Who Represents the Jewish People?

June 23, 2009

The annual meeting of the Jewish Agency for Israel is taking place on June 21-23. This morning was the governance session for resolutions. Controversy has been building for weeks over proposed changes in the governance structure. There are two main issues. First, the board of JAFI is composed of 50% representatives of the World Zionist Organization, 30% UJC, and 20% Keren Hayesod (Jewish communities from Europe and elsewhere, not part of UJC) and the JAFI executive also serves as the head of the WZO. What is the WZO? I have been puzzling over this question since arriving in Israel and looking more closely at these agencies. WZO is the political body that originated with the first Zionist Congress in 1897, led by Herzl. Its purpose is to represent the Jewish people, a task that was more necessary and more feasible when political forces needed to be aligned for the creation of the State of Israel. The Jewish Agency was created in 1929 to be the Zionist Congress representative in Palestine. Today it’s not clear what role the WZO plays or should play, but it does have inordinate influence, it seems, as well as receipt of something like $7 million from UJC's annual campaign. The executive of JAFI serves as the executive of the WZO. The representatives to the WZO are composed of Diaspora and Israeli Zionist organizations and parties, which means that the political parties in Israel have representatives on the WZO, a particularly troubling entanglement. So the first issue is that there is a joint executive with no justification other than to maintain the political influence of the government.

The second issue is the process by which the executive of JAFI is chosen. Currently, the executive is “nominated” by the Prime Minister of Israel, further creating entanglements. It is reasonable for the Israeli government that represents the people of Israel and who constitute about half of the Jewish population of the world to have some clear role in JAFI, but it’s not clear how to create that role with minimal political cost. These were the issues that were debated by about 300 people in a ballroom of the Inbal Hotel in Jerusalem. Two amendments to the operating agreement of JAFI passed by surprisingly large margins. First, the executive of JAFI will no longer serve as the executive of the WZO. Second, a nominating committee of the board of JAFI will identify and offer candidates for the executive, not the Prime Minister. Problems certainly remain as indicated in this quote from a story in the Jerusalem Post.

Instead of getting a chairman de facto appointed by the prime minister, "now the Americans are hostages of even the smallest operator in the WZO. We have to put together a unanimous political coalition now just to appoint someone allegedly 'apolitical.' We'd have done this also if we were appointing someone completely independent, such as [rumored candidate and Israeli businessman] Eytan Wertheimer."
The agreement is a complex political bargain. It gives the Likud the chairmanship of the agency and the deputy chairmanship of the WZO. Labor got the chairmanship of the Jewish National Fund, with rumors claiming that Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon wants the job. The Reform movement got the Israel department in the WZO and the deputy chairmanship of JNF. [Kadima] got the WZO chairmanship and cochairmanship of JNF. The Conservative movement took the External Department of the WZO, while Israel Beiteinu got the deputy chairmanship of the JNF. Mizrahi, the religious- Zionist movement, has yet to sign the coalition agreement because it feels it did not get enough - merely the deputy chairmanship of the agency and the Settlement Division of the WZO.
According to sources in the political establishment, Shas has also decided it's missing out on a good thing. The non-Zionist (though not anti-Zionist) party wants a place in the WZO, and its operators have finally obtained spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's permission. Religious Services Minister Ya'acov Margi and party official Yigal Bibi will be masterminding this effort. At next summer's Zionist Congress, expect to see the first-ever non-Zionist haredi delegation. It's safe to say they won't be there as homage to Theodor Herzl, but rather looking to take a share in the spoils every other party is enjoying.

The next day, Natan Sharansky, the former prisoner of conscience in the Soviet Union, former Knesset member, and ally of Benjamin Netanyahu was selected to be the new executive. He had been promoted by Netanyahu back in March, as the governance debates were heating up and one wonders why Netanyahu was not more sensitive to that process. Is he a powerful symbol of Zionism and an articulate spokesman? For sure. Is he the right person to run a complicated organization like JAFI in need of clarification of its mission? Not so sure.

The following from the Jerusalem Post covers some of his remarks upon assuming his new position.
"This closed a great circle for me," [Sharansky] told The Jerusalem Post shortly after the election. The circle "began in Moscow, where we lived as Jews without identity, weak. After 1967, we suddenly began to feel the existence of Israel, of the Jewish people. We had an identity. We started to fight."
An awakening such as his, he continued, "has to happen now to Jews around the world. We're in a world where Jews are losing their identity. Israel and world Jewry are like receding galaxies, floating apart at a time when contact is easier than ever."
His goals for the agency went beyond connecting with Diaspora Jews, he said. "Abroad there is the problem of assimilation, but in Israel, too, young Jews are growing away from their roots. It weakens us as a people. If we create contacts between the Diaspora and Israel, we strengthen their identity and ours at the same time. The Jewish Agency is that meeting place, the ideal tool for developing that connection."

One amusing note about the JAFI assembly. The atmosphere was that of a kindergarten or perhaps middle school class, with a constant din that made it difficult to hear the speakers. There were numerous side conversations in spite of repeated requests by the chair of the meeting for silence out of respect for the speakers.