September Newsletter

Survey: Most Israeli Arabs Do Not Support Hezbollah

A survey conducted mid August by Mina Tzemach, Israel 's leading pollster, revealed that the vast majority of Israeli Arabs did not support Hezbollah during the Lebanon War. According to Tzemach, only 18% of Israeli Arabs backed Hezbollah, yet 55% of Israeli Jews thought that all or most Israeli Arabs supported Hezbollah. An additional 21% felt that half of Israeli Arabs sympathized with Israel 's Lebanese Shiite enemy.

Last week, Environment Minister Gideon Ezra fanned the flames of these racist misconceptions by suggesting that Israel's Arabs do not deserve to be part of the government rehabilitation plan for the north because they "carried on as normal." In fact, 40% of the Israeli civilians killed by Hezbollah during the war were Arabs. In a Haaretz article entitled "After the War the Equality Between Arabs and Jews Must be Rebuilt," Shuli Dichter, co-director of New Israel Fund grantee Sikkuy: The Association of Civic Equality in Israel, wrote, "Half of the citizens of the Galilee are Jews and half are Arabs and Israel's civil strength in the region depends first and foremost on basic equality between the two sectors."

The gap between Israeli Jewish perceptions and reality demonstrates the critical importance of New Israel Fund's activities to promote Jewish-Arab coexistence in the aftermath of the war. Indeed, the third cycle of New Israel Fund's emergency grants in the wake of the war emphasize coexistence and joint living projects, including: allocations for a summer camp for Arab children run by Mossawa Centre; Jewish and Arab workshops about the feelings evoked by the war operated by Mahapach: Education, Housing and Livelihood; and coexistence activities at the Neve Shalom Jewish-Arab kindergarten and primary school.

Fighting for Just War Compensation

With the war over tens of thousands of Israelis are seeking compensation for damage to property and lost income. New Israel Fund is at the forefront of the campaign to ensure that all Israelis receive just compensation and have also provided an address for citizens who feel that the economic damage inflicted on them by the war is not being fairly dealt with.

Residents of northern Israel inspect the damage after a missile attack.

This article from Haaretz focuses on the unfair compensation being paid to small businesses according to their location.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/752768.html

New Israel Fund grantee Yedid: The Association for Community Empowerment is providing free legal advice for those submitting compensation claims related to the war and has printed a detailed user-friendly guide on compensation to help the ordinary citizen cut through the bureaucratic red tape. Among many emergency grants given by New Israel Fund Sot El-Amel Labourer's Voice has set up a hot-line to answer compensation queries in Arabic which has been inundated with dozens of calls each day. Many of the callers require an Arabic translation of the government compensation forms, which have only been published in Hebrew.

Precedent Setting Verdict on Haifa University 's Discriminatory Housing Policy

The different perceptions over the recent war have disturbed the delicate balance of coexistence between Israel 's Jews and Arabs. Against this background a precedent setting ruling last month by Haifa District Court against Haifa University's discriminatory housing policy has added significance. The ruling also reflects the strength of Israeli democracy and civil society even during this difficult period.

Veteran New Israel Fund grantee Adalah – Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel petitioned Haifa District Court on behalf of three Israeli Arab women who had been denied housing in student dormitories even though they came from disadvantaged backgrounds and lived in remote villages. The Court accepted Adalah's claim that the University's criteria for awarding housing was discriminatory because completing military service was a major factor in allocating dormitory accommodation.

Arab students at Israeli campuses will now get a fairer housing deal following this court ruling.

Adalah's lawyer Sawsan Zaher, a New Israel Fund Law Fellow, said "the ruling will have ramifications for other universities who make use of the military criterion," She also said that Adalah will use this legal precedent in its petition to the Supreme Court against the Israel Lands Administration's practice of giving precedence to those who have completed military service when allocating land.

Single Mothers Have Somewhere to Turn

With the fragile ceasefire holding New Israel Fund grantee Self-Respect for Women is helping immigrant women who work as caregivers for the elderly sort out their rights and disputes vis-a-vis their employers. During the war itself the organisation helped dozens of women who had nobody else to turn to.

For example the war was a nightmare for Larissa. A single mother and new immigrant from the former Soviet Union with two children aged six and two; she works as a caregiver in Haifa for an elderly couple. She was one of dozens of such women given special emergency assistance in Israel's war-torn north.

"Before the war Larissa had been leaving the children with friends while she went to work," recounts Galia Kulik, Programme Coordinator for Self-Respect for Women. "But the friends left the region when the missiles started falling. We stepped in and found reliable volunteers to look after the children in a bomb shelter."

Self-Respect for Women was founded in 2001. Activities have focused on protecting employment rights and improving working conditions.

With 12 branches throughout Israel , Kulik estimates that about 30% of the 1,500 women being assisted by Self-Respect for Women are single mothers like Larissa. With its head office in the Haifa suburb of Tirat Hacarmel the organisation found itself in the thick of the war. Kulik spent most of the war on the phone even though there were times when her apartment shook from missiles exploding nearby. "I had so many desperate people phoning me up," she explained. "I felt I couldn't desert them and stay in a shelter where there was no signal for my cellular phone or way to contact me."

As the war dragged on Self-Respect for Women increasingly found itself providing basic humanitarian to its client population. New Israel Fund matched up Self-Respect for Women with Meir Panim, an organisation that provided food supplies.

"We focused on dozens of the most needy families across the north," she explained. "Many families were without food because they were scared to go out to the stores and then after 1 st August they had no money anyway because they did not receive their salaries."

"Other mothers were in need of psychological and emotional support," Kulik added, "because rockets were continually falling near their homes and they were cooped up bomb shelters with their children who did not understand why they could not go outside."

Rebuilding the North: New Israel Fund and SHATIL Initiates Civil Society Effort to Ensure Government Responsibility

With the cease-fire in effect, New Israel Fund and SHATIL is turning its attention to the massive rebuilding efforts that must begin before life in the north of Israel can return to normal.

Despite years of irresponsible budget cuts that led to the near collapse of the social support system and increasing gaps between rich and poor, Israelis across the spectrum were still surprised at the government's neglect of the needs of the country's home front. Provision of shelter, food and other vital necessities for residents of the North were largely initiated and paid for by charities and private individuals.

To ensure that the State fulfils its responsibility to these citizens during the rehabilitation process, New Israel Fund and SHATIL will create a platform of civil society organisations and local authorities to press the government to take appropriate action, and to monitor the follow-up, to ensure populations in need receive assistance. The project also will advocate for policy changes, in light of the fact that government policies well before the war were responsible for government neglect of the home front during the current crisis.

A critical part of the project is a Budget Watch to ensure that government funds, including funds that come from overseas emergency appeals, are equitably allocated and distributed in a transparent fashion. The project will press for civil society input into decision-making about allocations to ensure that weak populations do not, again, fall between the cracks.

Northerners Wed in Non-Orthodox Ceremonies

New Israel Fund grantee Forum for Freedom of Choice in Marriage organised a wedding ceremony at Tel Aviv University for couples from the North who were unable to marry in their home cities due to the war. The couples selected from a range of "alternative" marriage ceremonies, including secular, Conservative and Reform services. The event was held on Tu B'Av, the Jewish festival of love, and was funded by charitable contributions from the Israeli public.

Message from Alan Bolchover, New Israel Fund UK Chief Executive

One of the most difficult challenges facing funders and organisations is shifting from a conflict mode, where rapid response capabilities are critical, to a more deliberate focus on long-term strategies. Not only is there no specific point in time that defines the transition, but also the ability to pause, reflect, plan and implement requires a change in the operational patterns that have emerged during a crisis period.

The fluidity of the current Israeli reality cannot be underestimated: a fragile ceasefire that may not hold; a scandal-plagued Israeli government; an untenable impasse in terms of Israel 's relations with the Palestinian Authority; and budget priorities that will focus on strengthening the military and rebuilding the North. Inevitably many of our issues: Jewish –Arab relations and the relief of poverty especially, are once again going to end up being sidelined by the political parties jockeying for position.

It is therefore up to us to keep these issues on the agenda, because for the majority of people particularly from the Northern region, they are the most important issues of all.

As always, thank you for your continued support.