New Israel Fund of Canada

Sharing views on Israel

More than 100 people were at the Museum of Vancouver on Sept. 9 for a New Israel Fund of Canada-hosted panel discussion, The Backstory: Behind What You Know About Israel. Moderated by Temple Sholom’s Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, the evening featured Ronit Heyd, executive director of Shatil, an Israeli nonprofit supported by NIF, and Canadian journalist and editor Jonathan Kay of The Walrus.

The night before their Vancouver talk, Kay and Heyd spoke to a large crowd in Toronto, where they were joined by Haaretz editor-in-chief and journalist Aluf Benn. In Vancouver, the two were introduced by NIFC board president Joan Garson and executive director Orit Sarfaty. They covered a range of issues, including the rise of women in the Knesset, how North Americans talk about Israel, the problem of racism in Israeli society, the lasting impacts of 2011’s social justice protests and the influence of feminism and the Women of the Wall.

photo - Ronit Heyd — Ronit Heyd *(photo from New Israel Fund of Canada)*

Starting with a bit of good news, Moskovitz asked Heyd to talk about the fact that, at 31 members, the current Israeli Knesset has more women MKs than any prior government. “It’s not just in the Knesset,” said Heyd, “more women than ever ran in the last municipal elections.” Women are also trying to participate more equally in local religious councils, a task not for the faint-hearted, she said, due to the “very strong political power in the Knesset [and the Israeli establishment] that is still being held by the ultra-Orthodox parties. The ultra-Orthodox do not have – I want to add, yet – do not have women in the parties.”

The impact of the rise of women in politics extends beyond the makeup of parliament, Heyd said. “It is important to note that when a woman enters a very masculine environment, it changes” in several ways, including shifting the agenda. It is changed by raising, for example, the notion of transparency, “of the need to have a more just distribution of resources, of having a more open governance … and we see that especially with the religious councils.”

Though the pace of change is slow, she said, “This is not happening just out of the blue; they needed training. One of the things that Shatil does is work with a group of women who want to be elected to the religious councils – they want to have their voice heard. They need support, they need to know how to build alliances, how to read a budget.”

Kay added that, while there are certain parallels, the situation in Canada is very different, and bringing women into Israeli politics is a “much more urgent project.” Unlike in Israel, he said, “in Canada, there is no significant mainstream constituency that believes that women cannot occupy the public sphere. It’s a fringe, not mainstream, view. In Israel, you have these people who ideologically don’t believe that women should have a role in public life.”

However, though women in Israel are participating at unprecedented levels in government, their voices are still not equally heard in the male-dominated policy landscape. Of the main issues in the Knesset, Heyd said, “The first one is security. The second one is security. The third one is also security. And women are not brought into that conversation.” The impact of women will be more fully realized, she said, once they have influence in policies around pay equality, security and the economy.

Moskovitz asked each panelist to comment on the polarization of the conversation about Israel and how the divisiveness impacts the Canadian and Israeli Jewish communities.

photo - Jonathan Kay — Jonathan Kay *(photo from New Israel Fund of Canada)*

Part of what creates the tense atmosphere is that “Zionism itself in its most potent form has become a form of religion,” Kay said. “What do religions provide? They provide a theory of evil, they provide a theory of good, they provide a tribal identity, they provide a liturgy … many of the fundamental elements of a religion are provided by the most militant aspects of Zionism as they are projected in the Diaspora.

“By the way,” he continued, “I consider myself a Zionist. I’ve written columns in support of Israel, I’ve raised the flag in time of war. However, I know when I see people’s opinions on geopolitics become so strong that they take on the character of religious beliefs. And you see this with the Iran nuclear deal. It is not only, ‘I don’t like Clause 7, but I do like Clause 8.’ The dialogue is, ‘It’s 1938, are you with Churchill or are you with Chamberlain?’ … the imagery of Hitler, the imagery of black, white, good, evil. And, again, I know there’s this well-intentioned idea among many liberal Jews, ‘Well, if only we had the right press release, or the right argument and we could frame things in the right way.’… To a certain extent, that’s not happening because the people on the other side of the debate have chosen another faith.”

The speakers agreed that the polarization of the debate in the Diaspora impacts Israeli society; it matters. “There is a direct line that goes from the conversation that is being held here in North America and what’s happening in Israel,” said Heyd.

Can Jews in North America find a way to talk about Israel, asked Moskovitz?

“Email is the destruction of dialogue,” Kay said. “Stop sending each other articles! Take 30 seconds and actually put your own thoughts in your own words. You don’t have to send it to 50 people…. Don’t call me an imperialist if you think I’m right wing. Don’t call me a useful idiot if you think I’m left wing…. Don’t fall back on those tropes…. In the ’90s, you actually had to find someone to argue with! Now, you can actually do it from your desk, and I think that has raised the temperature because it has created tribalism. It’s one thing to lose an argument with one person, it’s another thing to lose an argument with 50 people on a reply-all email chain. It sounds silly, but the medium is the message.”

Another issue that has made news is the problem of racism. While there are few parallels between the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and the protests of Ethiopian Israelis earlier this year, both countries still need to find a way to better integrate and respect racial diversity. The issue is especially acute when it comes to integrating Arab-Israelis into Israeli society.

Kay said he believes that Canada has done an excellent job of assimilating various groups, with some exceptions, but it helps that many immigrants come to Canada from urban centres, and are well educated. “Regardless of their skin color, they’re capitalists…. That’s the main thing,” he said.

On the question of what changes Israel has undergone since the 2011 summer economic protests, Heyd said there is still no economic relief for average Israelis, who are increasingly burdened by the cost of living, but Israelis have received more coverage for childcare, and the centralization of the market is back on the political agenda.

Overall, whether it’s the ways in which Israel is meeting its challenges or struggling to balance security with social justice, what is apparent, Heyd said, is that there is “a mini flourishing of civil society … people in the periphery are becoming involved, not just Tel Aviv, the big cities,” and that is cause of cautious optimism.

NIFC hosts Anat Hoffman, executive director of the Israel Religious Action Centre, on Nov. 17 at Temple Sholom.

Basya Laye is a former editor of the Jewish Independent.

Narrowing the housing gap

Gil Gan-Mor of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel will be one of the speakers at Gimme Shelter on Nov. 20. (photo from Gil Gan-Mor)

A condominium used to be a potentially affordable alternative to a home for buyers in Vancouver, but condo prices are now so high that the vast majority of Vancouverites cannot afford them.

The most recent Strategics’ Vancouver Condo Report, released last week, noted that, in Vancouver, “The average low-rise project … asking price is $632,000, which eliminates many of the young couples and single buyers in this market.” Other reports using other factors have come to similar conclusions. And housing affordability is not just a problem facing this city.

On Nov. 20, New Israel Fund of Canada is hosting the event Gimme Shelter: Closing the Middle Class Housing Gap in Israel and Canada, co-sponsored by Temple Sholom, Generation Squeeze and Tikva Housing Society. It will feature speakers Gil Gan-Mor of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Dr. Penelope Gurstein of the University of British Columbia and Dr. Paul Kershaw, founder of Generation Squeeze.

Gan-Mor, an attorney, will talk about the situation in Israel and provide an update on the government’s actions there since the social protests that took place in 2011. He spoke with the Independent in anticipation of his visit.

According to Gan-Mor, ACRI is the only human rights organization in Israel “that engages with the full spectrum of human rights and civil liberties.” A nonprofit, it is funded through donations and grants, but receives no financial support from the government. Its goals, Gan-Mor said, “are to protect and promote human rights in Israel through a combination of litigation, policy advocacy and public outreach. Specifically, in the Right to Housing Project, our goals are to ensure equal access to housing, fight housing discrimination, protect the right to affordable housing, promote inclusionary policies in housing and reduce segregation, combat homelessness and protect the rights of homeless people.”

Gan-Mor began working with ACRI during his second year of an NIF fellowship for graduates of its Civil Liberties Law program. He was “given the opportunity to develop a new project in ACRI,” he said, “the Right to Housing Project, which fit in with ACRI’s efforts to increase its involvement in social and economic rights.” He “didn’t expect at that time that, four years later, the right to affordable housing would be at the centre of the social protests that drew hundreds of thousands of Israelis to the streets.”

About the current situation, he explained, “In Israel, housing affordability is a big issue, because of two processes. First, in the last two decades, the governments in Israel dramatically withdrew from their past involvement in the housing market, leaving the role of providing housing to private market forces…. The second process is the dramatic increase in housing prices, which were already expensive…. These two processes led to a growing inequality in Israel,” as “more and more families must spend an increasing share of their income to ensure decent housing at the expense of other basic needs,” as well as “a growing polarization of residential neighborhoods, which are becoming increasingly separated on a socioeconomic level.”

Gan-Mor added, “We in ACRI view those aspects with great concern and are acting to force the government to become more active in realizing the right to housing, a right which cannot be ensured only through private market forces.”

The Gimme Shelter event will give attendees an opportunity “to question how Israel expresses the values of human rights in its domestic policy, and how they as international supporters of Israel can participate in this dialogue on building a more just society inside Israel,” said Gan-Mor. And it will offer a similar opportunity for Vancouverites to participate in the dialogue about how to build a more just society here, too, at least as far as housing is concerned.

Gimme Shelter will take place at Temple Sholom on Nov. 20, 7 p.m. For more information about the speakers and to register for the event, visit nifcan.org/our-events/upcoming.

Zach Sagorin is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Liberal Zionism still critical

Israel Defence Forces soldiers debrief during the Israel-Hamas conflict. New Israel Fund of Canada’s president Joan Garson discussed the painful war of this past summer and the ongoing responsibility of liberal Zionists in Canada to push for Israel to be a model of democracy, pluralism and tolerance. (photo from IDF via Ashernet)

The Jewish state won’t survive without a Zionism that’s liberal and a liberalism that’s Zionist. Such was the recurrent assertion of Haaretz reporter and columnist Ari Shavit at the New Israel Fund of Canada’s (NIFC’s) annual symposium, held on Sept. 14.

Entitled The Future of Israel Starts Here and held at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, the free event drew almost 1,000 people and marked the fourth annual symposium for NIFC, an organization founded 29 years ago that describes itself as being committed to fostering the development of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state “as envisioned in her Declaration of Independence.”

The symposium was moderated by Joseph Rosen, who recently wrote an article called “The Israel taboo” in an issue of the Canadian magazine The Walrus.

The event featured Rosen interviewing Shavit via Skype, as well facilitating a lively discussion between Shavit and Akiva Eldar, chief political columnist at the online magazine Al-Monitor, who attended in person. NIFC president Joan Garson also spoke.

photo - Ari Shavit — Ari Shavit *(photo by Sharon Bareket)*

Shavit spoke passionately about how the Zionist community needs to “talk seriously and honestly about our own mistakes” and to acknowledge where the government of Israel has committed wrongs both on a moral and political level, such as with ongoing settlement building in the West Bank. He argued this must be frozen to give the Palestinians space economically and geographically and “to move toward a two-state solution.”

It’s imperative that Zionists stop treating Israel as being above criticism, he stressed. Zionists must look its sins in the face, address the arguments made on the other side of the conflict and “limit injustice to Palestinians as much as possible.”

Further, Shavit spoke about restoring Israel to its former “state of wonder,” its promise to serve as a refuge for Jews – “a home for our homeless” – and to be as just as possible.

“What happened in 1948 [when thousands of Arabs ran from or were driven from their homes and villages during the country’s founding] was in the context of the brutal history of the 1940s,” he said. “But after that, after we secured our existence at a terrible human cost for us and for them [the Palestinians], to go into the other 22 percent of the land and to try to co-opt it [through occupation and settlement building] is a huge mistake.”

But Shavit also argued that it’s unacceptable to exclusively demonize Israel for its injustices, as its critics often do, or to use the history of its founding to delegitimize it.

“Some of the world’s best democracies were founded on the terrible treatment of indigenous people. Israel can’t be singled out,” he said. “But let us remember our democratic past and try to build a future for the Palestinians.”

Garson discussed the painful war of this past summer and the ongoing responsibility of liberal Zionists in Canada to push for Israel to be a model of democracy, pluralism and tolerance.

“As liberals, we are activists,” she said. “We think it’s our job not just to sit on the sidelines, but to engage … to make Israel the country of its founders dreams…. When we see [Israeli] policies in need of change, we speak and we act.”

She added: “We must be honest with ourselves, our children and our congregations … to bring intelligence and clear thinking to Israel as we do to other issues … and to commit to telling the truth about the country to ensure there will be another generation of lovers of Israel.”

Rosen subsequently posed questions to Eldar and Shavit about whether liberal Zionism is “dead” and about the position of Israeli left-wing “peaceniks.”

Eldar, who described himself as a “radical peacenik,” argued that liberal Zionism is crucial to the future of Israel, but that it can’t coexist with the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

It’s not enough to decry the settlements, he said, “we have to do something about it and call on every government in the world to do something.”

Eldar explained that he, therefore, does not buy products made in the settlements.

“If, God forbid, one of your friends was about to commit suicide, you would do everything to stop it,” he said “This [settlement expansion] is a suicidal project.”

Shavit later spoke about how many Israelis feel that Israeli “peaceniks” don’t care about them, that they’re more concerned with the well-being of the Palestinians than that of their own countrymen.

“We Israelis who advocate for peace need to love all our people, to go out and canvas and tell them why their future is connected to peace,” he said.

Eldar said the central problem is that fear seems to have become more effective than hope in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We on the left are trying to sell hope,” he said. “I’m upset that people are trying to sell fear. Why not look at the glass half full? Look, for example, at how Egypt has worked with us [in the latest ceasefire negotiation between Israel and Hamas] instead of injecting more fear and saying we don’t have partners for peace in the region?”

He said that Israel needs to withdraw from the settlements, but not unilaterally. “We need to do it by making peace.”

– For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com.