At this year’s General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities, held Nov. 12-15 in Los Angeles, there was a massive “Global Jewish Marketplace,” where organizations and individuals displayed their wares, ideas and products.
Among the booths were several that hawked Israeli jewelry, from simple classic Stars of David to Jewish bling to gorgeous hunks of Roman glass.
But the most poignant jewelry I saw at the 75th annual conference of North American federations was a necklace that every participant received after the opening session — metal dog tags with the names of Israel’s three kidnapped soldiers: Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
Shalit was kidnapped near Gaza on June 25 and is being held by Hamas. Goldwasser and Regev were captured in a cross-border attack from Lebanon and have been held by Hezbollah since July 12.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and almost every speaker who followed her throughout the three days in the Los Angeles Convention Center, spoke about the three soldiers.
“Those who kidnapped them see in our desire to do anything possible to bring them home a sign of our weakness,” said Livni. “They are wrong. It is testimony to our strength.”
“In this effort,” she continued, “your voice is important. I urge you to speak up on their behalf and help ensure that this issue stays on the international agenda and conscience. We cannot and we will not rest until our boys are free.”
Speaking on Nov. 14, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made similar statements to the some 5,000 people gathered for the GA’s closing event.
Addressing Karnit Goldwasser, Ehud “Udi’s” wife, he said, “Karnit, I promise you that Israel will do, that I will do, the utmost to bring our dear sons and bring Udi back to your arms.”
I think of Karnit as she wakes up, goes to sleep, prepares dinner for one, as she talks into the quiet, and I ache.
I approached her after the plenary and told her about our typical Israeli connection: My husband, children and I are close with Udi’s cousins and plan to spend Thanksgiving with them this year.
I told her that she was a true hero. Indeed, she has become a tenacious and relentless advocate. She always speaks clearly and simply and she always, without exception, expresses hope.
“I just want Udi back,” she told me.
‘One destiny’
The clanging dog tags I now wear ring not only for my empathy — as a wife and mother, as an Israeli citizen and Zionist and as a person who feels desperate for peace. But the simple chain expresses our commonality as Jews and brings to life the GA’s theme this year: “One people, one destiny.”
The three kidnapped soldiers permeated the four-day GA, which revamped its focus two months beforehand from its planned Hollywood theme to a focus on Israel.
Subsequently and exceptionally, it drew six Israeli cabinet ministers, countless members of Knesset (including Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu) and a flock of high-powered business leaders.
The halls of the center were filled with not only lay leaders and federation professionals but also scholars and thinkers, North American and Israeli. Topics ranged from internal American questions — how to engage young people, Jewish education and philanthropy — to exploration of the Israeli-Diaspora relationship; to examination of Israel’s response to its recent war and prospects for the future; to world threats against the Jews such as Iran and radical Islam.
Israeli leaders, for all their diversity of thought, philosophy and style, sang a common tune. Each of them thanked the American Jewish community for its support during the recent war with Hezbollah.
As of last month, the North American Jewish community has contributed some $350 million to the Israel Emergency Campaign, which was organized by Jewish federations and distributed through their umbrella group, UJC. Through the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, our community has contributed $936,823.
Those funds are directed to “the most vulnerable Israeli citizens in the north — Jews, Arabs and Druze alike — via its overseas partners, the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, who in turn work with dozens of Israeli non-profit groups,” according to UJC’s Web site.
It is important to note that 100 percent of IEC funds are sent to Israelis in need. None of that money is retained by UJC for infrastructure or maintenance fees.
Beyond the gratitude, however, the GA hosted earnest talk about the duality of our relationship. While the older model of Israel-Disapora relations was a one-way exchange of funds, the new paradigm is partnership and programs aimed to develop a sense of klal Yisrael, the unity of Jews.
The GA offered peeks into that relationship, its benefits and its challenges. In this space during the coming weeks, I will explore some of the ideas, issues and insights that struck me and have continued to resonate.
Voices of gratitude
“We in Israel greatly appreciate your efforts, your friendship and your support. However unaccustomed you are to hearing this from an Israeli, let me say the obvious, and let me say it out loud, in my name and in the name of the people of Israel: Thank you.”
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
“Our lives are interconnected. Our fates are intertwined. Israel and the Jewish Diaspora is one. Your success is our success. Our success is your success. We may be separated by a vast ocean, but our hearts beat together … always. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for your support and dedication and love to the State of Israel. Todah rabah me’kol halev.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
“I came here today to say todah rabah, thank you, because you were there when we needed you.”
Zeev Bielski, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel
Elections show U.S. needs a party like Kadima
By David Borowich
New York (JTA) — There’s a subtle, unspoken message in the Democratic Party’s overwhelming victory in recent midterm congressional elections:
The political pendulum that alternates between liberal and conservative camps has exposed an American desire for a centrist party.
The pendulum effect has been felt most acutely in the executive office but can be observed throughout the political landscape.
From Presidents Carter to Reagan and then Clinton to Bush, the American political system has shown an ability to reverse course, all the while maintaining its eye on the centerline. It essentially is a corrective force that enables democracy, like an unwieldy ship, to maintain a central course.
The founding fathers developed a system of government with checks and balances designed to be responsive to the general population, but also to rein in short-term, extremist thinking.
What they perhaps did not envision was a bulky, two-party political system, in which the will of the majority would be dictated largely by the more active, extremist elements in these parties.
Examples abound, through tactics like gerrymandering of congressional districts or implementing arcane nominating procedures throughout the parties.
Israel swings
This type of extreme swing has been especially pronounced in Israel, which recently experienced the emergence of a new political reality.
While far from a proven or sustained phenomenon, the establishment last year of Kadima, Israel’s centrist ruling party, was a long-sought remedy to Israel’s own pendulum.
The Kadima Party purportedly represents what the majority of Israelis seek — a moderate force that gives voice to the desires of Israel’s center.
The creation of Kadima rallied the center, not only with its optimistic exhortation for “forward” progress, but with its ability to siphon moderate elements from each of the two more established parties.
Moderates from both Likud and Labor were able to join forces — and it turns out that many of them had far more in common with their former political competitors than they did with former compatriots.
In creating this new party, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recognized that the left of the right and the right of the left were better off strengthening each other than constantly being pulled apart by their parties’ more extremist elements.
Perhaps this model can pave the way for a reorganization of politics in America. As world issues become more complex and not as easily broken down into “blue” (Democratic) and “red” (Republican), it may be time for a new, centrist political party in America.
Such a party would not just speak of bipartisanship, but would be a consensus unto itself. It would be a party that honors the sacred principles on which this country was founded but can still articulate a vision for the 21st century.
It could be a party of centrist leaders like Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and others.
Whether called “Democans” or “Republicrats” or something like “Libertans” (from the Liberty Party), such a party would need significant funding and big names to carry its banner.
Such a movement could usher in a new age of effectiveness and restore civility to government. More importantly, it would reflect the American people’s dormant desire for balance.
And it would be a vehicle to re-engage the many disenfranchised voters who are tired of limited and lesser-of-two-evil choices.
The results in Connecticut speak volumes about the possibilities and demand for a centrist party in America.
Ousted in the primary by the vocal and active liberal wing of Connecticut’s Democratic Party, incumbent Sen. Joseph Lieberman opted to stay in the general election, running as an independent. He believed that the primary outcome did not reflect the views of most voters in his state.
Lieberman is a well-respected moderate voice in the Senate who has served with distinction for three terms — but the Democratic establishment opted to support his challenger. Yet Ned Lamont still lost, despite overwhelming national and celebrity endorsements and strong support from the Democratic machine.
The Connecticut election was not a referendum on the war in Iraq. It was the voice of moderates and centrists who wanted to vote for a candidate who reflects the middle.
The challenge is that the middle does not often run for office. It’s a paradox accentuated by the fact that, on average, moderates don’t mobilize.
In the rallies for public opinion, it’s usually one extreme voice challenging the opposing extreme voice for the hearts and minds of the vast and largely unengaged, moderate middle.
A new party would give expression to that moderate voice and provide a legitimate vehicle and base for moderate candidates to run for office.
Regardless of its success in Israel, perhaps the time is right for a “Kadima-like” party to emerge in America.
David Borowich is a finance professional with the RAI Group and the founder of Dor Chadash. He has worked for Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and the Bush 2004 campaign.
Egypt-Israel ‘peace treaty’ has failed
By Daniel Pipes
Ninety-two percent of respondents in a recent poll of 1,000 Egyptians over 18 years of age called Israel an enemy state. In contrast, a meager 2 percent saw Israel as “a friend to Egypt.”
These hostile sentiments express themselves in many ways, including a popular song titled “I Hate Israel,” venomously anti-Semitic political cartoons, bizarre conspiracy theories and terrorist attacks against visiting Israelis.
Egypt’s leading democracy movement, Kifaya, recently launched an initiative to collect a million signatures on a petition demanding the annulment of the March 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
Also, the Egyptian government has permitted large quantities of weapons to be smuggled into Gaza to use against Israeli border towns.
Yuval Steinitz, an Israeli legislator specializing in Egypt-Israel relations, estimates that fully 90 percent of Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas explosives come from Egypt.
Cairo may have no apparent enemies, but the impoverished Egyptian state sinks massive resources into a military build up.
According to the Congressional Research Service, it purchased $6.5 billion worth of foreign weapons in the years 2001-04, more than any other state in the Middle East. In contrast, the Israel government bought only $4.4 billion worth during that period and the Saudi one $3.8 billion.
Egypt ranked as the third largest purchaser of arms in the entire developing world, following only population giants China and India. It has the tenth largest standing army in the world, well over twice the size of Israel’s.
Palpable harm
This long, ugly record of hostility exists despite a peace treaty with Israel, hailed at the time by both Egypt’s president Anwar El-Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin as a “historic turning point.”
U.S. President Jimmy Carter hoped it would begin a new era when “violence no longer dominates the Middle East.” I, too, shared in this enthusiasm.
With the benefit of retrospect, however, we see that the treaty did palpable harm in at least two ways.
First, it opened the American arsenal and provided American funding to purchase the latest in weaponry. As a result, for the first time in the Arab-Israeli conflict, an Arab armed force may have reached parity with its Israeli counterpart.
Second, it spurred anti-Zionism. I lived for nearly three years in Egypt in the 1970s, before Sadat’s dramatic trip to Jerusalem in late 1977. I recall the relatively low interest in Israel at that time.
Israel was plastered all over the news but it hardly figured in conversations. Egyptians seemed happy to delegate this issue to their government.
Only after the treaty, which many Egyptians saw as a betrayal, did they themselves take direct interest. The result was the emergence of a more personal, intense and bitter form of anti-Zionism.
The same pattern was replicated in Jordan, where the 1994 treaty with Israel soured popular attitudes. To a lesser extent, the 1993 Palestinian accords and even the aborted 1983 Lebanon treaty prompted similar responses. In all four of these cases, diplomatic agreements prompted a surge in hostility toward Israel.
Defenders of the “peace process” answer that, however hostile Egyptians’ attitudes and however large their arsenal, the treaty has held. Cairo has in fact not made war on Israel since 1979. However frigid the peace, peace it has been.
But if the mere absence of active warfare counts as peace, then peace has also prevailed between Syria and Israel for decades, despite their formal state of war. Damascus lacks a treaty with Jerusalem, but it also lacks modern American weaponry.
Does an antique signature on paper offset Egypt’s Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets and Apache attack helicopters? I think not.
In retrospect, it becomes apparent that multiple fallacies and wishful predictions fueled Arab-Israeli diplomacy:
Once signed, agreements signed by un-elected Arab leaders would convince the masses to give up their ambitions to eliminate Israel. These agreements would be permanent, with no backsliding, much less duplicity.
Other Arab states would inevitably follow suit. War can be concluded through negotiations rather than by one side giving up.
The time has come to recognize the Egypt-Israel treaty — usually portrayed as the glory and ornament of Arab-Israel diplomacy — as the failure it has been, and to draw the appropriate lessons in order not to repeat its mistakes.
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of “Miniatures” (Transaction Publishers).
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