{"id":40722,"date":"2023-02-24T01:59:31","date_gmt":"2023-02-24T09:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=40722"},"modified":"2023-02-23T22:32:18","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T06:32:18","slug":"israelis-not-that-divided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2023\/02\/24\/israelis-not-that-divided\/","title":{"rendered":"Israelis not that divided"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Einat Wilf and Mark Regev spoke at a Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs event Feb. 9. <\/em><\/p>\n

Canadian Jews who don\u2019t like the look of Israel\u2019s new government should not withdraw from engagement with that country and its discourse, but get more involved, says Dr. Einat Wilf, a former Labour party member of the Knesset.<\/p>\n

Leaders in the North American Jewish community are expressing concerns over the new government and aspects of its policy agenda, while others worry that the always-present fear of schisms between Israeli and Diaspora Jewry could be reaching a breaking point. But Wilf said this is a time for overseas Jews to act strategically to influence policies that reflect their priorities.<\/p>\n

Wilf, who served in the Knesset from 2010 to 2013, is an author, businessperson and one-time foreign policy advisor to Shimon Peres. She was part of a panel convened by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs Feb. 9. Wilf engaged with Mark Regev, who is chair of the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and Foreign Relations at Reichman University and a former spokesperson and senior foreign affairs advisor to Binyamin Netanyahu. He also served as Israel\u2019s ambassador to the United Kingdom. Yaron Deckel, the Jewish Agency for Israel\u2019s director for Canada and a veteran Israeli journalist, moderated the event.<\/p>\n

Wilf said it is up to Canadian Jews to decide how to respond to the political situation in Israel. \u201cBut my personal view is that this is perhaps the time for Jews outside Israel to fund more and channel money and efforts to things that have to do not with welfare but actually with how Israel is Jewish,\u201d she said. \u201cNorth American Jews, if they want Israel to be hospitable to their kind of Jewish practice, they need to make a stark choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Conservative and Reform movements in Israel are simply too small to be major players in this discussion and so the more practical camp with which Diaspora adherents of those denominations can partner to meet their goals is the secular movement, Wilf said. This is the most likely way to advance policies such as egalitarian prayer at the Kotel, liberal interpretations of identity for aliyah and reducing the powers of the chief rabbinate.<\/p>\n

Both panelists attempted to dispel some conventional wisdom, including that Israeli society is divided, turning its back on liberalism and getting more and more religious.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsraeli democracy, as it stands now, is more inclusive, more representative of the greater diversity of voices than it has been probably throughout its history,\u201d said Wilf. That diversity, by its very inclusiveness, has opened the door to ideas that can be considered contrary to traditional progressive Israeli values, she argued. \u201cThat means that more non-liberal voices are represented than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regev concurred. The \u201cgood old days\u201d of early Israeli democracy were, he said, \u201ca one-party state run by the Labour Party.\u2026 It was a much more conformist society, it was difficult for gays, it was difficult for women, it was a society that was more closed, it was difficult for Mizrahim,\u201d he said. \u201cToday, I have no doubt if you look at the trajectory, Israel is more liberal, more pluralist, more open, more free than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n

A couple of decades ago, Regev noted, if you wanted to go out for dinner in Jerusalem on a Friday night, you had to travel to east Jerusalem. \u201cNow, in Jewish Jerusalem, you have all sorts of places you can go to,\u201d he said. \u201cThe idea that Israel is becoming only more religious, more Haredi, more Orthodox is just not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the areas where most Israelis agree, said Wilf and Regev, is on the Palestinian issue. After Yasser Arafat ended the peace process and started the Second Intifada, and his successor Mahmoud Abbas demonstrated no more conciliatory a tone, Israelis realized the ball was not in their court. All they can do is wait for a change of leadership on the Palestinian side, both said.<\/p>\n

The fiercest divisions in Israeli society right now are over proposals to reform the judiciary, including allowing the Knesset to override Supreme Court decisions by a majority vote and to hand the power of judicial appointments to politicians.<\/p>\n

Deckel noted that Canadian legalist Irwin Cotler has warned that the judicial overhaul would make Israel a flawed democracy and other Jewish leaders in North America have spoken up in ways that are rare or unprecedented against some of what the new government is advocating.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there really a threat to Israeli democracy?\u201d asked Regev. \u201cI\u2019m not so sure. I don\u2019t believe there is. I believe Israeli democracy is strong. I believe we can debate the pros and cons of the different judicial reforms put on the table without having to say this is the end of democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both commentators think fears of the new government are overblown, although Wilf has a caveat. She has studied past Netanyahu governments and concluded their bark is generally worse than their bite or, at least, that the \u201chysteria\u201d with which they were met was not commensurate with the policies they enacted.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll Netanyahu governments, especially the one of 2015, were received with complete hysteria and none of it materialized,\u201d said Wilf. \u201cSometimes the exact opposite. Netanyahu turned out to be much more centrist, careful, generally very much eschewing violence and conflict and even bringing peace agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n

A difference now, said Wilf, is that Netanyahu is head of a more ideologically narrow government, where in the past he had built fairly broad coalitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Netanyahu, that was very comfortable,\u201d Regev said. \u201cBecause, when you have a coalition partner to the left of you and a coalition partner to the right of you, that allows you to be the conductor of the orchestra, so to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regev sees a danger in Diaspora Jews who disagree with events in Israel airing dirty laundry, but Wilf said that is the least of her concerns. No matter who is in charge or what policies they advance, overseas opponents will make the same case, she said. \u201cThey still would have argued that Israel is a settler-colonial, apartheid, genocidal, white European blah blah blah,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s how they work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Addressing the widespread spike in antisemitism, Regev sees a silver lining. \u201cYou could be very cynical and you could say some things don\u2019t change. But something has changed,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething very important has changed. Unlike my father when he was a child and the Jews were stateless and defenceless and knocking on people\u2019s doors [saying] \u2018Please let me in so they won\u2019t kill me,\u2019 today we can proudly say that, if something has changed, the Jews have changed. We have a state. We have a successful state. With all our problems, Israel is a very successful country, politically, economically, diplomatically, militarily. We can protect ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gail Adelson-Marcovitz, national chair of the board of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, opened the online event, which attracted more than 1,000 participants. \u201cMany of us believe that Israel is a state of the totality of the Jewish people and not just its citizens,\u201d she said. \u201cWhile it is the citizens of Israel who elect their government, that choice has ramifications for many aspects of our partnership and specifically impacts Diaspora Jews. We feel that our interest must, at the very least, be heard, if not respected, particularly in those areas where we are impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Einat Wilf and Mark Regev spoke at a Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs event Feb. 9. Canadian Jews who don\u2019t like the look of Israel\u2019s new government should not withdraw from engagement with that country and its discourse, but get more involved, says Dr. Einat Wilf, a former Labour party member of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329,4],"tags":[305,458,4304,1200,19839,22124,4330,22123,3597],"class_list":["post-40722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-local","tag-centre-for-israel-and-jewish-affairs","tag-cija","tag-democracy","tag-diaspora","tag-einat-wilf","tag-gail-adelson-marcovitz","tag-israel","tag-mark-regev","tag-politics"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}