By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Though the conversation about Israel can often hinge on the extremes of one side or the other, there’s a middle that makes up about 70 percent of the population in this country. While there may be plenty who don’t have an interest in talking about Israel, a new collaboration between two national umbrella organizations, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, is entering its second year in a project to promote positive dialogue about the Jewish State.
The effort, said the Israel Action Network’s managing director Geri Palast, is “to mobilize the mainstream Jewish community to counter the assault on Israel’s legitimacy and also to reach out to Jews and non-Jews to really build a new conversation about Israel.”
Palast, who served as assistant secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, along with the network’s associate director Julie Bernstein, and Ethan Felson, the JCPA’s vice president and general counsel, visited Seattle on Feb. 12 and 13 to speak to different groups that included Israel activists, rabbis, and even members of the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, the group that purchased the ads critical of Israel that were canceled by King County Metro. The IAN’s operations in Washington State are being administered by the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.
The IAN has specific aims to counter delegitimization: One is by driving a wedge between those who don’t see Israel as a viable state and those who may be critical of its policies.
“We…call out those who engage in a brand of activism that is not just critical of Israel, but is anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish,” Felson said. “We cannot tolerate that becoming mainstream in America.”
The other is to create a dialogue between Jews and anyone with whom they are doing outreach that treats both sides of the conflict fairly and positively.
“Our message is one of peace and reconciliation. Two states for two peoples living in peace and security,” Palast said.
Though the first organizations to come to mind that question Israel’s legitimacy might be ones like SeaMAC or the Olympia Food Co-op, which removed Israeli products from its shelves in 2010, the real battle, said Felson, is actually within mainline Protestant churches.
“The rank-and-file Presbyterians in this country, and the same for the other mainline Protestant denominations, are people who are supportive of Israel, of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and of positive relationships between Jews, and Presbyterians, Methodists, etcetera,” Felson said. “There are groups within those denominations that are advancing a narrative that really doesn’t allow for that support for Israel or the support for the relationship with the Jewish community.”
This includes upcoming resolutions that call Israel an apartheid state and seek divestment from companies doing business with Israel. A Facebook page set up by a Presbyterian group was removed earlier this month after pressure from JCPA and other Jewish groups.
The challenge, Felson said, is maintaining a positive conversation with these churches while at the same time recognizing the bond the churches have with the plight of Palestinian Christians, as well as the interfaith work Jews and Christians do together that don’t relate to Israel.
“No one has a lock on truth,” he said. “We want and understand that there are different understandings that can coexist.”
Relationship building between Jewish communities and the mainline churches is one of the tactics the IAN is using to combat delegitimacy campaigns, as are setting up a central database for communities to share best practices, meeting with women’s and ethnic groups and labor unions, and running training sessions in communities like the one that took place in Seattle this week.
The Pacific Northwest is seen as a hotspot of activity in promoting Israel delegitimization, according to Palast.
“We see this as a priority community,” she said. “We want to work closely with Washington State. We will create models and hone strategies — trial by fire here — that really will make a difference for everyone else.”
Bernstein, the IAN’s associate director, noted that tactics deployed here to delegitimize Israel — city divestment resolutions, campus protests, newspaper ads — might not be effective elsewhere.
“What resonates in Washington State and the Bay Area may stay within the realm of those regions because that’s the population, that’s the mentality, that’s who exists. It may not ever influence Chicago,” she said.
One of the IAN’s missions is to conduct “opposition research,” according to Palast, by keeping track of the organizations who have made the most impact.
“We are a network fighting a network,” she said.
Though events like Israel Apartheid Week, scheduled later this month on campuses around the country, have very little impact, she said, “that terminology, that phraseology, is not something we have been able to counter as effectively as the individual events.”
And therein lies the biggest challenge. Where IAN’s strategy is to move from negative messaging and spreading blame toward positive and constructive dialogue, it’s not always as sexy.
“Negative campaigning, as much as people say “˜I don’t want to do it,’ it sticks much more than positive campaigning,” Palast said.
Felson, however, noted a growing recognition among people on the more hawkish side of the pro-Israel community that “people don’t want to hear people bashed,” he said. “The groups from across the spectrum are recognizing the importance of understanding and acknowledging the suffering of both parties and the need for both parties to be able to live in peace and security.”
At this point, Washington State is in a strategic planning phase. The Jewish Federation has won a $4,000 grant from the IAN to begin relationship-building with local labor unions, and they will work with organizers here to help set direction and to help people hold difficult but civil conversations about Israel. Ultimately, Palast said, it is up to the individual communities to figure out how they are best able to address their own needs.