By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
What would it take for Israel to become a true home to its Arab citizens? How can Israel better serve new immigrants? Just how much money should the Israeli government be spending on national security?
On the evening of Oct. 24, activists and advocates from the New Israel Fund (NIF) took a crack at answering these and other questions during a forum titled “Toward a Progressive Vision for Israel.”
The forum was part of a weeklong series of events around the country put on by NIF in an attempt to challenge Americans to recognize the social and economic issues facing Israel as the country nears its 60th anniversary, according to June Rogul, outreach director for NIF.
“In the U.S., it’s as if the Jewish community has a zippered mouth,” Rogul said. We wanted people to know that “not only is it okay to talk about Israel’s problems, it’s our responsibility to recognize and to discuss the problems at hand and to do what we can to help improve Israel for the next 60 years and beyond.”
In its 28 years of operation, the New Israel Fund has provided more than $200 million to more than 800 organizations, which run the gamut from women’s groups to environmental services to Arab and Bedouin rights organizations. The non-governmental organization, based out of Washington D.C., also considers itself the vanguard of openness with regard to what day-to-day life is really like for Israelis. In that spirit, the forums, which took place in nine major American cities and in Toronto, were billed as “frank dialogues on the choices Israel faces on human rights, social justice and religious pluralism issues.”
When asked why Seattle was chosen as one of the locations for the forums, Rogul said, “There’s a core of longtime NIF supporters in this region who really care about what’s happening in Israel. We thought this would be a good opportunity to bring our message to a very progressive community.”
About 30 people turned out for the event, which was held at the Seattle Academy of Arts & Sciences’ art center on Capitol Hill.
The Seattle forum featured a panel of three NIF representatives, including Ronit Heyd and Ilana Litvak (who both work for SHATIL, the New Israel Fund’s training and empowerment center in Israel), and Nidal Abad El Gafer, a Seattle Attorney who has been involved in various Arab rights organizations since he was in his teens.
True to the forum’s promise, Heyd, who directs the Social and Economic Justice Initiative at SHATIL, kicked off the discussion by criticizing the Israeli government for focusing its attention on what she considerers to be “symptomatic issues,” rather than attacking the underlying causes of things like economic disparity.
Heyd estimates that 1.65 million people in Israel live in poverty and she considers this to be one of the major causes of violence and instability in the country. She is concerned that money that might instead go to funding social programs that could help prevent violence is being spent on national security.
“It’s very easy for the media to focus on issues of security and for the government to put money into security instead of dealing with the underlying issues,” Heyd said. She added that 52 percent of Israel’s budget currently goes to the Ministry of Defense.
“It seems to me that, in many cases, the government and the decision makers have become disengaged from the people,” she said.
Rogul acknowledges that these are difficult words for many Jewish Americans to hear, but defended NIF against claims that the organization takes an anti-Israel position.
“People who love Israel recognize the real Israel and acknowledge that it has flaws just like any other country,” she said.
NIF has also come under attack for not being entirely open about where donor money is sent. Israeli NGO watchdog group NGO Monitor has consistently accused NIF of shielding its benefactors from the agendas of many of the organizations it supports and, in an October 18 statement, called the October forums “a timid response to the growing dissatisfaction and criticism from NIF donors.”
NIF defends each of the groups it funds, however, and, when asked by an audience member if the organization regrets any of its partnerships, Hayd said she was not aware of any such sentiments on NIF’s part.
In the spirit of transparency, donors are encouraged to join NIF for 10-day project tours to Israel to see their money in action.
During the forum, the panelists took turns detailing their own contributions to NIF to give attendees a sense of where exactly NIF monies are being spent.
Litvak, the coordinator of SHATIL’s Former Soviet Union program and an activist for at-risk immigrant youth, oversees a variety of programs aimed at ensuring that children of new immigrants don’t fall through the cracks.
“For these kids, there’s a serious identity crisis,” Litvak said. “They want to know, ‘Are we Russian? Are we Jewish? Are we Israeli?’ We’re trying to create a bridge to help them learn that they can be all of those things.”
Litvak’s vision has resulted in efforts to put Russian-speaking counselors into a number of Israeli schools, as well as a project to create Hebrew language books that teach the history of many of the countries from which students emigrate.
“That way, they are learning both their new language and some pride in the country they are from originally,” Litvak said.
Like the programs Litvak works with, many of the organizations that receive NIF backing work with marginalized segments of the Israeli population such as Arabs, immigrants and working-class women.
El Gafer spoke about the challenges facing “mixed” cities, cities with both Arab and Jewish populations living side-by-side.
“These are amazing places in terms of the diversity of the people. You can be an Arab, but you might have Jewish neighbors, Christian neighbors, Ethiopian neighbors, all kinds of neighbors. But, of course, this isn’t always an easy way for people to live,” said El Gafer, who grew up just outside of Tel Aviv.
El Gafer was optimistic that Israel could be a true home to its Arab citizens.
“Having complete equality might be difficult, but it’s not impossible,” he said. “There’s just a lot of work that needs to be done.”
For Rogul, this is the point: Change is not impossible, but it takes work. And that work becomes much harder if Jews outside of Israel are unwilling to face a vision of Israel as country in turmoil.
“In Israel, there is a free and vibrant discussion on all these issues,” Rogul said. “This should be the case here as well. There’s a lot of good we can do, but we need to open our eyes first.”