New Israel Fund

Fighting racism, terrorism

Tag Meir chair Dr. Gadi Gvaryahu speaks, as moderator Maytal Kowalski and the live and Zoom audience listen. (photo from New Israel Fund of Canada)

Dr. Gadi Gvaryahu, chair of the Israeli anti-racism organization Tag Meir, addressed live and Zoom audiences last month in a talk organized by the New Israel Fund of Canada and hosted by Or Shalom Synagogue.

At the event, titled An Israel at Peace with Itself: Solutions to Racism and Inequality, Gvaryahu described his early efforts in social activism, which began after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. “The fact that a religious person with a kippah on his head decided to get rid of our prime minister was a crucial point for me,” he said.

Gvaryahu established the nonprofit Yod Bet b’Heshvan (12 Heshvan, named for the date of the assassination on the Hebrew calendar) and the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Synagogue in Rehovot, where he resides.

According to Gvaryahu, the creation of Tag Meir came about in 2009, following an escalation of racist rhetoric and acts on the part of far-right religious groups in Israel. Tag Meir is a play on words in Hebrew related to tag meicher, or “price tag.” Since the early 2010s, a small percentage of extremist settlers has carried out attacks against Arabs, meant to show the Israeli government “the price” of failing to support their cause.

“Tag Meir, on the other hand, means ‘light tag.’ We try to bring light into the world,” Gvaryahu said. “If there is a price tag attack, we want to be with the victims. We don’t distinguish if they are Jewish victims or Muslim victims. It is crucially important to be with them. We tell them they are not alone and support them.”

Gvaryahu gave several examples of Tag Meir’s work. One followed the July 2014 kidnapping and murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian. Immediately afterwards, Tag Meir chartered buses from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to visit those grieving. The large Israeli contingent wished to pay its respects to the Abu Khdeir family, and they were eventually welcomed in the mourners’ tent.

“This family became our friends and every year since then we visit them – usually around Hanukkah. We bring sufganiyot [jelly doughnuts] and they bring oranges from Jericho,” Gvaryahu said, pointing out that this was a good illustration of how, even in the face of terrible tragedy, a victim’s family can be shown how the perpetrators are not representative of a whole people.

Gvaryahu stressed that Tag Meir gives no preferential treatment to Jewish or Muslim victims of terrorism or hate crimes. In instances of Muslim terrorism, Tag Meir delegations, comprised of Jews and Muslims, are also sent out to those grieving.

Tag Meir is a coalition of 48 organizations that works to build tolerance and fight racism in Israel. It is made up of groups from various religious backgrounds – Arab, secular, Reform, Masorti (Conservative), Orthodox – which Gvaryahu views as a key reason for its success. With volunteers located at several places in Israel, Tag Meir is able to dispatch help quickly, supporting victims with emotional, financial and legal assistance.

At its core, Tag Meir sees the battle against racism as a part of a campaign that supports both the democratic and traditional Jewish values of loving one’s neighbours and justice for all. Whatever their politics, the organization argues, the majority of Israelis oppose acts of violence against innocent people who “are being used as pawns in a political fight that has little or nothing to do with them.”

During the violence that erupted in Israel in May 2021, Tag Meir members worked to ease tensions between Jewish and Arab communities. They set up a human chain around the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, visited areas that had been affected by riots, and handed out flowers in cities with large Arab populations in a gesture of peace.

Each year, Tag Meir orchestrates Flowers for Peace on Jerusalem Day, a time when activists hand out roses to residents of the Old City.

The umbrella group goes beyond responding to Jewish-Muslim attacks. In 2012, following riots against African refugees in South Tel Aviv, the home of some Eritrean refugees in Jerusalem was firebombed. Tag Meir organized a rally in the area and provided the family with material support.

Tag Meir also offers training in Israel, with programs for teachers in the national Orthodox school system and workshops in educational institutions across the country. Among the workshop topics are caring and empathy, open-mindedness and mutual understanding.

Responding to an audience question about the current political situation in Israel, Gvaryahu said, “I have no doubt in my mind that the next coalition will have Arab members and that the party of Mansour Abbas (the United Arab List) will be bigger and stronger,” citing the chance that more Arabs will vote in the next election. “This trend of governments working with Arab parties is good news and hopefully it will continue.”

Gvaryahu’s cross-country speaking tour included stops in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. His Vancouver talk on June 20 was moderated by Maytal Kowalski, a local board member of NIF Canada, and opening remarks were given by Ben Murane, executive director of NIFC.

For more information about Tag Meir and the New Israel Fund of Canada, visit tag-meir.org.il/en and nifcan.org.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Stepping back from abyss

Daniel Sokatch, New Israel Fund chief, urges openness to narratives of both peoples. (photo from JCC Jewish Book Festival)

The experiences of Jews and Arabs in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean are complex and both peoples deserve to have their stories understood, according to a leading voice of progressive Zionism.

Daniel Sokatch was the keynote speaker at the closing event of the 2022 Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 10. Sokatch is chief executive officer of the New Israel Fund, a U.S.-based nonprofit funding Israeli civil and human rights organizations and initiatives, which also engages in reconciliation and conflict resolution efforts between Israelis and Palestinians. He shared reflections from his new book Can We Talk About Israel? A Guide for the Curious, Confused and Conflicted, which was illustrated by Christopher Noxon.

“Over my years of service at NIF as the chief executive officer – I’ve been there for over 13 years now – I witnessed personally the discourse about Israel become more heated, more vituperative, more emotional and less fact-based,” Sokatch said. He wrote the book to give average people “a GPS to the conflict that would help them negotiate their own relationship to this complex issue.”

Israel was at the edge of an abyss before the new eight-party coalition government was sworn in last year, Sokatch said.

“This government is a Frankenstein’s monster made up of parties of the right, centre, left and Arab community that shouldn’t work but does work because enough people from all parties, except for the hard right-wing parties, knew that Benjamin Netanyahu was leading Israel over a cliff,” he said. “That was my editorial opinion but it is also the rationale for this government.”

A chunk of the Israeli public realized that Netanyahu was moving Israel toward neo-authoritarianism and a “democracy recession,” said Sokatch. This was exemplified, in part, by moves to abrogate the country’s balance between its Jewish and its democratic identities, he said.

“Israel passed a series of laws – most of them, I think it’s important to note, passed only barely – that really reduce the standing of Arab citizens of Israel to something that looked a lot more like second-class citizenry,” said Sokatch. “The worst of these laws was something called the Nation-State Law.… The Nation-State Law essentially said to Arab-Israeli citizens, you may have the right to vote but only Jewish citizens of the state have the right to what the law says is ‘self-determination.’… It stripped Arabic of its official language status…. The only reason you do things like that is if you want to throw red meat to your base and make a statement to the minority about where they stand. Anyone who has been to Israel recently – and by recently I mean at any point during its entire existence as a state – knows that the Jewish character of Israel is under no threat. In that sense, the alarm raised by Netanyahu and that Nation-State Law was like [former U.S. president Donald] Trump’s Muslim ban. It was a draconian solution for a problem that doesn’t actually exist.”

Reuven Rivlin, who was president of Israel at the time, acknowledged that he was obligated to sign the bill into law, but promised to sign in Arabic, which he did as a symbol of protest.

Sokatch addressed the recent Amnesty International report that accuses Israel of operating an apartheid system. He said that any honest and fair-minded left-wing observer who traveled the length and breadth of Israel would recognize that the apartheid label does not fit. But, he added, any honest and fair-minded right-wing observer who traveled the length and breadth of the West Bank would see things that could legitimately justify the terminology.

“I happen to think that the Amnesty report is deeply flawed,” he said. But, on the flip side: “To dismiss it all as antisemitism is to, like an ostrich, stick your head in the ground and ignore the reality of the problem.”

If Jews worldwide are held responsible for Israel’s actions, that is antisemitic, he said. Likewise, if Israel is depicted as a tentacled monster controlling the world, or if Jews are depicted as clannish, disloyal and the embodiment of “cosmic evil,” these are examples of antisemitism. The hostage-taking at a Texas synagogue in January is another example.

“Why did the guy go to a synagogue, instead of a church or McDonald’s or wherever?” Sokatch asked. “He went to the synagogue because he thought the Jews could get him what he wanted. He thought that we were so powerful in the United States that we could pick up the phone and tell Joe Biden to let the person he wanted let out of jail let out of jail. When criticism of Israel engages in those tropes, you can bet your life it’s antisemitism.”

But these examples of bias should not blind people to the legitimate criticisms being leveled against Israel, he warned. He hopes his book will open up more dialogue.

“Too often, I think, we are afraid to talk about the hard things,” he said. “What is the role of Israel’s Arab citizenry? What is the relationship between the U.S. and Israeli Jewish communities, the two largest Jewish communities in the history of the world? What is the deal with the settlements? Is Israel an apartheid state? What is the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement? I didn’t want to shy away from those things. But I also felt strongly that, in order to have an intelligent conversation about them, or to hold informed opinions about them, you have to know what you’re talking about.”

The first half of his book is mostly straightforward history, he said, with his analysis in the second half. He encourages a more fluent understanding of the narratives of both peoples.

“These are two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, who have been victims of the world, of each other and of themselves,” said Sokatch. “I felt that it was important to hold both of their stories with compassion and curiosity and concern, and to acknowledge that both parties have legitimate claims to this little place between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Both of these peoples have real histories of trauma and persecution and both of them have stories that help them understand who they are and where they are in the world and their connection to this place, and I wanted to tell those stories rather than just one of the stories.”

Sokatch appeared virtually in conversation with Dana Camil Hewitt, director of the book festival. Rikki Jacobson, chair of the festival committee, welcomed the audience and thanked the speaker.

Our right to discussion

Pamela Geller is a bully of global standing. And recently she turned her sights on our community.

Geller is an American writer, blogger, activist and president of the American Freedom Defence Initiative, which the respected Southern Poverty Law Centre calls an anti-Muslim hate group. Her provocations came to greatest public attention when she opposed construction of an Islamic community centre in New York City that was criticized for being somewhat adjacent to the World Trade Centre site.

Somehow, earlier this month, a local Shabbat dinner discussion that was to be facilitated by a New Israel Fund of Canada representative drew her attention.

On July 8, Geller posted on her blog an article titled “United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism supports boycott against Israel.” Like almost everything else on her website, the short piece is deceptive, manipulative, unfair and false. In it, she accuses Congregation Har El in West Vancouver, which was set to host the event targeted to the under-40 crowd, of supporting “the boycott against Israel” and writes that “the traitors of New Israel Fund give information to the United Nations to harm Israel’s soldiers.…”

The New Israel Fund describes itself as the “nation’s leading organization committed to democracy and equality among all Israelis.” It supports human rights organizations in Israel, among which people of almost any political persuasion could probably find something objectionable. But NIF unequivocally does not support the boycotting of Israel. Whatever one might think of its political orientation or those of the frontline groups it funds, it is a legitimate nonprofit agency functioning under the laws of Israel. If it weren’t, the Israeli government would have shut it down.

But the legitimacy of the New Israel Fund is, at best, secondary to the larger issues here. Never mind that Geller extrapolates one event at a single synagogue to represent the views of the entire global Conservative movement – that is silliness that doesn’t warrant refutation – the fact is that Geller was able to kibosh an event in our community. Given the power of bullying in general, and the power of this bully in particular, we cannot blame the organization involved for shying away from the event, though we regret that it happened.

Two other New Israel Fund of Canada events are scheduled to take place in Vancouver in the fall. On Sept. 9, a symposium featuring Ronit Heyd, executive director of Shatil, and Jonathan Kay, editor-in-chief of The Walrus magazine, will engage with the audience on the topic The Backstory: Behind What You Know About Israel. On Nov. 16-17, Anat Hoffman, executive director of the Israel Religious Action Centre, will tackle the topic From the Back of the Bus to the Top of the Agenda.

Any external threats to these events proceeding should be met by our community with a united voice – regardless of our political views. It is our community’s right to discuss whatever issues we deem important – and to determine where the limits, if any, of that discussion lay.

Mahapach-Taghir: education, community building

Mahapach-Taghir’s national coordinator Itamar Hamiel and Palestinian co-director Fidaa Nara Abu-Dbai at the organization’s last residents conference in Tel Aviv. (photo from Itamar Hamiel)

On June 10, Itamar Hamiel of Mahapach-Taghir will be in Vancouver to speak about his organization and new models of activism focused on the Israeli peripheria, the socioeconomic and geographic fringes of the country.

Sponsored by New Israel Fund of Canada (NIFC) and hosted by Temple Sholom Synagogue, the lecture is the latest in a series of NIFC events in the city. Mahapach-Taghir, a project that NIF supports, defines itself as a feminist, grassroots, Jewish-Arab organization that focuses on education and community development. Its origins are in the Israeli students’ tuition strike of 1998, with a group of students from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Believing that social change must go beyond themselves and also include marginalized communities, they began volunteering in the Katamonim neighborhood in Jerusalem, eventually establishing an after-school education and mentoring program. This program grew into Mahapach-Taghir’s first “learning community,” which has been replicated in eight neighborhoods across Israel, and remains the organization’s core program.

In anticipation of his visit, the Independent spoke with Hamiel, who is Mahapach-Taghir’s national coordinator.

JI: What is the relationship between NIF and your organization?

IH: NIF has supported Mahapach-Taghir since our founding in 1998…. Our organization is sometimes hard to understand: we are a feminist, grassroots, Jewish-Arab organization that focuses on education and community activism. Because of this, sometimes it is hard for us to find funding from foundations that have more specific focus. NIF understands this complexity and supports us in it. Because we insist on Jewish-Palestinian partnership on all levels of our organization, some Jewish foundations aren’t interested in our work. They have a narrow view of what supporting Israel means, and NIF breaks that mold.

Around 14 percent of our funding from last year was from NIF, but our experience is that long-term support is more critical than the amount of funding, and NIF has provided that.

JI: How did you become involved in Mahapach-Taghir?

IH: I became involved in Mahapach-Taghir around 15 years ago, a few months after it was established, as a student volunteer in our community in Florentine (Tel Aviv). After the students in Jerusalem founded the organization in Katamonim, they decided to open communities around the country, including in Florentine.

I saw an ad in the university library and thought it looked interesting – 15 years later, I still haven’t left. I was a student volunteer, a coordinator, a board member, and now work on the national staff. Mahapach-Taghir became my “ideological home.” I know many organizations that focus on feminism, Jewish-Arab partnership, community work, etc., but there are no other organizations that combine these inherently interconnected issues in the way that Mahapach-Taghir does.

photo - Itamar Hamiel with with Rosa Feldesh, one of Mahapach-Taghir's veteran activists from Florentine, Tel Aviv — Itamar Hamiel with with Rosa Feldesh, one of Mahapach-Taghir’s veteran activists from Florentine, Tel Aviv. *(photo from Itamar Hamiel)*

JI: Looking at the staff list on the website, all of the staff are women except for you. What are your thoughts on leading a feminist organization?

IH: I am here representing Mahapach-Taghir, but I wouldn’t say that I lead the organization, and I don’t think it would be right if I did. Our Palestinian co-director is Fidaa Nara Abu Dbai and we are currently looking for a Jewish co-director. I won’t even apply for that job because I don’t believe a man should lead an organization that is comprised primarily of women. Usually, even in civil society, most of the staff and volunteers are women and the directors are still men. We believe that it is important to break that paradigm.

JI: How does the Jewish-Arab aspect of the organization get expressed?

IH: Our communities come together for national conferences and seminars at least six times a year. One of our communities is a mixed Jewish-Arab community and, in our communities that are not mixed, there are partnerships between Jewish and Arab communities in geographic proximity.

Mainly, though, we do not think that the only way to do Jewish-Palestinian partnership work is through direct meetings…. For example, in Jerusalem, the Mahapach-Taghir activists in Kiryat HaYovel started a project called Second Opportunity, in which women who had no high school degree were able to pursue a bachelor’s degree. This might not seem political but through Mahapach-Taghir, they drew the link between their lack of education and the political marginalization they face as women in a Mizrahi community. They also understand the link between their marginalization and that of Palestinian women in Israel. The women shared their project with the rest of the communities in a national event, and that inspired the women from Tamra (a Palestinian town inside Israel) to start their own version of the project where the graduates from Jerusalem will serve as mentors. For me, this is the true meaning of partnership: each community works for its own empowerment, while acknowledging the rights and needs of other communities and inspiring one another. They work in solidarity.

JI: What is the feminist aspect of the learning communities? Are fathers also invited to participate?

IH: Each learning community is led by a steering committee that is comprised of residents, almost all of whom are women. We didn’t set out to exclude men but, when you talk about education and community empowerment, women tend to show up. The students who founded Mahapach-Taghir didn’t set out to establish a feminist organization but their view of social justice, and the fact that most of the activists that got involved were women, made it clear that feminism is one of our core values. The very fact that even today when we open a new community it is women who show up, confirms this value. Being a feminist organization doesn’t necessarily mean excluding men, but this country will be a better place when more women have active leadership roles.

photo - Itamar Hamiel with the coordinators of 7 of Mahapach-Taghir's communities at a national activists' seminar — Itamar Hamiel with the coordinators of 7 of Mahapach-Taghir’s communities at a national activists’ seminar. *(photo from Itamar Hamiel)*

JI: Organizations focusing on community development, education and youth take a long view of social change compared to political groups. Why have you chosen this form of activism?

IH: Your question assumes a dichotomy between political and social change. We in Mahapach-Taghir see community development, education and youth work as highly political. Especially in the Israeli context there is a separation between talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (political) and doing work in marginalized communities (social). As always in Mahapach-Taghir, we see this holistically. These issues are interconnected and we need to engage with them as such.

For this reason, we use this form of activism. We have a long view of social change and want to support communities in engaging in activism that will improve the lives of their families, communities and eventually their societies more generally while encouraging solidarity between Jews and Palestinians inside Israel.

JI: Are there measurable outcomes from Mahapach-Taghir’s learning communities?

IH: There are many measurable outcomes from our learning communities but the most important outcomes are not easy to measure. How do you measure empowerment, solidarity and sense of community? In recent years, the perspectives of the corporate world have increasingly influenced expectations of civil society. Organizations like Mahapach-Taghir are expected to provide products and measurable outcomes, and I think that this view is mistaken. I understand that foundations want to know if their money is being well spent but I don’t think that social change can be measured so easily. I am happy to share countless success stories. We can see changes in the communities where we work and in the activists and students that we work with. The stories that are most exciting are usually from activists who have been involved for many years and have gone through a slow but meaningful process of change.

JI: You are coming to Vancouver to solicit donations for NIF from the Diaspora Jewish community. Do you also do resource development in the Arab community (either locally or in the Diaspora)?

IH: Most of our funding comes from European foundations, not from the Jewish Diaspora. We hope that this will change and that more Diaspora Jews will see the value in our work. We also do fundraising locally in each of our communities because we believe in the value of sustainability and local partnership. We have had much more success doing this in our Arab communities. Last year, we raised over 50,000 shekels from our local communities and most of this was from our Arab communities.

JI: What do you hope to share with the Jewish community in Vancouver?

IH: I want to share with them a complex understanding of the society in Israel. I see the tension that Diaspora Jews face of feeling the need to be either “with us or against us,” but I believe that supporting Israel means supporting a more democratic, diverse, pluralistic society in Israel. I hope to bring the voice of our activists, who are doing incredible work in their communities, Jewish and Palestinian, marginalized communities around the country.

Maayan Kreitzman is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.

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To register for the June 10 event at Temple Sholom, which starts at 7 p.m., go to nifcan.org/our-events/upcoming. In addition to Hamiel, NIFC has invited a local counterpart in community building as a parallel to the work being done in Israel: Lindsay Vander Hoek of Mission Possible will describe her organization’s work with residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.