located beyond the Green Line as well as the history of settlement activity since the Oslo period began in 1993.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/12/world/middleeast/netanyahu-west-bank-settlements-israel-election.html?_r=0

The World-Wide Media’s Mis-characterization of Israel’s Election Results

19 Thursday Mar 2015

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[The following is a letter I received from a friend, Glenn L. Krinsky, a long-time progressive Zionist, who I believe accurately, corrects the media’s mis-characterization of the 2015 Israeli election. I am posting Glenn’s letter by permission. Glenn L. Krinsky is a law partner in Jones Day – One Firm Worldwide in the Los Angeles office. I add some reflections following Glenn’s email.]

“It’s just amazing how the worldwide media, including the Israeli media, have so vastly mis-characterized the election results. 

In 2013, Bibi prostituted himself to Lieberman, and their combined Likud/Yisrael Beitenu slate won 31 seats. Naftali Bennett’s then-new party, Habayit HaYehudi, won 12 seats. So Bibi/Lieberman/Bennett won 43 seats.

This year, Bibi purposely shifted to the extreme right to cannibalize votes from Lieberman and Bennett to ensure that Likud was the largest single vote-getter and would be asked to form the coalition. The strategy succeeded in the sense that Bennett went from 12 to 8 and Lieberman was marginalized down to 6. But note, this year the Bibi/Lieberman/Bennett trio got 44 seats, only one more than 2 years ago.

What happened to the center/left? In 2013,Yesh Atid won 19 seats (but sold out and went into Bibi’s coalition). This year Yesh Atid got 11 (a decrease of 8). Labor went from 21 (15 for Labor plus 6 for Livni’s Hatnuah party) to 24, and Meretz went from 6 to 5. So, these parties won 46 seats in 2013 and only 40 in 2015.

Where did the other six seats go? Not to the right, since we saw that they went only from 43 to 44. Instead, they went to Kahlon (the former Likud-nik who moved from the right to the center) who got 10 seats, whereas in 2013, the former Likud-nik who moved from the right to the center–Shaul Mofaz–got only 2 seats. In other words, the ‘we want change but don’t want Labor or Livni’ vote stayed right at 21 seats (in 2013, 19 for Yesh Atid + 2 for Mofaz; in 2015, 11 for Yesh Atid + 10 for Kahlon).

The Arab parties went from 11 to 13 (because of the drawing power in 2015 of the 3 Arab parties consolidating into one joint list), and the ultra-Orthodox went from 18 to 13 (due to the split in Shas, which went from 11 to 7 seats since Yishai’s half of Shas barely missed the threshold which would have given it 4 seats, which would have matched exactly Shas’ 2013 results when added to Deri’s half of Shas in 2015). 

So, it’s clear that, with minor variations (the largest being Kahlon’s showing), the 2015 results are strikingly similar to the 2013 results.

The real story in 2015 was one of ‘expectations versus results.’ The opinion polls showed Herzog pulling away from Bibi in the last week, and everyone was conditioned for a Zionist Union victory. Instead, Bibi went so far to the right that far right-wingers didn’t feel the need to vote for Bennett or Lieberman. As set forth above, the right-wing trio merely went from 43 to 44. But Bibi took enough votes away from Bennett and Lieberman that Likud far outstripped Herzog/Livni as the largest party, which the media are characterizing as a ‘resounding’ or ‘striking’ win when it’s merely a reflection of Likud moving so far to the right that it cannibalized votes from Bennett and Lieberman.”

As I indicated, I believe Glenn has interpreted the election correctly. He alludes to the final weekend of the campaign in which PM Netanyahu appealed to the worst in the Israeli character. His racist and demagogic disenfranchisement of 20% of Israeli citizenry represented by the Arab population inside the Green Line has done serious damage not only to his credibility as the Prime Minister of all Israeli citizens, but his appeal to fear and hate is unbecoming to the nation state of the Jewish people.

Further, Bibi’s rejection this last weekend of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sadly conforms to what many of us knew to be the truth even after the Prime Minister’s speech in 2009 at Bar Ilan University in which he said that he supported a two-state solution.

Reports emerged following the break-down in the American sponsored Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that Tzipi Livni, who served as Israel’s chief negotiator, was constantly undermined and second-guessed by Bibi’s lawyer who sat in (on orders of the PM) on every negotiation session and made Livni’s work next to impossible. In truth, as Bibi revealed to settlers after his Bar Ilan speech, he never intended to make a deal with the Palestinians for a state of their own in west bank territories.

Now, the challenge will be for all of us who love Israel, to continue to love her and support her, even as we insist that Israel’s future as a democratic and Jewish state depends on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In truth, there is no other solution to this conflict, and we American ohavei m’dinat Yisrael have to join with half of Israel’s population in supporting them in advocating for an end to the conflict which will not only be in Israel’s best interest internally, but internationally as well.