Blogs of Zion is an on-line forum for Zionists from across the ideological and social spectrum to decipher, develop and debate issues affecting the Jewish people around the world.
Here I am, with Aharon, in Zion. And in the minutes I have before the sun sets over Jerusalem, I found this video. Not the best–but a good representation of the craziness on these streets.
Eighteen-year-old civilian Eliyahu Asheri, from the settlement of Itamar, was found dead by Israel Defense Forces late Wednesday night in the A-Tira neighborhood of Ramallah. May his memory be blessed and not forgotten
What has been going on in Gaza is war, plain and simple, and is a war started by a territory with sovereign power without provocation–thereby being an unjust war instigated by the Palestinians, who invaded a neighboring country in the hope of striking fear through violence in its civilian population. Even the NYTimes editorial board writes:
The responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas, whose military wing tunneled into Israel on Sunday, killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped another…If things go on like this, Palestinians can look forward to endless rounds of reckless Hamas provocations and inexorable Israeli responses. That is why things must not be allowed to go on like this. It is not just Israel that needs to be delivering that message to Hamas.
And so, when Hamas calls the arrest of its political representatives open war they’re right–Israel and the Jewish People should not shy away from saying it openly and honestly: we are at war with the elected Palestinian government, and, therefore, with the Palestinian collective as a whole who bears responsibility for the election of that government. War as war, we will attempt to do our best to avoid non-military casualties, but not at the expense of winning this war and ensuring the safety of our citizens. Those of us not currently in the military, or not currently in the country, at the very least can make sure to support the people of Israel and the families of the victims as this war is prosecuted to its successful conclusion.
AB Yehoshua, according to Haaretz, “failed to strike a conciliatory cord in an address to Diaspora Jews yesterday when he reiterated his argument that only Israelis could be “total and committed” Jews.” Here is why you should be an Israeli Jew:
Life should be about integration - integration between territory, moral decision making, Judaism, history,” Yehoshua said. “That is the fullness [of being an Israeli Jew]. I believe identity should be something we do.
A beautiful description of a positive Zionism. Of course, as we’ve been so brutally reminded over the past 48 hours, pain and sacrifice closely accompany the responsibility and privilege.
I am sorry that I didn’t post at all yesterday, but as you know from Jason the internet in Binyanei Hauma wasnt working and I got home and passed out from exhaustion. I will just post some reflections on the congress.
I came into the congress very excited to do something that would make a difference in the Zionist world, to exact some real change, to change the world. At the end of yesterday I was sorrily dissapointed.
The main sessions of the Congress were made up of large plenary sessions with every delegate of the congress and individual committes with smaller groups of representatives from each party represented. In these sessions we went over different resolutions put up by each party. As you can see by reading these resolutions, many of them have very substantial things to say about hundreds of different issues ranging from the place of the WZO to supporting ethiopian olim. Many of the issues addressed were incredibly important and it was great they were addressed.
The problem arises however in the extent of the actual power of the congress. The Congress cannot pass resolutions budgeting any money towards programs of the WZO or anyone else for that matter, so their power in basically in recomending the budgeting of monies, making statements about different issues and thats about it.
Essentially during the past 4 days, we have done absolutely nothing important and that is incredibly sad. The congress is way too involved in the business of politics instead of the business of Zionism and ensuring the organizations own future. The headline on all of the WZC posters was “The 35th World Zionist Congress-Innovation and Revitilization” and we did nothing of the sort. People have been continually talking about the relevance of the WZO today and if it really matters still, and to be honest if we do not change the organization drastically, it will and should die.
All of the major decisions (Monetary and otherwise) are made behind closed doors in an Old Boys Club setting. I talked with my friend Leor Sinai, a delegate from the conservative movement at the end of the congress yesterday and we both expressed our frustrations about the congress and talked about how for the most part, all of it was just, excuse my language, utter bullshit. Nothing we did had any importance or relevance to anything. The resolutions were nice, but they were just words, not actions. It wasn’t automatic that anything we passed would be enforced in any way. I saw too many resolutions at this congress which talked about how previous resolutions from other congresses and zionist general councils (the body that meets in the off years of a congress which takes care of the business of the WZO) had not been implemented in any way and should be in this congress.
Another thing that bothered me was the way that committees were run, as well as the plenaries, there was no parlimentary procedure, no rules of order, it was up to the chair to decide the rules and procedures. While I am sure there were a lot of nice people chairing committees, that is not how any organization should work. When we voted, the counting was all done by looking at the committee or plenary using an interpretation of which side had more hands up, not counting votes or anything as obvious at that. Even when they actually counted the votes, we each had voting cards, and the ushers had to come around and hand count every vote, as opposed to something like electronic voting or buttons to vote. I mean come on, I had that type of stuff when I was in middle school almost ten years ago.
Another thing that brought the Congress down was the politics of everything. It was all about horsetrading and previous agreements between parties, while there was debating, many of the decisions had been made behind closed doors between parties before any committees and plenaries ever occured.
One of the problems that has made the congress weaker and weaker, has been to get rid of the responsibilities of the congress and WZO over the years and farm them out to JAFI, KKL, Keren Hayesod, etc. There was a resolution to transfer the job of the shlichim to the WZO and it wasn’t passed because people argued that the WZO didn’t have the resources to do this. How will we ever become relevant if give away our responsibilities to other people and we have a largely symbolic job? While I understand the argument about resources, how can we ever grow if we don’t expand our mission?
Even the amendment to expand the Executive to put 5 youth delegates on it was not passed because of previous agreement between parties not to make any amendments to the constitution during the congress. They did establish a special committee headed by Ze’ev Bielski, the chairman of the WZO composed of 10 youth to hopefully change the role of youth in the congress. That was good, but who knows if that will actually accomplish anything.
I may sound very pessimistic about the future of the WZO, and that is because I am. I think that if we do not do something drastic before the next congress, then who knows if it will actually take place? I heard from many people in different parties referring to the next congress by prefacing their statements “If there is a next congress….”. The entire WZO process needs to be blown open so that it is accessible to everyone, not a select few decision makers behind closed doors. The constitution as it is needs to be scrapped and a new one, put together by the elected delegates from the countries, which will make the entire process open and democratic in every respect. We need to start over completely in order for the WZO to ever make a difference or change anything.
As much as it was an honor to represent my movement at the Congress, it doesn’t really feel like one now because I don’t feel like we really accomplished anything.
I really hope that this organization can be completely changed and revitilized, but the proof is in the pudding.
Sorry about the lack of posts today–the internet connection was not working in the conference center today so I’ll post some stuff which I wrote during the day… anyway this is from this morning’s session. There was a big gap in time and then all of a sudden someone got on the podium… read on!
Theodore Bikel, the head of Meretz, just got up to the podium and gave a speech. He wasn’t on the agenda, which caused quite a stir, and he made some divisive remarks, some of which I agreed with and some of which I did not. Here are some of them for your enjoyment:
There are some who think it seems anachronistic to show the youthful enthusiasm of the early Zionist movement. … I might argue that in this time of the country facing the mundane business of governing - talking about Zionist ideals and dreams is no more than an exercise in nostalgia, but speak of the dream we must.
Not all of us see eye-to-eye on every issue. there are often sharp disagreements about policy and directions for the future. but let me be perfectly clear about one thing: We of the peace movement are as devoted to the welfare and safety of Israel as anyone in this hall!
For decades, the Israeli establishment has danced around the problem (of religion) without [a way to deal with it]. We in America know too well that when government and religion are mixed, both tend to be corrupted and the nation as a whole tends to suffer as a result.
To this, many in the Likud faction called out “This is not America!” and booed. After the speech, Shlomo Mostofsky approached the microphoe and made the following statement which received a standing ovation from the right-wing groups (who ironically are seated on the left side of the hall):
the people who represented the religion zionist may not have the same aspirations as the ultra-orthodox community but to have it addressed here at the world zionist congress by someone who is not on the program is a disgrace!
Think what you will: Much of what the congress does may not make much of a real difference, but we all can certainly get riled up!
Right now, most of the committee’s have ended their discussions and for the most part the day is over. The discussions were interesting ad fruitful.The rest of today is filled with WZO sponsored trips around Jerusalem showing different Zionist aspects in Israel.
Thats about it for today.If anything comes up later, we will be sure to blog about it.
A gentleman from Likud just added an amendment supporting the Gush Katif evacuees to a proposal calling to support Ethiopian Olim. Now, as much as I feel bad for those from Gush Katif, this amendment has nothing to do with the racism, prejudice, and discrimination against Ethiopian Jews.
I love how people tack on irrelevant issues just to get their political agenda forward.
By chance I also ended up in the Settlement and Aliyah committee with Zach. Currently the committee is discussing a very complex resolution being presented by Green Zionist Alliance. The amendment (5/2) wants to make any settlement go through an Environmental Impact Assessment before they begin building. I am personally very worried that this will pass—not because I am against the environment; I believe that if we mistreat the Land of Israel which we are priveleged to live in, we are destroying the future of the Zionist dream—but with the new Kadima-Mercaz faction I am worried that it will actually pass and make it nearly impossible to build new communities in the Negev and the Galil as well as improve existing communities. In my opinion, it will cause years and years of delays, which we cannot afford. If every moshav and kibbutz that was started before the State of Israel was created had to go through years of bureaucracy—in fact they were often started by completely ignoring the British and Turkish bureaucracy—we would not have a State today.
There was just a resolution from Meretz which would return “the mandate givent to the settlement division of the WZO” to the Israeli government, as well as cease all the activities of the Settlement division. This resolution was swiftly taken off of the agenda by many of the right wing parties because apparently there were “coalition agreements” to take it off. This may be true, but I think that we should be democratic and at least give the resolution an up or down vote on the floor.
I guess being democratic is too much to ask of the World Zionist Congres…
I am at the beginning of my committee meeting, the name of which deals with Settlement and Aliyah. In the opening ceremony on Monday night they showed off the different parts of the WZO, for Settlement and Aliyah they showed settlements in the Galil and the Negev. It is an interesting transition from only a few years ago, pre-Sasson report when “Settlements” talked about in WZO were in Gaza and the West Bank.
