Jewish Federations of North America hits iceberg, pats itself on the back
Earlier this week, the Jewish Federations of North America held their annual general assembly here in Jerusalem. Luckily, I wasn't paying attention or someone would have gotten me a ticket. I had way too much work to take a couple of days off to live blog a conference this week.
There's another reason it was good I didn't go: Michael Freund explains some of what I would have found frustrating:
But in light of the recent findings of the Pew Research Center
regarding American Jewry's frightful descent into assimilation, the
upbeat tone of this GA was entirely out of place and even inappropriate.
Indeed, even more than its predecessors, this GA was reminiscent of
the ill-fated RMS Titanic as it steamed straight for an iceberg in the
northern Atlantic ocean in April 1912, oblivious to the impending doom.
After all, it was more than a month ago that Pew shocked the Jewish
world with some grim data when its October 1 survey revealed that
intermarriage rates among non-Orthodox American Jews have soared to 71
percent and that nearly one-third of Jews under the age of 32 do not
identify themselves as Jewish by religion.
These are the statistics of shared suicide, a glaring sign that large
portions of American Jewry are simply melting away and shedding their
identity.
If the Jewish federations were serious about confronting this crisis,
they should have taken the extraordinary step of reformatting the GA's
schedule in order to focus on the existential emergency at hand.
Instead, in an act of pathetic hubris, they had the gall to add a
single session on Monday, with the self-aggrandizing title, "Responding
to Pew: How Federations are Successfully Engaging the Next Generation."
"Successfully"? Who are they kidding? BACK IN 1990, after the
National Jewish Population Survey revealed an intermarriage rate of 52%
(which was subsequently the subject of much debate), the Jewish world
was stirred into action, vowing to do whatever was necessary to stem the
tide of assimilation.
Here we are, more than two decades – and hundreds of millions of
dollars spent on bolstering Jewish identity – later, and for all intents
and purposes the situation has only worsened as growing numbers of Jews
turn their backs on their heritage.
Clearly, the Federation system has proven to be a colossal failure,
and it bears much of the blame for this catastrophic situation. It sets
the spending priorities of the Jewish community, allocates funds and
oversees various initiatives.
Nonetheless, they have presided over nothing less than a disaster of
epic proportions, even as they celebrate their own failures at the GA.
This isn't responsible leadership, it is a reckless letdown.
Jewish Federation's General Assembly gives itself over to anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agendas
Caroline Glick has a deeply disturbing indictment of the recently concluded Jewish Federation General Assembly in Denver, Colorado.
This year at Jewish Federations of North America'sannual General Assembly, they invited the newly minted anti-Israel activist Peter Beinhart to speak. They also showcased the Boston Globe's resident anti-Israel columnist James Carroll. These moves as well as much of the program of the 3-day conference which presented several panels discussing whether anti-Zionists should be embraced by the community are indicative of the advanced suicidal tendencies of the American Jewish community.
This is a community that has for generations seamlessly merged its definition of Judaism with leftist politics. And now that this generation of leftists has cast its lot with the anti-Semites, the young American Jews coming of age have embraced anti-Semitism to show their moral purity.
It may have once gone without saying, but apparently it is no longer obvious that this embrace of Jew hatred by young American Jews is a death embrace for the community.
The only way to deal with this is head on.
But who among the well-funded American Jewish leadership has the courage to tell these young people that they are deranged? Who has the courage to tell their children that they have embraced evil and ought to be ashamed of themselves?
Jewlicious, which is well to my left, posts a response to the people who heckled Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier this week.
Third, your organization is the founder of Muzzlewatch. Muzzlewatch is a blog that claims that voices criticizing Israel are under censorious attack. The irony of this claim is that when some of us went to Muzzlewatch to debate your group’s claims, they shut down all comments. Permanently. The fact that you would disrupt a speech with the claim that your claims can’t otherwise be heard is sheer hypocrisy.
Fourth, your banners are mistaken. What delegitimizes Israel are groups such as yours which serve as the vanguard of the numerous organizations that attack Israel regularly. What helps to delegitimize Israel is that many haters of Israel (as well as haters of Jews, just so we are perfectly clear on this point) use groups such as yours as shills, because you are Jewish, to enable their movements to avoid or to take cover behind you guys when they are justly criticized for singling Israel out in ways they don’t single out other nations that do far worse. In other words, you serve as a fig leaf for Israel’s enemies.
Fifth, your group and others like it have done more to damage the possibility of peace than has Hamas. What you have effectively done is give the Palestinians the confidence and belief that their waiting strategy is likely to succeed in defeating Israel over time. You have strengthened those who would refuse peace deals like Olmert’s and Barak’s.
Sixth, it is precisely peace offers such as Barak’s and Olmert’s which undermine the many false claims your organization makes in general and even specifically with your lying banners in this event. The fact is the occupation could already be over, the Palestinians could have their own state over approximately 98% of ’67 borders with additional land inside Israel to compensate for the other 2%. The Palestinians could have eastern Jerusalem with either sovereignty over their holy places or able to enjoy international sovereignty over the Holy Basin. The Palestinians could have received over $30 billion in reparations and even a limited return of original Palestinian refugees to Israel.
Yet, here you are complaining that the occupation continues and that an embargo on Gaza – a place which has launched thousands of rockets at Israel and is making great efforts to arm itself to the teeth – should be lifted thus easing the way for more arming of those who have no problem shooting rockets at Israeli civilian centers in order to cause both terror and death.
And I could go on and on.
My point, however, is different.
If you had the true courage of your convictions, you would make every effort to convince the Palestinians to negotiate for peace and to close a deal.
Ron Kampeas believes that Prime Minister Netanyahu's appearance at the Jewish Federations General Assembly in New Orleans on Monday shows that Netanyahu feels empowered by the Republican victory in last Tuesday's elections.
The sharpest signal of what last week’s elections meant for Jews came not from Washington but from New Orleans, Nova Scotia and Australia.
In New Orleans, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech Monday calling for moving beyond sanctions to mounting a “credible military threat” against Iran as a means of avoiding war.
“Containment will not work,” Netanyahu said in his address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America.
The prime minister’s remarks echoed the precise terminology used by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in Nova Scotia two days earlier, when he told the Halifax International Security Forum that “containment is off the table.” The likely new majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), referred to a "credible military threat" in the days before the election.
It was a clear sign that Netanyahu feels empowered by the Republican sweep last week of the House of Representatives to trump the Obama administration’s emphasis on peacemaking with the Palestinians with his own priority: confronting Iran.
Funny, Netanyahu didn't feel too empowered when it came to Jerusalem, did he?
Netanyahu heckled in New Orleans by Code Pink-organized protesters
As I'm sure most of you have heard, Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech at the Jewish Federation General Assembly in New Orleans was heckled on Monday. Here's an excerpt from the uninterrupted part of the speech.
Let's go to the videotape.
But as I mentioned, Netanyahu's speech was disrupted. Here's a description of what happened.
"The loyalty oath de-legitimatizes Israel," a woman holding a placard yelled while standing on her chair, interrupting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech at the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly in New Orleans on Monday.
She was swiftly escorted out by security. However, moments later, another protester stood on his chair and shouted "the occupation de-legitimizes Israel." The man was also quickly taken outside. But then another, and another, appeared. Six in all. One of them was tackled by participants in the crowd and a short scuffle ensued until security reached him.
The protesters were part of Jewish Voices for Peace, a leftist organization of Jews which helped organize a recent boat that tried to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza and is attempting to pressure the planned Tolerance Museum in Jerusalem to relocated from the current, controversial building site.
"These actions are in part a protest of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and Jewish Public Affairs Council (JCPA) newly announced $6 million dollar program to target campus, church, peace and human rights groups that are working to end Israel’s human rights violations through nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions pressure campaigns," a press release from JVP read. "The Federations and JCPA are calling this initiative the “Israel Action Network.”'
The group's aim was to draw attention to their cause, and to a large part they succeeded. Haaretz, Yediot Ahronot and other Israeli newspapers lead with the sensationalist news on their Websites. But the sentiments of the protesters did not reflect any greater discontent by American Jews with Israel based upon interviews with a sampling of participants after the event occurred.
Outside the plenary hall, it appeared cooler heads prevailed. A young group of Hillel students eating kosher sandwiches handed out by JFNA offered their opinions on the frucus which took part shortly before.
"If we allow five butt-heads to hijack the message here by standing on chairs with their homemade signs we're failing our roles as ambassadors to Israel," Daniel Friedman, a student at UCSD said.
Yes, that's the same 'Jewish' Voices for Peace (I am willing to bet that if we check, we will find that a substantial percentage are not Jewish under Jewish law) that is sponsoring 'Israeli occupation awareness week' at Brandeis this week. And I wonder if that's the same Daniel Friedman who has been sending me emails lately.
But I want to show you Prime Minister Netanyahu's reaction, so let's go to the videotape.
I wish the protesters had been arrested for trespassing. They were not. Three were held until Netanyahu finished speaking and two were let go (see next link below). I don't know what happened to the sixth one.
Lastly, I want to bring the astoundingly self-righteous reactions from the protesters themselves (Hat Tip: Republican Jewish Coalition Headquarters via Twitter) and I did promise in the title to tie these people in to Code Pink.
But the group’s pretensions to representing a generational voice, manifested in the publication of a document roughly outlining their positions and titled the Young Jewish Declaration, were called into question by the presence of scores of young, pro-Israel activists in the halls of the G.A.
“I think the point is more that there needs to be space for people like us, people who don’t fit into the paradigm that’s been laid out,” said a member of the protest group, Eyal Mazor, 22, a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, who was born in Israel. Though involved in planning the action, Mazor was not one of the activists who disrupted the speech. “We need to be seen as a legitimate part of the Jewish community,” he said.
...
Individual activists said in interviews that they supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, and JVP supports the right to engage in BDS campaigns, although a document created by the group does not mention BDS.
The Forward was given limited access to the protesters before the disruption on the condition that the information not be published until after the disruption took place.
On the night of November 7, in a Unitarian Universalist church a few miles from the site of the convention, a dozen young activists sat in a room crowded with half-drawn signs, debating the contours of the next day’s protest.
The activists had been based in the building since November 4, two days before the general assembly’s official kickoff. Convened by JVP, the group of 14 had spent two days engaged in training and skills sharing and preparing for their actions. Members ranged in age from 17 to 39.
Activists initially told the Forward that they planned to silently hoist signs. But in the meeting the night before the action, the plan seemed to be shifting. Rae Abileah, a staff organizer for the anti-war group Code Pink, was arguing for the disrupters to shout while being removed from the room. Abileah said that the time between when the signs are taken from the protesters and when they were removed from the room could total 15 minutes — time that could be used to shout slogans.
“We are often far [more] concerned with being polite and being politically correct and being nice than we are with human rights, dignity, justice, and international law,” Abileah said later in an interview. Abileah said that she has participated in similar disruptions at two recent AIPAC conferences.
In the end, Abileah apparently won out. She was among those who rose to interrupt Netayahu.
Communications staff at the JFNA knew of plans to disrupt Netanyahu’s speech as early as the evening of November 6. Staff members became aware that at least one person registered as a member of the press was actually an activist. JFNA staff sought to intercept any protesters going in disguised as press before they could enter the ballroom. It’s not clear whether they were successful.
Asked about the JFNA staff’s concerns about a disruption of the speech hours before the second plenary, Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles president Jay Sanderson said, “I would rather my enemy be standing right in front of me than hiding. I’m not afraid of any kind of protest. At least we have an opportunity to respond.” Sanderson has been one of the architects of the Israel Action Network, the new JFNA anti-divestment initiative that has been a focus of the program at the G.A.
After the disruption, Jewish Council for Public Affairs senior vice president Martin Raffel, who is leading the Israel Action Network, said that the disruption demonstrated the atmosphere advocates for Israel face. “Trying to prevent the audience from hearing what the prime minister has to say is in itself a form of delegitimization,” Raffel said.
In other words, Code Pink organized this protest. For those who have forgotten about Code Pink's ties to Hamas, go here. For those who have forgotten about its ties to the Obama administration, go here. No, Mr. Mazor, by putting yourselves under the pink umbrella, you have forfeited any right to be viewed as a 'legitimate part of the Jewish community.' Go back to the unitarian universalist church. That's where you belong.
And the smug, self-righteousness?
“I think I’m very much succeeding in practicing tikkun olam and derech eretz by standing up for the rights for all people,” said Hana King, 17, a freshman at Swarthmore College. “It such hypocrisy for these Jewish leaders that I grew up admiring to say that, you know, that the Holocaust was a tragedy but what we’re doing to [the Palestinians] is fine.”
“We have to get their attention somehow,” she said.
Who the hell does this punk think she is and why is she throwing around terms to whose true meanings she is completely oblivious.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
