I first registered to vote at a Gay Pride parade in Houston.
The process was easy, convenient and the people were friendlier looking than the ones at the Republican Party table. They clearly weren’t happy to be stuck behind enemy lines.
But I digress. The real reason I became jury pool eligible at a Gay Pride parade was my future wife’s fault. It was a competition thing. She was still playing the Jewish frat field at the time, and while I couldn’t outdrink or outspend my competition, I thought I could win any progressive values battle. So why not try to impress with my liberal open-mindedness?
I guess it worked.
Janet and I married, and she moved on to become an Anti Defamation League Board Chairperson and I moved on to 35 years of gay target marketing.
Voting registration location clearly matters for marketing folks. I became entitled to enter what, at the time, was a fairly secluded world. It was a world where, over the years, I was able to learn about the right candidates, the right issues, and the right to receive gay-themed mail in plain unmarked envelopes. (As time marched on, so did the times: My mail gradually lost its anonymity.)
However, the material also helped me learn about how perceptions can shape opinions and how even when those perceptions are proven to be wrong, the perceptions can still strick. Most important of all, perhaps, is that the gay rights material helped me appreciate the benefits of informed perspective and identifying the real issues and goals.
These lessons can be applied to pro Israel and pro Palestinian supporters — no matter where they registered to vote — and key Jewish organizations like AIPAC, ADL, AJC and J Street. (Although none of these organizations would ever be accused of specializing in understated mailings. Whatever it takes to gain your PRO ISRAEL and PRO JEWISH contribution dollars for the fight against Iran, Syria, delegitimization, anti-Semitism, Palestinian intransigence, the U.N. — the list of external battles to wage is, unfortunately, quite long — and the fight for the hearts and minds of Diaspora Jewry, Congress and the world.)
Let’s deal with the lessons.
Many in the Jewish community grew up shrouded in Holocaust memories and with Israel’s very existence constantly at risk. The focus was on getting Jews in the Soviet Union out and Jews outside of Israel in. The Arab countries were all threats, and Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, Israel’s not so friendly neighbors, seemed to constantly be at war against Israel. The Soviet Union and America were also engaged in a proxy war using Arabs and Israelis as pawns. Virtually no Arab leader dared to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. How Israel was perceived by the world was far less of a concern than Israel doing everything it could to survive in a hostile region and in a world where anti-Semitism and hatred were a recent and constant factor in Israel’s decision making.
Then things changed. Peace with Egypt and Jordan removed key strategic threats. The Soviet Union imploded and America became the world’s only superpower. Russia and America became far less (overtly) hostile and America actually replaced Russia as a key Arab benefactor. The vast majority of Arab League members started to support a peace agreement and began to recognize Israel’s right to exist. And while Syria and Lebanon remained hostile neighbors, neither they or the military wings of the terrorist organizations they supported and harbored — chiefly Hamas and Hezbollah — became strategic threats. (Although the mayhem they can now produce remains a tactical threat, particularly to northern and southern Israel, and it is a threat that must still be fought and defended against.)
What has also changed is the nuclear threat Israel now faces from Iran. While it is a conceptual threat today, many Israelis and their supporters are not comfortable relying on the concept of ”mutual assured destruction” or an implicit or explicit America defense promise to act as an Iranian deterrence. Considering Israel’s experience — four major wars and two intifadas, plus the countless acts of terrorism that Israel has been through in its relatively short 62 year existence — that is not only understandable it is in many ways logical.
It is hardly surprising that leaders of a country that has been continuously threatened, or Jewish organizations that have been supporters for all of those years, would perceive the Iranian threat any differently than they do. Nor is it surprising that certain Middle East issues and leaders would be perceived more as they were than as they now are: After all, the simplist and arguably safest Middle East strategic and tactical planning would be to assume that past perfomance IS a guarantee of future performance.
Yet while the Iranian issue remains one of deep concern and is one that Israel’s leaders and Jewish organizations do need to confront, there remain legitimate disagreements within Israel and these organizations about the best diplomatic tactics to apply and how long to apply them before resorting to military tactics. What remains most important, however, are that today’s current geopolitical realities (and not “past performance” induced thinking) form the primary basis for decision making.
Beyond the Iranian issue, what are some key unaddressed issues that Israel faces that Jewish organizations should resolve to focus on in 2011? What are the important goals that should be added or reprioritized in light of changed realities? What are perceptions that possibly should be shed?
Let’s look to Israel’s political system and changing demographics for the answers.
Ever since the second intifada, most major Israeli leaders, and now three of the four largest political parties — Labor, Likud and Kadima — have come to realize that peace, or at least disentanglement from the Palestinians, is in Israel’s interest as much (or even more) than it is in the Palestinians’.
Without disentanglement, the population growth of Israel’s Arab citizens and their West Bank and Gaza Palestinian brethren could soon end the notion of Israel as a Jewish state. ( Or Israel would have to take restrictive actions to limit voting rights, which could fundamentally alter Israel’s democratic nature. ) Not only that, the incredible growth of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox citizens, with their often extreme religious, political and social views, combined with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s (arguably anti-Arab) ultra-nationalists now provide Israel with an internal existential threat that is too often ignored. These are Israelis whose beliefs and values no longer closely mirror their Diaspora Jewry supporters’ values and who do not share the sense of urgency in hammering out a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Yet is rare to find that any American Jewish organization publicly acknowledges or focuses on this threat. (To point out the obvious and to encourage change is to add more fuel to the Israel delegitimization fire and violates the dictum that it is verboten for American Jews to “interfere” in Israeli politics.) It has been so much easier (and safer) to focus on external threats that are familiar, but have diminished, than to focus on emerging internal issues that are difficult to address but are growing.
When Alan Dershowitz, a brilliant Israel defender, talks about the need to have a united front in defense of Israel, his subtext is that it would be better for a 2 1/2 year old progressive organization like J Street to merge with AIPAC. Why? It’s a messaging issue. AIPAC tilts all Israel all the time and J Street tilts nuance. Nuance, in this view creates disharmony and confusion in the Jewish community and in Congress. Confusion and disharmony equals lower pro Israel support.
However, Israeli political and societal dysfunction and not disunity among Israel supporters appears to be the key messaging and support problem that Israel now faces. To foster unity in support of Israel, Dershowitz and Jewish organizations would be better served to focus on ensuring that Israel’s political system addresses the elements that are pulling its society further apart from its American Jewish supporters.
Certainly AJC, J Street, ADL and AIPAC can and should still focus externally and speak out against issues they feel existentially threaten Israel. (Defining what those issues are differs among organizations, but Iran’s nuclear ambition is one where agreement is shared.) And when these organizations help place Middle East incidents in context to interrupt what is too often an unfair and unbalanced world reaction to Israeli defensive responses that is also helpful in maintaining pro Israel support. But, the best long-term way to help maintain and encourage Israel support would be for the organizations to start addressing uncomfortable internal Israeli issues.
Little progress can occur until Israel changes its political system. It is a system that has led to an internal threat that is in many ways equal to its external Iranian threat. Israel’s coalition government has produced so many dangerous compromises that a huge segment of Israel’s society remains either subsidized non-participants or antagonistic to a large segment of its fellow citizens.
Over half of the ultra-Orthodox remain unemployed, few participate in the military, and their schooling (which occurs largely in their own schools, where math and science are far less rigorously taught than in Israel’s “non religious” school system) is heavily subsidized. The ultra-Orthodox demand to be treated exceptionally because they feel their religious study helps preserve Jewish religiosity and Jewish traditions. But, when manifestations of their religion and tradition building include encouraging Arab housing discrimination, trying to acquire enough power to discriminate against domestic and Diaspora Jews who don’t meet their Jewish definitional standards, and opposing a peace agreement with the Palestinians, because many feel that all of the land from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea belongs to Jews, then one must wonder about the value of supporting their efforts. And this is a group who now represents around 8% to 10% of the population and, in their discrimination downtime, averages over nine children per family. By 2020 they may represent as much as 15% of Israel’s population and a much higher percentage of Israel’s political, social, and economic problems.
Then we have the ultra-nationalists, headed by Avigdor Lieberman, a man who leads a political party, Yisrael Beiteinu, whose members were largely born outside Israel. Yet, despite this location handicap, they are sure they know best how to preferentially treat “true” citizens of Israel. This largely includes specializing in discriminating against the 20% of the population that is Arab and, along with the extremist United Torah party, attacking Israeli peace groups as disloyal, and also working to postpone a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Both of these groups are in positions of power because of their positions in Israel’s coalition governing system. Both present a risk to Diaspora Jewry’s support of Israel: They represent a values system not widely shared among pro Israel supporters, and they act as regular impediments to the type of peace deal that best ensures Israel’s long term support and success as a Jewish democratic state.
AIPAC, AJC, ADL and J Street would ultimately increase pro Israel support if they resolved in 2011 to encourage Israel to make the type of tough political changes necessary to either change its coalition governing system, where gaining as little as 2% of the vote allows a political party to participate, or to at least change the current coalition government coalition partners. (Netanyahu’s Likud and Livni’s Kadima are the key players here, and both need to be pushed, for the good of Israel, to reach a political agreement.)
Since structural change would be difficult to implement with the existing coalition members — it isn’t likely Netanyahu’s smaller participating partners would opt for political suicide — changing the current coalition government to add Tzipi Livni’s Kadima Party and drop the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu and ultra-Orthodox Shas parties, looms as a more feasible alternative. (Since some of the minor political parties’ actions effectively operate to assist in “delegitimizing” Israel as much as some of the actions of Israel’s most ardent enemies, Kadima would, at the minimum, be addition just by subtraction.)
Only with a coalition government change can Israel begin to make the type of tough decisions necessary to bring the ultra-Orthodox more into the mainstream of Israeli society and reduce their all too pervasive societal influence. (This influence extends beyond Kashrut and Sabbath laws to legal rulings on marriage, divorce, burial rights and immigration status.) Only then can Israel also successfully marginalize the corrosive influence of the extremists and ultra-nationalists.
Yes, the axiom that Israel must have a willing Palestinian partner in order to reach a final peace agreement is true. Yes, the Palestinians must enter into negotiations in order to reach any type of successful outcome. Yes, the process is a shared burden and for the Palestinians to place the focus on stopping settlements in order to start peace negotiations is certainly an unwelcome precondition.
But, the Palestinians have their own political reality that most Israeli leaders recognize. That reality requires them to make this demand. The fact that the demand comes from a less mature and far weaker government than Israel’s is notable. It is also notable that Israeli leaders recognize the Palestinians’ more limited flexibility and that the present Palestinian leaders have managed, despite all of the complex internal difficulties they face in trying to govern an area they don’t fully control, to demonstrate an increasing degree of success. It is a success that Israel is foolish not to try to build on by finding some type of formula to stop settlement building, or to at least give enough of an appearance that this has occurred so the Palestinians can claim success and reenter negotiations.
Settlement expansion in areas that will eventually revert to Palestinian control is tactically unwise. If Israel’s political system allowed Netanyahu to focus more on actions to reach a peace agreement than efforts to pander to coalition members that are more narrowly aligned with their own intra-party interests than Israel’s then Israel and Diaspora Jewry would benefit.
Israel exists in a hostile region and a hostile world. AIPAC, ADL, AJC and J Street are right to focus on external threats. But, Israel must also have Jewish organizational partners that are willing to address Israel’s internal threats.
By expanding their organizational missions they will better help Israel maintain and grow the support of Diaspora Jewry. This will ensure the type of external unity necessary to more effectively respond to Iran’s existential threat and to fulfill the peace goals of the vast majority of its citizens and political leaders.
