By Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, The Jewish Sound
Reut Cohen knows what it feels like to be a minority.
The Mizrachi Israeli grew up in Kiryat Haim, a suburb of Haifa, in a family that struggled economically. In high school, she came out of the closet.
“The Israeli society is very gender biased,” said Cohen, 29. “All the class issues, all the gender issues — I understood what it’s like to be part of some sort of minority. I made the connection between those different oppressions.”
Cohen is a 2013 New Israel Fund Herman Schwartz Israel Human Rights Law Fellow, and an LL.M candidate at the American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. She visited Seattle last week with the New Israel Fund.
The New Israel Fund works to build democracy and fight inequality and injustice in Israel with grant making, advocacy, coalitions, fellowships, and empowerment. Each year it grants fellowships to a Jewish Israeli and a Palestinian Israeli attorney. The fellows spend one year in the U.S. obtaining a master’s in civil rights law (LL.M). Upon return to Israel, they spend a year interning in social change organizations.
Cohen’s visit is part of NIF’s growing presence in Seattle. The organization, headquartered in New York, has offices around the country and the world. A Seattle branch opened in October, with Ben Murane serving as director of outreach.
“Opening an office here and bringing in people like Reut is part of introducing a new voice into Seattle about Israel, particularly about social justice,” Murane told JTNews. “Our message in particular is resonating with people for whom the standard ways of connecting to Israel [are] not enough anymore.”
Cohen went to the University of Haifa to study labor law, but moved into civil rights. She helped found a Jewish-Arab group that challenged student union policies perceived as racist and has been a leader in the LGBT movement in Haifa. She also started a blog with two friends critiquing Israeli pop culture from a feminist perspective.
“We wanted to expose the nuance,” she said. “If you saw a commercial, why was it disrespectful to women?”
The gendered language of Hebrew, and the value Israeli culture places on the military, makes it difficult for women to rise in the ranks, Cohen said. Commercials about business or cars, for instance, frequently invoke male pronouns, while others about cleaning and childcare use the female form.
Cohen’s Mizrachi identity (she is Syrian, Egyptian, and Turkish) also informs her politics.
“You have complete overlap between class and ethnicity in Israel,” she said. “You will hardly find women, Palestinians, and Mizrachi Jews” in leadership positions.
“The only field Mizrachi Jews are successful in Israel is the music industry,” she continued. “Being a successful musician does not mean you’re in a position of power.”
The NIF fellowship is an important step for Israeli attorneys aspiring to strong civil rights careers. Two of Cohen’s future goals are to build the LGBT infrastructure in Haifa, and to work against gender-biased opinions that inhibit women’s advancement.
“[I can’t say] I will only fight for my liberation,” she said. “I really wanted to work in a field that can change the reality in Israel.”
Noam Pianko, the Samuel N. Stroum Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, has been involved with NIF in Seattle for years, and is excited to have a resource on the ground to galvanize support.
“The more resources that are available for having public conversation and guest speakers and educational resources about Israel, the more likely it is that we can include Israel in our conversations about what it means to be Jewish in Seattle,” he said. “It will enable more Jews to be passionate about helping Israel to reach its own goals.”
To start, the organization is holding a series of discussions on the nature of the Jewish State, at Congregation Beth Shalom.
“Israel used to be the one issue we could all agree on,” said Murane. “Soviet Jewry and Israel. Now Israel’s the only issue we can’t agree on.”
Despite recurring accusations that NIF’s involvement with humanitarian organizations links them to organizations that support the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, NIF’s spokeswoman, Naomi Paiss, iterated that “Everyone knows we do not support the global BDS movement.”
“What’s missing in the Seattle Jewish community is discussion, dialogue,” said Murane. New Israel Fund shows the progressive people frustrated with Israeli policy that “The beating democratic heart of Israel is alive and strong.”
Photo: Reut Cohen on a panel before UW law students with Rabbi Oren Hayon and law professor Stephen A. Rosenbaum. Credit: Dikla Tuchman
As a woman in Israel, I can agree that Israel is not perfect and there is plenty of room for improvement. However, I must disagree with some of the statements made here.
Hebrew is a gendered language, but so is French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. Are Germanic languages better because they not only have male and female gender designations for nouns, but also a neuter case? Gender neutral English is more likely the exception rather than the rule.
The military is important in Israel because it is a rite of passage and soldiers build life-long relationships with those they serve with. Women can serve in combat units or they may do national service. Even those who immigrate to Israel after the age of conscription still find their way in Israeli society.
More importantly, I would like to address the issue of the NIF. It sounds wonderful to encourage democracy and equality everywhere and it is indeed a noble effort. But there are problematic elements of their philosophy. The NIF does not support the BDS movement directly; its tacit support comes from supporting organizations that do delegitimize the existence of Israel and call for boycotts and sanctions such as Adalah, B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence, and others.
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. But it is also the Jewish State. There is and always will be tension in this idea. This is a problem of definitions and terms. Being Jewish is not merely a religion. It is a heritage, a history, and a belonging to a group of people. Religion is only one part of the identity. Israel as a Jewish state does not mean that it will ever become a theocracy. Instead it means that the People of Israel, also known as the Jews, choose to live in their ancestral homeland. They need not attend any religious services, but will live in the rhythms of a Jewish calendar. In the same way it is not unreasonable to expect that in a Christian country, the vast majority of businesses are closed on Christmas Day.
And it is here that the NIF is being disingenuous. It may be that since 2011 things have changed at the NIF, but their former Assistant Director in Israel said that she “believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state will not be the tragedy Israelis fear since it will become more democratic.” (See paragraph 7: http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=10TELAVIV439&q=nif) At that time, she managed grants in the amount of $18 million dollars to 350 organizations and said that the long-term strategy was not to simply fund organizations but rather to create a movement.
Israel today has 12 Arab Members of Knesset (out of 120 MKs), including Haneen Zoabi, an Arab Muslim woman, who regularly (and freely) calls Israel a racist state. A Christian Arab has a permanent appointment on Israel’s Supreme Court. Bedouins, Druze and Christian Arabs proudly serve in the IDF. Tel Aviv has been voted the most gay-friendly city in the world. Israel is by no means perfect, but it is not the “apartheid” state guilty of war crimes that certain organizations supported by the NIF would have you believe. These organizations are driving wedges between segments of society. They seem to encourage pride in the minority status, but also encourage separatism and divisiveness.
The end result of the New Israel Fund would be a “new Israel” that had no Jewish character. A state where people practice Judaism might as well be in Novosibirsk, Uganda, southern Texas, or Alaska. But the Jewish state, the one that connects to our history, is here in the land of Israel. And that’s why if you take the Jewish character out of the State of Israel, you remove its very reason for being.