By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Compared to a vote this week by a municipality in Scotland that will no longer allow books by Israeli authors on its library’s shelves, the removal of a few items from a food co-op might seem like, well, a tub of hummus. In this context, the issue of delegitimization and boycotts of Israel has become very complicated, says Martin Raffel, senior vice president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella group for community-based organizations that advocate on behalf of Israel.
“You remove some Israeli products from shelves, then because the world is flat and we live in this social media world…that message is sent out in neon lights across the world,” Raffel said. “It becomes a valuable message that can get communicated globally and creates certain associations in people’s minds that can be very destructive.”
The question then becomes, when should the Jewish community react? To counter such philosophical attacks on Israel, Raffel, through the JCPA, is spearheading an initiative launched in partnership with Jewish Federations of North America, the umbrella organization for local Jewish federations. The effort, called the Israel Action Network, will provide both materials and experts to assist communities dealing with such so-called delegitimization campaigns and to advise on whether counter-efforts should utilize a scalpel or a sledgehammer. Raffel visited Seattle on May 16 to meet with Jewish communal leaders about such recent campaigns.
“Our job is to help and give a wider lens so that Seattle is not operating in a vacuum,” Raffel told JTNews.
Raffel said the Israel Action Network’s goal is to find people both in and out of the Jewish community who want to help both Israelis and Palestinians, regardless of whether they’re critical of either government’s policies.
“We’re not trying to support divestment from the Palestinians or sanctions against the Palestinians, we want to create win-win scenarios,” he said. “Critics can be allies. Delegitimizers cannot.”
Delegitimization efforts here have included boycotts and attempted boycotts of Israeli products at supermarkets or on college campuses; the cancelled campaigns of advertisements that had been scheduled to run on the sides of King County Metro buses and on billboards; and citizen initiatives, such as one three years ago that would have forced the City of Seattle’s retirement board to divest from some companies that do business with Israel.
All of this energy is wrongheaded, Raffel believes.
“If they believe that certain tactics ought to be used to move the Israeli government in a different direction that are one-sided and punitive toward Israel, I would argue strongly that they’re making a huge mistake,” he said. “They’re making it even more difficult for Israel, ultimately if a negotiation were to ever take place.”
Locally, a consortium of Israel-focused organizations has been meeting on a periodic basis to work toward a two-fold plan against delegitimization.
“It’s to prepare people to be able to respond when the vilification of Israel comes up, that they feel like they have the tools, whether it’s on campus or amongst their friends, or when something public happens like the bus ads, that they feel like they can respond in a constructive way,” said Richard Fruchter, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. “This isn’t the kind of thing that should happen privately.” In addition, “we have to be strong as a community. We believe that Israel has a place in the family of nations.”
Fruchter said the Federation is creating a committee to look at broader public policy issues that affect the Jewish community beyond Israel.
It will be “a small group of people who are representing many different views within the Jewish community and can turn on a dime for us when an issue like the bus ads come up…where we can be able to make a community statement,” he said.
Given the activity in Washington State over the past few years, this community can also act as an information source for the nationwide network, Fruchter noted.
One place where these efforts will require different thinking, however, is with college students.
“Telling them what to think and banging my fist has not been very effective,” Raffel said. “The messages will have to be in the idiom of the constituency to which [they’re] being addressed.”
To that end, the network will be working with college organizations such as Hillel and the JCPA’s Israel on Campus Coalition. Much of their methodology will come from studies that have analyzed what specific segments think about different issues.
“We’re going to pour a lot of this expertise and analysis and best practices of what seems to work around the country through the filter of the Israel Action Network so that all the communities will have the benefit of this wider look and wider perspective on these issues,” Raffel said. But, he cautioned, “each community will have to tailor its own efforts.”
Ultimately, the goal of both the Israel Action Network and the communities it will serve is to send this message: “There are any number of ways you can be exposed to the real Israel and not the distorted, grotesque Israel that is being portrayed by the delegitimization movement,” Raffel said.