Kerry vs Bennett for the hearts and minds of the Diaspora

Ha’aretz 6/6/13 

Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made an impassioned plea to the American Jewish community to rededicate itself to the two-state solution. Kerry has moved his ticking clocks from years to days, declaring if we don’t get the talks moving now, we never will. Yet, while Kerry is making his pitch to get the American Jewish community involved, Israel’s minister for Diaspora affairs is less keen.

Let me explain. During the coalition talks, Naftali Bennett asked for the roles of public diplomacy and Diaspora affairs and religious services to be included with his industry, trade and labor portfolio.

The public diplomacy and Diaspora affairs and the religious services portfolios have the greatest potential to shape the relationship between Israel and her Diaspora. Both of these jobs were demanded by Bennett, head of the Habayit Hayehudi party, home of the national religious the settlers.

Before trying to understand why Bennett wanted these jobs, it is important to clarify what these portfolios actually do. In the case of public diplomacy and Diaspora affairs, the minister is effectively the government’s foreign minister to Jewish communities abroad. Of all the formal and informal links between Israel and communities of the Jewish Diaspora, Taglit-Birthright sits as the jewel in the crown, coordinating the visits of thousands of young Jews to Israel every year.

The Religious Services Ministry controls all issues of religion within Israel in addition to cultivating religious ties to the Diaspora. Alongside getting involved in the messy business of setting budgets for the yeshivot and state employed rabbis, it is the central battleground between the progressive streams of Judaism and the Orthodox establishment.

By taking both of these portfolios, Bennett, the Modern-Orthodox former chief of the Yesha Council of settlers, has put himself at the center of the two points of friction between Israel and the Diaspora, namely the growth of settlements and the status of progressive Jewish rights within Israel.

Two weeks ago, we found out that the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry had been handed over to Bennett, but not before it was stripped of everything that made it a ministry. Even Taglit-Birthright, the flagship program, was moved back into the Prime Minister’s Office along with the Masa Israel Journey program.

Yet Bennett has managed to turn his empty ministry into a tool that he can use to sell himself and his party to the Diaspora. Having grown up as a child of olim (immigrants), Bennett understands the Jewish-American community well. He knows that they want to see more religious pluralism within Israel and those they are not particularly fond of settlements.

Through the Religious Services Ministry, Bennett has made somesurprising moves that have enabled, for the first time, non-Orthodox rabbis to receive state money. In changing the model of how rabbinical figures receive their salaries, he has opened up the system to the non-Orthodox without having to deal with the issue head on. This policy, coupled with his move to allow Israelis to get married with any rabbinical council within Israel, is changing the landscape for progressive Jews within Israel.

By ingratiating himself with the progressive community, no easy feat as the head of a religious Zionist party, Bennett is demonstrating his value to the Diaspora on the issues that matter to them. Through his empty title of public diplomacy and Diaspora affairs minister, he has the right to be able to talk directly to Jewish communities about these achievements.

He hopes, one expects, that through his fight for equality for all Jews he will become a champion for Diaspora Jewry. In doing so, he will have succeeded in his quest to become a politician for all the Jewish people, not just those who live in the West Bank.

Through normalizing himself as a change maker, he will be able to bring himself and his party into the Diaspora’s mainstream. His policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians should not stop him being accepted if he is breaking the stranglehold of the ultra-Orthodox on issues that directly affect Reform and Conservative Jews.

So, while John Kerry hopes to motivate Jews in America to put pressure on the Israelis to reach a two-state solution with the Palestinians, Bennett is giving that same community legislative wins within the Knesset. It will be fascinating to see how dividing American Jews between two issues so keen to their heart will play out. The real question, however, remains: How much time is there before the clock runs out and there is no real choice to make? Time is certainly in Bennett’s favor, but whether he becomes a welcome figure in the established Jewish community of America waits to be seen.

Kerry’s Task: Close the Incredulity Gap

Daily Beast 24/5/13

With Ghaith al-Omari and Danielle Spiegel Feld

President Obama’s challenge to the thousand Israeli students he addressed in Jerusalem was clear: “Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this: political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see.” The President, once a community organizer himself, understands the importance of grassroots momentum to change the status quo.

Secretary of State John Kerry has since made important progress towards reviving the two-state agenda: On the political front, the Israelis appear to have agreed to impose a settlement freeze of sorts, while the Palestinians have temporarily agreed not to pursue international legal actions against Israel. On the economic front, a private sector team of business leaders now stands ready to examine investment opportunities within the West Bank. And regionally, the Arab League has revived its 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, demonstrating that there is still Arab support for the idea of two states.

Yet, despite these promising developments, the Israeli and Palestinian publics are no closer to believing that peace is on its way.

The latest Pew polls report that 61 percent of Palestinians believe there is no way for an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully with Israel. Within Israel the figures are somewhat better—only 38 percent see no way to coexist—but the whole peace process was still virtually ignored in Israel’s last elections.

Thus, even though poll after poll indicates a plurality of each population would accept a two-state solution, a vast “incredulity gap” remains within each society. The physical erosion of the two-state solution due to settlement expansion, provocations by each sides’ leaders, violence that followed the Gaza disengagement, and relentless effects of the occupation, are causing both peoples to lose faith in the ideal of two states living beside each other in peace.

The incredulity gap poses a serious hurdle for Secretary Kerry. If the people do not believe a two-state solution is plausible, they will not actively push for it. And as President Obama made clear, without strong stakeholder engagement, there will be no pressure on political leaders to return to the negotiating table, nor remain there if the talks do take place.

There is, however, one bright spot in the recent polling data: a plurality of Israelis and Palestinians wants President Obama to play a bigger role in resolving the conflict (49 percent of Israelis and 41 percent of Palestinians). This provides an opening for Secretary Kerry to speak directly to these constituencies, bolstering support for civil society groups on both sides of the Green Line.

These groups need this extra attention: We cannot expect the grassroots in the region to make change when the mediators seeking to achieve that change pass them over.

The U.S. has established an admirable record of supporting people-to-people dialogue and regional cooperative initiatives, particularly through the auspices of U.S. AID funding programs. The Obama Administration is also in the midst of an important project to map the different civil society groups in the region to see how American support can best be allocated.

But given the urgency of the moment, the Administration needs to do more. The most immediate way of doing so is for Secretary Kerry to elevate the profile of Israeli and Palestinian two-state advocacy groups by meeting with select organizations during his next visit to the region. This meeting should mark the beginning of heightened U.S. engagement with civil society groups within each nation.

Many Palestinians believe that the U.S. has been deaf to their plight and blinded to the changing realities on the ground. By speaking with Palestinians directly, the Secretary can start a conversation that demonstrates he understands their position and promotes their understanding of his.

To be most effective, Secretary Kerry will need to speak with representatives of the varied voices of Palestinian civil society, including those who have remained active in peace advocacy as well as those who have grown too pessimistic to continue investing in the two-state solution. Kerry might not like all that he hears from these groups, but without engaging all these stakeholders, he will not be able to bring the people with him in this process.

Engaging with peace advocates in Israel is equally as important. Despite the fact that a majority of Israelis still identify the two-state solution as their preferred outcome, Israeli groups advocating two states are demoralized right now. By giving these groups an audience, Secretary Kerry can help reenergize Israel’s committed two-state advocates, emboldening them in their fight against the skepticism that abounds. And by speaking with political groups outside of the committed “left,” the Secretary can help publicize news of the promising recent developments, hopefully chipping away at the sense of futility that fuels many Israelis’ detachment.

With the same enthusiasm that Secretary Kerry has approached the economic, political and regional dynamics, he must now try to bring the people on board by directly engaging with those who have suffered the continued failures of initiatives past, building their support for efforts to start anew. If he is diligent in this task, the Secretary may just be able to translate his early diplomatic progress into concrete changes on the ground.

U.S. Jews need to decide if they are tourists in Israel, or extended family

Ha’aretz 5/23/13

Israelis, understandably, are being consumed by the budget negotiations that are currently taking place. The global economic slowdown has finally hit and like every other country Israel is facing thought decisions about what to cut from the budget to handle the deficit.

Israel has a pretty complex relationship with her Diaspora at the best of times. Some groups, such as Women of the Wall, use Diaspora support in order to turbo-charge their campaigns. Others clearly tell Jews living abroad that their opinions should stay abroad as well.

When it comes to laws around religious pluralism and immigration, many Israelis feel that Diaspora Jews have ‘skin in the game’ and therefore have a right to comment on what Israel chooses to do or not to do. When it comes to the budget, the vast majority of Israelis would maintain that if you don’t pay tax you should not get a say.

So it was interesting last week that the conference of Jewish Presidents called on Yair Lapid not to charge VAT on tourists as it “would add significantly to the cost for tourists and will, we fear, cause many to reconsider, postpone, or even cancel trips to Israel.”

While I understand that the costs may go up, if people’s affiliations to Israel are merely linked to how cheap it is to travel there, the U.S. Jewish connection to Israel is in a far bigger crisis then we previously thought.

The U.S. Jewish community undoubtedly has contributed millions of dollars to the Israeli tourism industry and, through Birthright, it has created a new generation of returning tourists. But giving tourists a vote on how Israel makes up its budget gap seems counterintuitive.

It makes sense for Israel’s Tourism Ministry to object to this budget shift. Tourists themselves don’t seem to mind the impending increase in costs. What I find odd is that the U.S. Jewish community is using its clout as the Diaspora to try and have a voice as tourists.

Lapid does not have any easy choices but charging those who have the resources to travel abroad to visit the country seems to be a better way of plugging the hole then cutting welfare to the neediest. While tourism is a massive sector within the Israeli economy the majority of travelers are going not due to the cheapness of the country (already the eighth most expensive in the world according to World Eonomic Forum) but due to it being the Holy Land.

Why should Israelis who earn far less than the American Jews who visit have to subsidize hotels and souvenirs for tourists. Giving directly to the Israeli taxation system is a better way to help and support Israel, in this regard, than U.S. Jews giving indirect taxation to Israel through the myriad of different Israeli welfare charities that are dependent on them.

It’s unclear whether the Conference of Presidents hoped their letter would sway Lapid’s mind more than the government ministers who sit around him, all of which are looking to protect their slice of the pie. I’m happy that they failed though. As Israel goes through this difficult period of austerity the rest of the Jewish people who choose to visit can contribute their part to try and ease the suffering of the worst of within Israel. That’s what being a family is all about.

 

What do you do if your mum hates Mother’s Day?

Ha’aretz 5/9/13

I love my mum. She has always been a role model to me. Having retired from the National Health Service and made aliyah, she now spends her time volunteering as a doctor for the refugee clinics in Tel Aviv.

My mum, however, is an atypical Jewish mother. Despite the thousands of miles that separate my mother from her youngest (me), my mum gets freaked out if I call more than once a week. Mum has never been one for constant contact, nor involving herself in the everyday details of her children’s lives.

This background is important to understand as I recount my first experiences with Mother’s Day. Growing up in North West London, I did not pay very much attention to Mother’s Day. It felt like a weird fad. My family was never big on giving presents to one another; so having an extra day to do so never came naturally.

I first became really aware of Mother’s Day when I was attending university in Bristol. During my first year finals I wandered into the student union to find flowers on the desk of the receptionist with nondescript cards carefully placed across her desk. Seeing me looking at her flowers, the receptionist fixed me with a steely stare and demanded to know, “Have you sent your mother flowers for Mother’s Day or are you one of those children who could not care less?”

Being a little taken aback by this enquiry of my love for my mother, I mumbled something about being Jewish and that we don’t do Mother’s Day and quickly made an exit.

Having someone question my love for my mum was more than a little disconcerting so I picked up the phone and apologized to my mum for not sending her flowers. My mum’s response was classic: “What in G-ds name are you talking about?” I told her of my scolding and my sheepish defense and asked her if she felt that I appreciated her enough. After wondering if I was drunk, she told me to stop worrying, that I was a lovely son and to get back to work on my finals.

I did not really think about Mother’s Day again until I moved to the United States. Mother’s Day seemed to be a far bigger deal across the pond then it did back in the United Kingdom. The added benefit of Mother’s Day here, however, was brunch. I like brunch as much as the next guy, so, in my new found U.S. home, I became an avid fan of Mother’s Day.

Yet with my mother thousands of miles away, having brunch with my wife did not really feel like I was doing something nice for my mum. Knowing that sending her a card or flowers would make my mum believe that I had become a fully assimilated American (something that would upset her greatly), I struggled for inspiration to balance my love of Mother’s Day brunch and doing something nice for my mum.

After racking my brain for some inspiration, the idea of dedicating this blog to my mum felt like the perfect way to tell her how much I appreciate her. Mum, you’re a rock star – thanks for being you.

Are Economics the Best Way to Get the Israelis to the Table?

Pieria 5/7/13

As Secretary of State John Kerry continues to pull rabbits out of his hat and get headlines in his attempt to get the Middle East Peace Process back on track, the parties involved seem less keen.

As predicted, the Palestinians did not react well to the economic levers that Kerry announced, seeing it as another attempt to trade Palestinian political rights for an economic peace. A question that needs to be answered is: does the use of economic levers in Israel/Palestine negotiations help or hinder their progress?

Linkage theory

While the Palestinian side of this dynamic has been well explored, for the Israelis there are still some false assumptions. In order to discover them, first we need to understand how the Israelis see the conflict.

The Israelis are keen to stress that the conflicts in Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East, demonstrate that the so-called ‘linkage’ theory is disproven. ‘Linkage’ is the concept that by solving the Israeli Palestinian conflict you would create stability in the region and it is at the root cause of the majority of the problems the Middle East faces.

Many, including the Israeli government, dispute this analysis and instead point to the general instability in the Middle East as their main concern of making peace agreements with parties whose own political future is in question.

What the Israelis will point to, however, is that allowing daylight between the West and Israel on any issue in the diplomatic arena is a green light to Israel’s enemies. So while the Israelis will decry linkage as a reason to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they do maintain that a diplomatic sanction aimed at their behavior towards the Palestinians directly affects all other parts of their security dynamic.

This complexity of the security picture that the Israelis face in a regional context is often forgotten due to the focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the majority of the world, the frame of reference for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of an asymmetric occupation. For the Israelis the frame is the Israeli-Arab conflict that puts Israel against almost all the countries of the Middle East.

These frames of reference matter. The tools available to those attempting to press Israel towards substantive negotiations depend to a large extent on which of these perspectives is adopted.

Falling value of economic leverage

It is in this light that we should view the common assumption within much of Europe that if the US put on the economic squeeze on the Israelis, they could get them to do what they wanted. Many point to the 90s, where the first President Bush suspended loan guarantees to push Israel into the Madrid Peace Conference.

Economic pressure has, over the past few years, been the favored tool of civil society that is critical of Israel and her actions towards the Palestinians. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign is a non-violent strategy to change the status quo vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians. Various groups have different goals in their campaigns – but share the belief that economic pressure can force the Israelis to change their policies.

One of the major problems with this approach is that the country is not the same as it was in the early 90s. Israel is now a member of the OECD and has turned into a high tech powerhouse. The ‘start-up nation’ continues to be a magnet for direct foreign investment from huge multi-nationals and celebrity investors.  Add to this the new natural gas and potential tight oil finds and Israel’s economic future looks anything but bleak.

Yet with all this private sector success, Israel is still the largest recipient of foreign aid from the USA running at just over $3 billion a year. If only the US would put policy riders on this aid, the argument goes, then Israel could be forced into a more pro-peace position.

While this huge amount of aid may look like the perfect leverage, the current US and geo-political realities have made this far less clear.

Much of the aid is supplied in order to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region at large. For the majority of the supporters of this aid package, Israel is viewed in the context of the entire region.

Moreover even if John Kerry wanted to add conditions to the aid, it is not in his power to do so. It is up to the US Congress to allocate aid and at present it would be almost unthinkable for Congress to change its mind, given current events in the Middle East.

For the vast majority of Congress, the aid is an easy way to make sure that a nation that shared the vast majority of its foreign policy objectives, as well as many of its overall values, can do so without US troops. As Israel has shown in Syria, it is happy to take the lead if it feels it needs to. In a rapidly changing strategically important region, a war weary US population may balk at withdrawing money from an ally who is willing to fight on the front lines.

A diplomatic approach

Given this, is there anything left in John Kerry’s bag of tricks to get the Peace Process rolling again?

To my mind the answer is not to focus on economic levers but to look at diplomatic ones instead. If Israel is keen on denying that ‘linkage’ exists, then Kerry’s team should detach their support for Israel in the context of the region as a whole from their support of Israel with regard to the Palestinians. By making it clear that the US will not have Israel’s back in the UN Security Council when it comes to settlement expansion they can demonstrate a clear stick within the Israeli-Palestinian frame of reference to Israel’s non-compliance.

This way they can maintain their support for Israel’s role within the wider Middle East, if they so wish, yet still create pressure within the narrower sphere of negotiations with the Palestinians.

Israel’s Achilles heel has morphed from economic to diplomatic dependency. With this being the case, Kerry’s team needs to adopt a complex view to its diplomatic relations with its number one ally in the region. Having Israel’s back in a hostile neighborhood is different from enabling it diplomatically to entrench its occupation of the Palestinians.

Kerry has set up the carrot of the Arab Peace Initiative, he now needs a diplomatic stick to help him guide the peace process back on track.

From the Lapid-Haredi battle to the Boston bombings, Lag Ba’omer is all around us

Ha’aretz 4/29/13

Lag Ba’omer is a day of vivid memories for me. It was the only day that my primary school in London would go on an outing, full of packed lunches and adventures, to celebrate and learn about the Bar Kochba uprising. We would shoot toy bows and arrows and generally have a good time.

As I grew older I learned about other themes of the day. The death of the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva, who were the greatest Talmudic scholars of their generation, but were stuck down by a plague as they were disrespectful of each other. Lag Ba’omer was the day that the plague stopped.

There are many different explanations of this event in rabbinical teaching and many different lectures have highlighted how the small passage in Sefer Yevamot is packed with multiple meanings.

Historians point to the fact that the students were not killed by a divine plague, but in the Bar Kochba uprising. All of Rabbi Akiva’s students died and he fled to the south where he rebuilt the study of the oral traditions through five students.

In my yeshiva days there was always a stress on the concept of “derech eretz kedma la’tora,” roughly translated as “manners comes before religious observance.” It was the ideology of the German Orthodox Jews in the late 1800s. The historical narrative was not as important as the lesson embedded in the text; your learning is for naught if you cannot be a mensch.

If you are in Israel, you will know that Lag Ba’omer is a day that turns Orthodox Jews into pyromaniacs with bonfires marking the death of Shimon Bar Yochai with many making a pilgrimage up north to Meron where he is buried.

Lag Ba’omer this year can be seen in the events all around us. In Israel, the battles between the ultra-Orthodox parties and Finance Minister Yair Lapid can be seen as an attempt to get Torah students to behave with manners or as an attack on Torah students. The reading of the events depends on your perspective.

In the United States, we see students caring about one another and their communities in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. As someone who lived in-between Cambridge and Watertown last year it is amazing to see how the community has come together to support one another during this awful time. The U.S. equivalent of Rabbi Akiva’s students, the brightest of the bright, cared about each other and those around them during their tragic time. They did not see themselves as above the moral code of society, but rather steeped in it.

The messages and themes of Lag Ba’omer are rich and wonderful. It’s sad that it is one of the lesser-known Jewish holidays. There are so many different themes throughout the day, the activities are so much more fun then the more well known festivals, it’s a shame that it is unknown to so many.

 

Why Economic Incentives are not Enough for Israel/Palestine

Pieria 16/4/13

There is a tendency to think that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the Middle East Peace Process. A new secretary of state but the same old shuttle diplomacy with the stated goals of getting the parties back to the negotiating table. If this was a film, someone somewhere would be charged with copywrite theft.

The ‘Groundhogs’ day phenomenon, however, is mistaken. Though the political situation has remained stagnant, the attitude of the populations has developed over the past twenty years, as have the facts on the ground. Peacemakers are faced with two populations who still agree in principle on the final outcome but who are incredulous on the ability to get there in their lifetime.

The basis of this lack of belief is a legitimate lack of trust both on a people to people level in addition to their leadership. Though the Israelis might at times make the correct noises, the settlements continue to grow. Security cooperation with the Palestinians might be the best they have ever been; yet there has been no preparation of the population for the compromises that will be necessary for a peace deal.

In order to coax the parties back to the table John Kerry and his team have been experimenting with different options. The most reported ‘confidence building measure’ has been a pledge to support the Palestinian economy, continuing the Salam Fayyad, the former Palestinian Prime Minster, paradigm of building Palestine despite the occupation.

Given that these measures have the ability to help the daily lives of Palestinians living in the West Bank, some observers have been surprised at the Palestinian pushback to these incentives.

The reason the Palestinians are not thrilled with a state building effort is due to the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s concept of economic peace. Never a fan of the peace process, Netanyahu has long been the champion of replacing political rights in the West Bank with economic incentives.

While economics are a necessary factor to create a sustainable two-state solution, they are not sufficient. Through Netanyahu’s support for economic measures but opposition to political rights, the economic state building efforts themselves have become unpatriotic within Palestine. As long as it is perceived that the economics come as a replacement, rather then a supplement, to resistance to the occupation – economic incentives will not help bridge the gap to get the parties back to the table.

I was happy therefore to hear John Kerry’s joint press conference with Netanyahu after his recent visit to the region. Kerry opened his remarks stating that he had discussed many different options with Netanyahu including some economic ones. Netanyahu followed stressing that there were some good economic projects that he could support to improve the lives of the Palestinians. Kerry then went off script, and protocol, to put in a final word where he stressed that economic moves are no replacement for the political process. It was a message that he stressed again in his final remarks before he left the region.

Kerry’s early highlighting of this understanding provides a solid grounding for him to mount his effort. With the resignation of Prime Minster Fayyad and the Israelis apparent rejection of the majority of his suggested bridging proposals, a solid footing is about the most he can hope for at this early stage.