Fed up with the American Jewish community and the big-mouth nobodies who think they own it? Good news: There’s an election going on. And you can vote.
No, really. There is an actual, honest-to-goodness election.
From Jan. 15 until April 30, you can go online, pay $10 to register and cast a vote for a delegation that will represent the Jews of America at an international convention in Jerusalem next fall.
The convention, in turn, will choose officers and set budgets and policies for several Israeli and international bodies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on Jewish education, social services, urban renewal and rural settlements. So it’s sort of a big deal.
The convention is called the World Zionist Congress. It meets every four years or so to oversee the World Zionist Organization, which is headquartered in Jerusalem and has operations around the world.
Editor’s note: At present, The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle knows of only one Wisconsin event associated with these elections: Congregation Sinai in Milwaukee will hold an Israeli brunch on Sunday, Feb. 22, 10 a.m., for voters for ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America.
Because the elections don’t end until April 30, there is still time to organize events and inform The Chronicle about them. Please email your notice with “WZO elections” in the subject line and send to Chronicle/MilwaukeeJewish.org.
The WZO has elections because it’s a hybrid. For one, it’s a confederation of competing membership organizations.
It was formed in 1897 as a world movement to create a Jewish state, but it broke up into rival parties with competing visions of what kind of country that should be. The WZO became the umbrella body and forum for debates.
Before statehood the parties fought fiercely, sometimes violently. After 1948 everyone calmed down. Since 1967, it’s been slowly heating up again. Now it’s white hot.
The stakes are raised by the WZO’s other role: It’s a multimillion-dollar operating agency that runs educational programs, encourages aliyah (emigration to Israel) and oversees Israeli rural development, including those controversial settlements.
It also partly controls several much larger institutions that it founded years ago, including the Jewish Agency for Israel, the massive social services and educational body, and the Jewish National Fund, which owns and manages about one-seventh of Israel’s real estate.
The outcome of the elections will help determine who wins control of which budgets. The congress used to choose a joint Jewish Agency-WZO chair, but the posts were separated in 2010.
One other thing is worth knowing about the WZO. Together with JAFI, it’s designated in Israeli law as the formal liaison between the Jewish Diaspora and the Israeli government.
It is the vehicle through which Jews around the world are officially invited to make their views known to Israel and, in a small way, make policy. So yes, it is sort of a big deal.
Most years the election is a sleepy affair pitting gray-haired functionaries and teenagers against each other to divide up control of an Israeli institution that nobody except its employees cares about. That, at least, is the image. And it’s one reason you don’t hear much about it.
This year promises to be different. With Israeli-Palestinian peace in deep freeze, settlements in high gear and chances for a two-state solution fading, the debate among different schools of Zionism — religious vs. secular, hawks vs. doves — is at its fiercest in years.
The American delegation holds 145 of the 500 seats. Israel receives 190, allocated by Knesset election results. The rest of the world shares 165.
The WZO is ground zero for the battle because one of its departments, the Settlement Division, is the government’s main subcontractor for settlement activity. Its entire budget comes from the government, unlike the philanthropy-funded WZO itself.
Because it’s nominally a private organization, it isn’t subject to government accountability rules. Because it’s government-funded, the WZO’s Diaspora leaders keep hands off it. It operates without scrutiny.
A fight has been brewing for a while. The 1983 congress turned chaotic when a majority voted to end settlements. The session was ruled out of order and the vote annulled.
A 2005 government-commissioned study, the Sasson Report, found the Settlement Division routinely used government funds to create illegal settlement outposts, often on privately owned Palestinian land.
The report caused a brief furor and forced the resignation of division chair Avraham Duvdevani, a Religious Zionist leader. Two years later he became co-chair of the Jewish National Fund.
In 2010, Duvdevani became chair of the WZO. He’s still chair, despite his 2005 disqualification. You don’t hear much about that, either. I’ve spoken to members of the WZO executive committee who didn’t realize it.
Last spring, then-Justice Minister Tzipi Livni asked the Knesset to subject the Settlement Division to government transparency rules. The Knesset law committee chairman refused.
A few weeks later, Labor lawmaker Stav Shaffir asked the finance committee chair to release the budget. Shaffir was booted from the room.
Nine or 10 slates are competing in this year’s American election. (The lineup wasn’t finalized at press time.)
Included are Reform, Conservative, plus three varieties of Orthodox Judaism; the Sephardic Shas; the mainstream Modern Orthodox Religious Zionists of America; and a new ticket, Lavi, that’s close to the far-right Tekumah settler party, though its literature doesn’t mention God or settlements, only “vision” and Jewish unity.
There’s also a Russian immigrant slate aligned with Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, which happens to control the Settlement Division.
The intense action, though, is on the right and left flanks.
On the left is a new alliance called Hatikvah. Spearheaded by the American affiliates of Labor and Meretz, it includes for the first time the presidents of J Street, the New Israel Fund, Americans for Peace Now and Open Hillel, along with national teachers’ union president Randi Weingarten and political philosopher Michael Walzer.
Leading the ticket is actor-folksinger Theodore Bikel, who’s also the board chair of the American Meretz affiliate, Partners for Progressive Israel.
On the right is the indefatigable Zionist Organization of America. It’s filed a formal complaint to have the left-wingers barred from running.
The charge: J Street supposedly supports the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions movement against Israel. The evidence: It hosted BDS advocates at its conventions.
The facts: One conference featured a panel debating the rights and wrongs of BDS and one panelist was pro-BDS. Another conference featured a panel of Palestinian leaders discussing the mood on the West Bank.
ZOA also complains that Partners for Progressive Israel advocates boycotting businesses in West Bank Jewish settlements, and that an offshoot of the Labor Zionist group Ameinu — that is, a split-off from an anti-BDS professors’ group Ameinu launched — has proposed U.S. sanctions against four pro-settlement Israeli leaders.
The ZOA complaint went to a legal adviser to the WZO’s American branch, who reportedly wrote back that the complaint was groundless and that the leftist slate’s sponsors, Ameinu and Partners, are longtime members in good standing of the WZO.
The ZOA appealed to the WZO’s Central Elections Board in Jerusalem. The appeal was dismissed, but the organization has vowed to take the matter to the Zionist Supreme Court.
If ZOA prevails, it will have the odd distinction of expelling the Labor Zionists — the founders of Israel — from participating in the Zionist congress.
This article was originally printed in The Jewish Daily Forward and is reprinted by JTA.
Loading ...