NIF comments

On ‘Strangers No More’ winning an Oscar

‘We are very pleased that Oscar success helps highlight the issues facing the children of refugees living in Israel. New Israel Fund offers our congratulations to the Bialik-Rogozin school and the many other organisations in Israel who we support that are helping to ensure these children  from Darfur and other war-torn regions are able to stay safely in Israel. As President Shimon Peres has said, their success brings joy to Israel.”

 

Message from NIF UK Chairman, Nicholas Saphir

Thank you for your ongoing support in helping maintain Israel as an open, egalitarian and just society.

2010 was a record fund raising year for NIF UK. As a result we were able to continue to provide for the many Israeli organisations that depend on us. It was a year with many significant successes. Despite the many pressures and issues facing NIF and its grantees we continued to work to help Israelis to help themselves to create a better civil society and to tackle discrimination, examples of which we feature in this newsletter and on the website.

 We can all take pride in these successes, which were achieved despite the unprecedented attacks on NIF and its grantees in Israel and on supporters throughout the Diaspora. The pressures on NIF and its grantees will continue and 2011 will bring with it many new challenges including the fight for women’s rights; elimination of unequal treatment of Israel’s Arab minority; and the continued struggle for religious pluralism. We also expect that the Knesset enquiries into the funding and activities of NGOs will become more vindictive.

 We will continue to promote open discourse and democratic debate as the way to strengthen Israel, challenging those who mistakenly believe this strengthening is achieved by unquestioning loyalty.

 Your support for NIF UK was also a clear comment on the work of Ellen Goldberg, who leaves us after four years to return to her family in Jerusalem. Those of you who have enjoyed Ellen’s dedication and deft management of the organisation will join us in being sorry to see her go and we wish her much success and happiness in her new career. Fortunately we are able to welcome Adam Ognall as the new CEO.   

 We need your financial support, but just as importantly we need your ongoing encouragement for those Israelis who are fighting to ensure that Israel remains true to its own democratic values as set out in the Declaration of Independence. Please do keep in touch with our programme and join us at some of the many interesting events planned for 2011.

Nicholas Saphir

Does a Jewish Democratic State have to be racist?

By Ellen Goldberg

A recent halachic ruling by the Chief Rabbi of Tsfat, Shmuel Eliyahu, that Jews are prohibited from selling or renting real estate to non-Jews has significantly raised the stakes in the deeply disturbing question as to whether racism will become a key feature in maintaining Israel as the Jewish State.

For many of us the statement by Rabbi Eliyahu and the support he received from so many other Orthodox Rabbis was deeply offensive and is completely contrary to the Declaration of Independence which states that “Israel will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or gender; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture." 

In response, New Israel Fund circulated a letter condemning the ruling and encouraged rabbis around the world to take a clear public stand against it.  Within days, nearly 1,000 rabbis from across the globe – including the UK - signed the letter.  Signatories included rabbis from across the religious spectrum from Orthodox to Progressive.

Prime Minister Netanyahu himself criticised the edict, as did President Shimon Peres and the leadership of Israel's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem.  Minister of Minority Affairs Avishay Braverman stated that the good relations between the Jews and Arabs of the Galilee is the cornerstone of coexistence and that he could not let "such a divisive individual continue his activities as the holder of an official state post."

Since most of the rabbis who signed the original racist edict are also government employees, the Attorney General has opened an investigation against them to determine whether they should be suspended for incitement, a crime in Israel since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.

New Israel Fund encompasses a wide range of activists and supporters across the religious spectrum in Israel and around the world – Progressives, modern Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox and secular.  But we do abhor the marriage of convenience between some ultra-Orthodox and the nationalists, which has led them to claim that “racism is in the Torah”. Israel is a Jewish Democratic state and, although we all struggle with what could be considered an oxymoron, we support and work with Israelis who are committed to living in tolerance and understanding, in a just society that treats all its citizens as equals. 

In a statement made in early December by the Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks in the House of Lords in honour of International Human Rights Day and the anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he promotes human rights education. 

The Chief Rabbi said, “Rights are lost when one group within a society, usually the dominant group, sees another group as a threat to its freedom, its own dominance.  Threat becomes fear; fear becomes hate; hate becomes dehumanisation.  When we dehumanise the other, evil follows, as night follows day...When I diminish others, I am myself diminished.  Human rights begin in the way we teach our children to recognise the humanity of the other and the dignity of difference.  The rights of tomorrow are born in the education of today.”

It is clear that the rabbis who supported Rabbi Eliyahu’s statement were not educated sufficiently in human rights, or about the dignity of difference.  The reasons offered by the Rabbi for his halachic ruling include preventing assimilation, preventing property values from decreasing, keeping cities Jewish.  How many times have these justifications been used elsewhere to keep Jews out of neighbourhoods and jobs?  It seems that he and his co-signatories were not educated sufficiently about Jewish history either.  The Jewishness of the state is not an excuse to promote racism against its own citizens. 

As an organisation that supports Israelis who promote religious pluralism, freedom of religion and conscience, New Israel Fund encourages debate about the relationship between religion and state in Israel.  We believe citizenship and identity must not be controlled by religious authorities.  In a democratic Israel, all streams of Judaism – and of other religious faiths – must be welcome.

This is not a position against the Orthodox.  NIF proudly supports countless Orthodox organisations, leaders and activists that work on a wide variety of issues - on promoting better relations between Jews and Arabs and between different types of Jews, safeguarding human and civil rights, closing social gaps, preserving the environment and others. 

In line with what we believe are true Jewish values - tolerance and understanding, open-mindedness and respect - Israel can be the Jewish homeland and haven of the Jewish people, while still maintaining its democratic values with equal treatment for all.

Ellen Goldberg is Executive Director of the New Israel Fund (UK).

 

On Shimon Peres’ comments on English anti-Semitism

Asymmetric criticism of Israel is wrong. However, there is a serious risk in conflating criticism of Israel with latent or overt anti-Semitism. Criticism of the policies of the State of Israel are not in themselves anti-Semitic nor is it undermining the State if the intent of such criticism is to further the difficult challenge of defending the values and priorities of the 1948 Declaration of Independence for "liberty, justice and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel"